Inspirational Friday 2017: The Black Legion (until 1/5)

[Kierdale]

Welcome to Inspiration Friday 2017.

Inspiration Friday is a chance for members to write pieces of fiction on set Chaos-related subjects, with a winner chosen at the end of each period and awarded a medal. As in the previous Inspiration Fridays, images accompanying entries are most welcome.

While previous incarnations were strictly weekly, I may give two weeks to work on some themes. I should also point out that, living in Tokyo, my Fridays start earlier than many of the Frater and so likely I will close and open themes early on Saturdays, Tokyo-time. Likely still Friday for most of you.

From 2016 onwards there were a couple of changes to Inspiration Friday:

While I, Kierdale, set the topic each time (or another member I appoint to take the helm in my absence), the winner of each topic will be given the choice of judging the next topic’s entries and choosing the winner from those entries. Should they, for any reason, wish to turn down this duty then judging will revert to Kierdale for the next entry.

Judging Rules

1. Many of our members are non-native English speakers so grammar, spelling and punctuation should not be too harshly judged. That said, members are encouraged to type their entries in a word processor program which can help them with their spelling and grammar.


2. The judge should choose the one entry which, in their mind, exemplifies the IF topic of that week. Not necessarily the most action-packed, the longest, the coolest, etc.

3. The judge may, when posting their judgement, choose to give feedback on each entry. What they liked and didn't like, what they wanted to see more or less of.

Past Inspiration Friday Topics

Links to previous incarnations of Inspiration Friday, for reference:

Under Brother Nihm:

Aspiring Champion

Chaos Banner

Regarding the Legions

Favourite Model

Paint a CSM

Favourite Primarch

Why Chaos?

Under Tenebris:

Chaos Cults - Winner: Disease

Legacy Weapon - Winner: Xenith

Rank and File - Winner: Kol Saresk

Chaos Worlds - Winner: Marshal Sampson

Chaos Vehicle - Winner: Loesh

Call of Chaos Test model - Winner: Alan of Angels and Loesh

Chaos Battle - Winner: Cormac Airt

Minor Daemon - Winner: Tdf4638

Spooky Chaos - Winner: Dizzyeye

Chaos Stronghold - Winner: Carrack

Nemesis of Chaos - Winner: Kierdale

Chaos Navigator House - Winner: Marshal Sampson

Chaos Knight House - Winner: Kierdale

Chaos Santa - Winner: Castellan Cato

Chaos Dreadnought - Winner: none was chosen!

Chaos Warship - Winner: Conn Eremon

Interview with a Chaos Lord - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Interview with a Chaos Sorcerer - Winner: Kierdale

Chaos Space Marine Bolter - Winner: Son of Carnelian

Chaos Assassin - Winners: Carrack, Kierdale and Zhaharek

Intel Report on Warband - Winner: Kierdale

Betrayal - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Chaos Sword - Winner: Castellan Cato

Chaos Spawn - Winners: Carrack and Kierdale

Champion of Khorne - Winner: Slipknotzim

Chaos Heraldry - Winner: Teetengee

Equerry - Winner: Zhaharek

Chaos Tome - Winner: TDF

Chaos Crossover - Winner: Lord Pariah

Dark Mechanicus - Winners: Carrack and Kierdale

Daemon Forge - Winners: Zhaharek and Beachymike123

Battles of the Space Marines - Winners: Carrack, Warsmith Aznable and Tipper

Cult Leader - Winner: Zhaharek

Familiar - Winner: Kierdale

Nemesis of Chaos II - Winners: TDF and Conn Eremon

Ruination - Winner: Carrack

Chaos Sidekick - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Chaos Skirmish - Tactical Squads - Winner: Kierdale

Under Kierdale:

2015

Interview With A Warpsmith - Winner: Carrack

ETL Background (care of Carrack) - Winner: Kierdale

Lair of the gods - Winner: Scourged

Signature Tactics - Winners: Scourged and Majorbookworm

Berserkers of every creed - Winner: none.

Chaos Geneseed - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Tales of... ...Chaos Glory - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

A Stolen Relic - Winner: Beachymike123

Summoning - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Treadheads - Winner: Scourged

The Primordial Annihilator versus...the Greater Good - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Replenishments New Meat - Winner: Scourged

Chaos Halloween Horror - Winner: Dammeron, Scourged, Zhaharek and Teetengee

Interview with a dark apostle - Winner: Carrack

Chaos Power Armour - Winner: Scourged

Tales of Hubris - Winner: Teetengee

Chaos Titans - Winner: Scourged and Teetengee

Chaos Icons - Winners: MaliGn, Teetengee, Carrack and Scourged.

Bonus Challenge: Chaos Objectives - Winner: Carrack

2016

Memories of Terra - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Possessed - Winner: Captain Malachi

Chaos Steeds - Winner: Scourged

Traitor Regiments - Winner: Teetengee

The Primordial Annihilator versus...the Vlka Fenryka - Winner: Carrack

Campaign I - Opening Moves - Winner: Diabolist

Interview with a Daemon Prince - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Skirmish II - Upon Cursed Wings/Jump Assault - Winner: Teetengee

Lost in Space - Winner: Scourged

Imperfect Beings - Winner: Carrack

Obliterators - Winner: none

Lesser Daemons I - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Tales of Honour - Winner:Son of Carnelian

Tales of Dishonour - Winner: Fulkes

Campaign II - Assault - Winner: Scourged

Knightfall - Winner: no contest.

Architect of Fate - Winner: Carrack

Chaos Flyer - Winner: Kierdale

Schism - Winner: Scourged

A Chaotic Alliance - Winner: Squigsquasher

Chaotic Rites - Winner: Krautscientist

Retro-Chaos - Winner: Carrack

ETL-V model - Winner: Scourged

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Inquisition - Winner: Carrack

Interview with a Chaos Apothecary - Winner:Kierdale

Chaos Trophies - Winner: MyD4rkPassenger

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Sons of Sanguinius - Winner: Carrack

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Bugs - Winner: Teetengee

Aquatic Combat - Winner: Kierdale

Campaign III - Tables Turn/The Crucible - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Halloween 2016 - Winner: Carrack

Tales of Vengeance - Winner: MyD4rkPassenger

Unit Champion - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Iron Warriors - Winner: Carrack

Thousand Sons - Winner: Zhaharek

2017

Black Crusade – A Call To Arms - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Campaign IV - End Game - Winner: Kierdale

Seeds Sown... - Winner: Scourged

The Fallen - Winner: Trevak Dal

Chaos Bikers - Winner: Kierdale

The Warp - Winner: Scourged

Hive War - Winner: Carrack

Propaganda - Winner: Kierdale

The Ends Justify The Means - Winner: Carrack

The Witch - Winner: Honda

Rivalry of the Gods - Winner: none

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Sons of Guilliman - Winner: Caius/DogWelder

Death Guard - Winner: Azekai

Alpha Legion - Winner: Iron Father Ferrum

Desert Warfare - Winner: P3AKHOUR

Abhumans and mutants - Winner: Gunnyogrady

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Adeptus Mechanicus - Winner: ColonelSchaeffer

The Primordial Annihilator versus the Imperial Guard - Winner: Warsmith Aznable

Images of Chaos - No contest

If Horus had won... - Winner: MaliGn

Exalted Champion - Winner: macbeefin

The Black Legion - Winner:

While each topic will close (with respect to who can win the medal for that theme) after a set period, members who find themselves inspired to write about previous themes are most welcome to post these as and when they can, but I ask that you please title your entry accordingly (e.g. “Chaos Warship”).

Inspirational Friday: Timelines of Treachery is a companion thread to this (and past and future Inspirational Friday main threads) for those who wish to organise their IF entries and present their warband's timeline. I know I just about my warband's timeline a lot, so the thread is to help both readers and writers to get their heads around which stories come where. By all means please add your own timelines as and when you can

[Son of Carnelian]

So are we posting on 2017's first topic now?

[Warsmith Aznable]

So are we posting on 2017's first topic now?

 

Short answer, not yet. See here for more.

[Kierdale]

Welcome to Inspirational Friday 2017!

I thank you for your many entries in Inspirational Friday: Thousand Sons.

We had five fantastic entries this time which really captured the spirit of the XV legion, a legion close to my heart as it was they who lured me back into the hobby (and then Slaanesh seduced me, but that’s another tale...).

Here begins our first challenge of Inspirational Friday 2017:

Black Crusade - A Call To Arms

Abaddon’s thirteenth Black Crusade rages as we speak and in the first challenge of IF2017 I want to see tales set in the build up to any of the 13 Black Crusades. Were your warbands involved? Were they recruited, pressured? An old debt called in? Did they take up the black or fight as mercenaries, or even shun the call to arms? Or were they the ones tasked with gathering forces for the Crusade?

And which Black Crusade you choose is entirely up to you. Were your warriors called upon by the lord of the newly-formed Black Legion, Abaddon, to aid him in claiming the daemon sword Drach’nyen? Did they assault Cadia in the 2nd Crusade? Aid in the desecration of Saint Gerstahl’s tomb or the diversionary force that attacked the Cadian Gate? Were they key in the bringing down of the Citadel of Kromarch during the 4th Crusade or were they present during the Scouring of Elysia in the 5th? Were they embroiled in the infighting between former Sons of Horus in the 6th Crusade? Perhaps those of the Hydra found wetwork for their blades and bolters during the Ghost War or those bearing the Black faced the entirety of the Blood Angels chapter on Mackan? Did they aid Abaddon in appeasing the Changer of Ways during the murderous 8th? Was your warband one of those that sailed unhindered from the great Eye in the wake of the 9th? Were they part of the alliance between the Black Legion and the Iron Warriors in laying siege to the homeworld of the Iron Hands during the 10th Black Crusade? Perhaps they were part of the Despoiler’s fleet scattered by the maddened daemon of Tzeentch at the beginning of the 11th, ending up fighting both the Imperium and the Greenskins on the Cardinal World of Relorria? Or were they to play their part in the legendary Gothic War?

Note that in a future IF we will cover the actions of your warbands during this or another Black Crusade, so you needn’t go beyond `how they got involved` (hence the 1-week only time limit) but by all means do go on if you wish. If you wish to cover the entirety of the Crusade in this IF entry then by all means do a different one in the later challenge Then again, a Black Crusade is not merely one battle, you could cover the opening engagements now, leaving more meat for later...

Note that this topic is also open to loyalists lapdogs of the Corpse God to submit entries from their point of view...

Inspirational Friday: Black Crusade – A Call To Arms runs until the 20th of January.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: Carrack.

To the chosen victor: step forward and claim the Octed Amulet:

[Zhaharek]

Wow, I'm utterly honoured to judge the first Inspirational Friday of the year. Ominissiah willing, I'll add that Octed to my signature.

I'm looking forward to reading everyone's stories!  

Happy New Year my fellow heretics!

[Kierdale]

Congratulations, Zhaharek!

 

My entry for the current topic:

 

Telling Tales

Hidden Content

"A single cruiser?"

 

"Aye, captain."

"However they found us, they're bold coming in at that speed alone. One cruiser against our fleet."

The captain nodded. A couple of hundred years ago it would have been a cool, calm gesture given as he estimated the bogie's intent. But not now; the chapter's ties of loyalty to Holy Terra thrown off, the oaths he had sworn long ago upon his elevation from mortal to Astarte long ago trod upon. Now it was an eager, hungry nod, born of his devotion to higher powers which both granted him far greater power than his old loyalties had, but also demanded so much more of him.

"Helm, move us to intercept. This is our kill. Have the tubes loaded and the gun decks readied." Then almost as an afterthought, "And run a scan. Find out who they are."

Within the Eye, that great maelstrom where Chaos literally bled though from the immaterium into realspace, one found few friends and a great many foes.

As fate would have it, as the captain's colourful battleship came about to face the inbound unknown vessel, its equally luridly-painted sister ships hurrying, eager to follow suit and perhaps steal the kill, it turned out that the lone cruiser came with an offer.

 

"An offer of power and vengeance."

The envoy stood in his armour of gold-trimmed black within the audience chamber. Both the plate of the speaker and his hosts were ornate though in completely different manners: his bore the hallmarks of age, being a venerable suit of mark III which had seen action during the days of the Great Crusade, upon its front were great slabs of ceramite which had saved the black guard's life in countless boarding actions through the millennia. New applications of sable paint barely hid the scars and damage of all those battles. The ornamentation and trophies of the Long War were battered flat against the plates in a balance of efficiency and pride. Where one could barely make out the remnants of Imperial iconography long ago wrathfully defaced and disgraced, the Aquilas upon his obscenely-coloured audience were more recently lovingly hacked at and pried away. The plates of their armour, no suit in sight older than mark six though a good few were cobbled together mongrels, were seemingly madly daubed with pastel shades of green, blue, violet and even orange, over a dominant roseate pink. These shocking colours so ill efitting the war gear of genecrafted warriors, were arranged randomly with little uniformity within squads let alone what remained of companies or the chapter itself. And upon their armour they decorated themselves with myriad jewelry and baubles. Chains and hooks of gold and silver pierced noses, mouths, eyelids and other exposed flesh, crisscrossing the bodies of some like the webs of deranged arachnids. Others bore ritual scarification in patterns which indicated their loyalty within the pantheon. A merging of the ancient symbols for Mars and Venus, the masculine and the feminine. A blessed few openly flaunted mutations so as to incite jealously in their peers.

The envoy had, over his time in the Eye since the bitter days of the Scouring, seen a great many turncoat chapters like these. Thinbloods the veterans of old called them, amongst other epithets. He looked over those assembled around him. Oh, they played their roles well enough; put on a fair display of force, a reasonable attempt to intimidate him. But he was not, for he had been undergoing such missions for - how long now? Time was liquid within the Eye and to keep track of its passing merely an exercise in frustration for a year might pass within the Realm of Chaos and in the same period a century pass upon worlds without, and in the blink of an eye the balance reversed - for longer than these renegades had been renegades, he would wager. Since he had lost his right leg, for one. That was one way in which he tracked the passage of time: Togris The Bleeder they called him. As one of the Sons of Horus it had been due to the vindictiveness and cruelty of the young warrior. He had been filled with a violent streak and spite that, his comrades had said, could have seen him fit in with the Night Lords with ease. But that had been long ago. Since the Scouring his nickname had taken on a different meaning for in each engagement since he had not failed to be injured. At first it had merely been bad luck, but some whispered that the turn in Togris' fortunes reflected that of the Legion. It had been no great concern whilst he still reaped a tally of enemies as he had during the Heresy and the Crusade before it, but when he lost his leg during the sixth of the Despoiler's Crusades, he had seen himself sidelined. 'His expertise and experience put to better use, in light of his injuries' he had been told, but he knew full well that he was seen as an ill omen.

Now he was a figurehead. Those who beheld him saw a proud veteran of the Long War, but those who were able to look within would see a bitter soul indeed.

 

"Groxdung!" Exclaimed one of those listening to the storyteller. "You're telling is you were there? You saw all this? Nurgle's festering nutsack!" they spat.

The doubter looked at the armour of the storyteller. It was a grubby, dirty white with eight-pointed stars painted large over the armour plates. Neither the colours of the Psychopomps nor the Black Legion or any of its affiliated groups, nor any warband any of the listeners had seen before.

The storyteller sat in one of the many dives which catered to renegade astartes on the shadowport of Aelial - a world on the fringe of the Eye and a home to traitors and turncoats of all faiths and breeds. Catering to those with posthuman constitutions the refreshments served were unpalatable and in some cases downright toxic to mortals, which was how the clientele liked it. It was rumoured that the owner and brewer was a former son of Fenris gone bad.

"With my very own eyes," the storyteller replied curtly.

"The Black Legion sent only a single cruiser?" One listener began.

"A single cruiser perhaps, if the call is going out wide, but a single marine to speak on their behalf without a bodyguard?" Another put in, his voice dripping incredulity.

"I've half a mind to find one of the Legion hereabouts and see what they make of your story," yet another of the storyteller's audience added.

Though he was helmed, a smile was evident in the tale-weaver's voice when he next spoke, "You think they don't already know what happened? And besides, you'd miss the end of my tale."

This elicited guffaws and chuckles from those listening, but served to diffuse the tension and buy him a few more minutes. Those present were from half a dozen war-bands and legions, feuds and rivalries mostly put aside while on-planet for the sake of rest and trade. That didn't mean one went about unarmed, in fact quite the opposite. All those present at the table had a drink close to one hand and a weapon closer to the other.

That they were present on Aelial now, rather than having been given the Black Legion's offer indicated that their war-bands had been overlooked or deemed too small, too weak. Insignificant. They were bitter, and could not help but listen to a tale of those to whom the offer had been extended.

 

"An offer of power and vengeance," Togris had said, fixing the lord of the Psychopomps with his gaze. He did not kneel, but stood proud before the terminator-clad warrior upon his marble throne, daemonettes leaning against its sides and lounging upon the steps before it. Sophusar, former chapter master of the Stygian Guard - the name the chapter had held before its fall - looked at the envoy from the Black Legion through his enlarged right eye, which scintillated green.

"This is the first time that we have ever been visited by a member of the Black Legion," the lord commented.

"You have not long been within the Eye."

You have not long served the Gods, Thinblood. The insinuation escaped few of those present and there was a general murmur and sound of blades loosened in sheathes, bolter slides racking. To the lord's side stood a dark apostle with half the face of a man. He looked about those present with a calming glare while the daemonette side of his face leered, lapping up the tension.

To the other side loomed the towering figure of a greater daemon. A bastard creature with a form at once male and female yet also possessed of bovine features, it was clad in only a loincloth, the rest of its exposed flesh tattooed and pierced. It rested one of its four arms across the back of the Chaos lord's throne, looking at once both a loyal counsellor and a doting parent. The daemon watched the Astartes with barely-hidden mirth, as if it knew what each and every one present was thinking, what they planned to say and most importantly what they had no intention of saying at all.

"And now here we are. To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, legionary?" The lord went on.

"The high lord of Chaos, the Despoiler himself, calls upon those loyal to the Pantheon, those who yearn to cast down the False Emperor, to flock to his side in a force greater than ever seen before."

"To what end?" Barked a marine near the front of the crowd. One of the warband's bikers, his mouth was as fast as his ride, but his brain not quite so. Even now, with his bike over a kilometre distant in the huge battleship's vehicle bays, he could not stay still, fidgeting from foot to foot and toying with the grips of his weapons.

"Cadia," answered Sophusar before the envoy could speak. "What other purpose could there possibly be for the Despoiler to launch another Black Crusade. The thirteenth, if memory serves...?"

Togris nodded.

"A figure tied to ill omens," the lord commented.

"For the Imperium of man," came the legionary's response.

"Thirteen Black Crusades?!" came the biker's tactless voice once again, dismissively.

The Black Legionnaire looked from the loudmouth to his master. Such a slight to the warmaster could not be allowed to go unanswered.

Nevertheless, Sophusar would not have his actions dictated to him.

" Viasi," he addressed the biker in a stern tone, riveting him to the spot with a gaze. "The pain glove. Tertiary level. Half an hour."

Togris could not see Viasi's look of delight as the biker bowed low and backed away into the crowd of assembled marines.

"The final Crusade," the legionnaire stated, looking about the chamber. The decor reminded him in some ways of the vessels of the third legion, and indeed the Psychopomps shared their patron deity, but there was not quite the same level of form-over-function ostentation that the sons of Fulgrim exhibited. He did note a proclivity for Eldar trophies and wondered what score the lord of the Psychopomps might have with those fay aliens. Such had not been in the intel the legion's agents had furnished him with, only the hatred of the Psychopomps for the Black Templars, the latter having lain waste to their home world and essentially been the discoverers of the chapter's corruption. It had been this he had hoped to use as leverage. Still-"

 

"What happened?" one of the listeners pressed. "Did they answer the call?"

"Did they take up the Black?" Another demanded.

"Not the Psychopomps," commented another, unhelmed but with a dirty hood of cloth drawn over his head, who had until that moment remained quiet. "They would not dull their armour with black."

Though said with all seriousness, the observation drew laughs from those assembled in the bar.

 

"What say you, lord Sophusar of the Psychopomps? How do you answer the Despoiler?" Togris took a single step forward, unsteady on his aged bionic limb. "Do you choose the path of vengeance and glory?"

Sophusar had sat back as he listened to the envoy's speech, judging for himself how much of it was hyperbole, how much empty praise and what few nuggets of truth he might glean from it. At the same time he estimated what might be the true cost and benefits to the Psychopomps. Bodies, material, spirit and faith.

The lord seemed to have formed an answer when he instead turned to his counsellors.

"Yes."

"No."

 

One of the listeners, a marine in worn armour a rich green, with a large '1' emblazoned on his pauldron barked, "I'd say 'fine', then back off and secretly contact whichever of the two counsellors had voted in my favour. Ally with them, help them stab their lord in the back, and get the survivors in on my side."

This drew grunts of approval from most of the renegade flotsam and jetsam, but for the storyteller.

"And if both answers had come from the same mouth?"

 

Sophusar looked to the dark apostle, Angra, with a smile tugging at the corners of his own mouth now. Bemusement or amusement, Togris could not fathom but when the lord broke eye contact with the two-faced demagogue - his human side having answered counter to his daemonic side - and turned back to face the legionary it was with a look at once apologetic and amused.

He rose.

"If you would do me the kindness of a few minutes with my counsellors..."

 

No one can be sure of what words passed between lord Sophusar, master Angra and the Keeper of Secrets Ki'mahgu'reh, but it is said that the greater daemon exacted a terrible price from the former chapter master in exchange for his hidden knowledge.

 

When the marble floor shook once more with the steps of the terminator lord, apostle and the attendant greater daemon's return to the throne room, all present held their breath as they waited for him to pronounce judgement.

Sophusar swept a hand up from beneath his cloak of turquoise and a single hard bang rang out as he sent a shot into the face of the veteran of the Long War.

"Take us out of the Eye, avoiding the Cadian Gate at all costs," he announced to his war-band.

 

"Madness!" at least three of the listeners spat at once.

"The Despoiler will have his head!" another hissed.

"With the crusade underway, you think Abaddon can spare the forces to punish those who refuse him?"

"There might be a price on 'Pomp heads, then." A couple shared a look, seeing an opportunity to turn their fortunes around.

"But why shoot the messenger?"

Before the tale-teller could answer, the hooded marine spoke up, "groxdung, the lot of it. From what I hear, the 'Pomps took part in the 9th crusade, and after what happened there is no way they could have refused the call again."

"Oh?" Expectant heads turned to listen more.

 

Does everyone need another week? I don't mind pushing back the deadline.

[Warsmith Aznable]

If you push it back another week then I'm just going to write my entry next Thursday instead of tonight

[Warsmith Aznable]

Struggled with the ending for this. This idea may have been better suited for a different topic, but here it is.

 

It references Betrayal directly, being a sort of sequel, and alludes to Three Ladies, Quartus, Hubris, and the as yet untold finale to the campaign series of challenges.

 

Hidden for length

Hidden Content

The Warsmith, if he could still be called that, wandered through the cold darkness of the space hulk. His few remaining space marines trailed a distance behind him, silent yet ever present at the edges of his awareness. It had been days since any of these few had spoken to him, and he sometimes forgot they were still there. A few dozen line troopers, a handful of terminators, and a despondent Dreadnought were all that remained of a nearly three thousand strong Grand Company.

 

The Emperor’s Children had been relentless in their pursuit. There had been no safe haven from their predation, no forbearance of their vengeance. The only place in the galaxy they believed they could run to was too far away, with too many enemies and opportunists in-between. There was only deeper into the unknown, and the vain hope that there might be a distance that their foes would not go.

 

++THEY HAVE FOUND US++

 

The Old Warsmith intoned, relaying the weak signal from the remains of their battle barge.

 

++THREE STRIKE CRUISERS. THIRD LEGION. STILL SEVERAL HOURS OUT++

 

The Warsmith did not acknowledge this information. It had only ever been a matter of time. He plodded forward in his battered Terminator armour, pressing deeper into the space hulk. Unable to push deeper into the Eye of Terror this space hulk was all he had left. His last voidship suffering cascading failures, finally succumbing to its slow death, the monstrous spacehulk had at least given them a place to go, such as it was.

 

Forward.

 

+++++++++++++

 

Polished gems glittering in the darkness. Two of them. Where had he seen that before?

 

She looked like an aparition, a phantom. The Warsmith’s heavy armoured boots carried him right up to her, and he stopped within arm’s reach of the gaunt Eldar woman.

 

“Do I know you?” The Warsmith asked, glazed eyes staring through the Farseer, mouth slack, with a dab of drool in the corner of his coarse beard and a hint of madness in his voice.

 

“I owe you my life.” The Farseer whispered, suddenly close. “And that of my child.”

 

“That does not sound plausible.” The Warsmith said in an even, emotionless voice, swaying slightly, arms dangling loosely at his side. “I am a destroyer of worlds, a worker of evil, not a savior of mothers.”

 

“I see a path into the future for you.” The Farseer ran her long, slender fingers over the Warsmith’s brow, gently arranging his tousled bangs out of his eyes. “This path, this possibility begins from the moment you first laid eyes upon us, to thousands of years into the future, and into an eternity beyond time itself.”

 

“No.” The Warsmith let his combi-bolter slip from his numb fingers and it clattered to the deck. Just as gently as the Farseer had brushed away his hair, he took her own frail hand in his pushed it away. “There is nothing left for us here but to die.”

 

“Yes.” The Farseer closed her eyes, looking deep within herself. “But I will prophesy for you, Worker of Evil. Two more will you meet here in this dark place. Individually they are death to you. Exchange blood with me, accept me as your sister, and I will show you the far side of death. We three will be the pillars you raise your Grand Company upon anew.”

 

“They are all dead.” The Warsmith whispered. “And soon so shall we be. It would be a Grand Company of ghosts.”

 

“Yes.” The Farseer produced a slender, wicked knife made of bone from her flowing robes with her free hand. She turned the Warsmith’s palm upward and drew a thin line of blood with a quick flick. The Warsmith stared at the blood, not at all surprised when his Astartes physiology could not staunch the flow. The Farseer offered him the handle of the bone knife. “The choice is yours, Worker of Evil.”

 

“Warsmith.” A voice called from the darkness, the Librarian. “I cannot see you. Where have you gone?”

 

“I remember you now.” The Warsmith dropped his axe, letting it dangle from its power cable. He used this hand to take the bone knife. “A prisoner of the III Legion, I refused to shed your blood. I will do it now, if it is the only way forward.”

 

“Brother.” The Farseer said as the two clasped bleeding palms together. She opened her eyes and stared deeply into the Warsmith’s. “There will come a time when I will call you and you must answer.”

 

“Tell me what I need to know.” The Warsmith squeezed his hand, feeling the pulse of the Eldar woman’s heart as her blood pumped into his veins. “Sister.”

 

+++++++++++++

 

“They are on the spacehulk.” The Librarian said to the Warsmith. “I can feel them.”

 

“Yes.” The Warsmith answered him calmly. “So can I.”

 

The Librarian gave him a sidelong glance, but did not ask the obvious question. They walked together, deeper into the spacehulk, the rest of the Grand Company’s remains trailing.

 

“Are you mad?” The Librarian eventually asked. There was no accusation or anger in the question. He may as well have been asking if the Warsmith were cold, or hungry.

 

“I used to think I was the only sane man in a galaxy created for the insane.” The Warsmith told him.

 

“And now?” The Librarian asked.

 

“I have nothing clever to say about it.” The Warsmith said with a sigh. “But we must go forward. That is all that matters.”

 

“Stop!” The Librarian suddenly drew back, placing an arm across the Warsmith’s chest and holding his force staff horizontally out before them. “Something is here!”

 

“I know.” The Warsmith removed the Librarian’s warning arm away and stepped around the protective staff, cold dread hanging in the expectant air.

 

“Have you come to play with me?”

 

Out of the shadows stepped a girl child. In the dreary depths of the ancient spacehulk she seemed so out of place that she might not be real. She wore a black and white chequed dress of a romanticized Gothic style with a frilly under-dress and a black velvet bodice. White stockings disappeared into shiny black buckle-shoes. Her skin was nearly as pale as the gossamer white sleeves, and her long hair was blacker than night itself, as were her liquid black eyes. The red silk ribbon in her hair was too, too red, however. It was such a vivid red that it seemed completely removed from the play of light and darkness in the natural environment.

 

“I have come to play the greatest game with you.” The Warsmith moved to stand before her. Looking down at her he felt an irrational hatred, a primal instinct that begged him to lash out at the thing in frenzied violence. He focused on the secrets and promises the Farseer had whispered into his ear and stifled the impulse to kill.

 

“And what will you give me if you lose?” The unearthly little girl smiled.

 

+++++++++++++

 

++WE SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR A DEFENSIBLE POSITION++

 

The Old Warsmith complained, surveying the vast open space before them.

 

They had come to the heart of the spacehulk, an ancient colony cylinder from a pre-artificial gravity civilization. Of the few dozen warriors of the line they had left the doomed battle barge with, only fourteen remained. The rest had been killed or disappeared as the bizarre hunter-killer groups (for they could not be considered organized enough to be called teams or squads) had harried the Iron Warriors through the corridors over the last several days.

 

Through all the death and misadventure the Warsmith had remained oddly calm. This only agitated the heretofore morose Dreadnought, who repeatedly and with more frequency attempted to assert control over what was left of his former Grand Company.

 

“We are nearly there.” The Warsmith said simply, and walked past the industrial structures that the Old Warsmith was eyeing for a last stand.

 

++I DO NOT MIND DYING++

 

The Old Warsmith growled, spitting harsh static from its speakers.

 

++BUT I DO NOT WANT TO DIE WITHOUT SOME KIND OF PLAN IN MOTION++

 

The Dreadnought lashed out with its powerfist and knocked in a wall as he strode past it.

 

++I DO NOT WANT TO DIE RUNNING AWAY++

 

“We are not running away.” The Warsmith suddenly turned and pushed hard on the front of the dreadnought’s coffin. To the surprise of the several Iron Warriors looking on, the great machine stumbled backward a step. “We are moving toward a destination.”

 

The Warsmith turned and looked out into the black void that stretched many meters to the far side of the enormous cylinder. He held his arms out wide and the ambient light subtly grew brighter, making murky details of the far side visible if the effort was made.

 

++WHERE++

 

Demanded the Old Warsmith, unimpressed by the display of unnatural strength.

 

++WHERE ARE WE MOVING TOWARD++

 

H E R E I A M H E R E I AM H E R E

 

The words were not heard, but rather felt by the Iron Warriors. They seemed very far away at first, then felt as if they were emanating from their very bones. Finally they felt pulled in a specific direction. The Iron Warriors looked at one another, seeing their Warsmith already headed in that direction and well ahead of them.

 

“I hear you.” The Warsmith whispered, stumbling through the ruins of the ancient cityscape. “I feel you.”

 

The Warsmith heard his Iron Warriors calling to him. The sound of their voices grew distant and dreamlike, and soon he found himself alone. He stood in the ruins of an abandoned market, metal shelving overturned and askew, any products or equipment looted millennia before.

 

H E R E I A M H E R E

 

“I have come for you!” The Warsmith yelled into the silence, turning around, straining to see where the thoughts were coming into his mind from.

 

A stopped. In the distance an old woman sat upon an overturned display. Withered and grey she could have easily been mistaken for a shadow, or just another piece of wreckage in this impossibly old ruin.

 

“Serve me!” The Warsmith called to the hooded crone. “I will bring you the light of the stars and lay the galaxy at your feet if you will serve me and only me!”

 

The hooded woman turned her face to the Warsmith. Only the shadows reflected back at him, and the old woman was gone.

 

+++++++++++++

 

The Librarian felt the world shift around him and leaned on his staff. The sensation was dizzying. It overpowered him and the Librarian was forced to the ground, holding onto the cracked foundations of a tumbled down wall as if here were a shipwrecked sailor struggling against the tide.

 

The Old Warsmith stomped in circles, his uselessly out of fuel multimelta tracking frantically for targets.

 

The surviving Iron Warriors crouched uncertainly in the flotsam of the ruined cityscape. The Terminators formed a defensive circle, while the line troopers began to compulsively construct fighting positions and barricades from debris and rubble.

 

A low vibration shook their bones, traveling through their feet up from the deck. With the pops and thunks of warming lines and thrown switches the lights of the spacehulk began to come online. The thrum of atmospheric pumps pulsed and the stagnant air began to circulate.

 

“A neat trick!” The Emperor’s Children champion was a riot of colour and a mass of bizarre trophies. It cracked a whip made of braided human faces and a tittering mob of similar Astartes emerged to surround the beleaguered Iron Warriors. The champion blew an exaggerated kiss toward the Iron Warriors Terminator-captain and swept his free arm up to indicate the cylinder’s interior as it approached, hips swaying saucily. “But it’s not going to save your sad little faces.”

 

“It is over.” The Warsmith emerged from the ruined market, striding forward to stand among his Iron Warriors.

 

“Aw.” The Emperor’s Children champion pulled a disappointed pout, grotesquely swollen and painted lips adding to the insulting effect. “Don’t be like that. It’s not going to be over for a very, very long time. I do like to play.”

 

“I like to play too.”

 

The Emperor’s Children turned to stare down at the strange little girl who suddenly appeared amongst his circus of pleasure warriors. For the first time in a very long time, the champion was nonplussed.

 

“What is that?” The champion leaned down to examine the surreal apparition, and the Little Girl smiled sweetly at him. And smiled just a little wider than looked exactly comfortable. And then grinned even wider. The Emperors Children champion took a hesitant step backward as some measure of understanding began to show through his drug glazed eyes. “Oh no.”

 

“We will play such fun games.” As the Little Girl spoke her voice modulated deeper, and colours and sounds distorted, spatial distances becoming momentarily arbitrary and unstable. The Emperors Children fell backward, landing hard, and stared as the Little Girl loomed over him. Fascinated at the last moment by the forcefully unnatural red of the Little Girl’s ribbon, the champion did not resist as the Little Girl picked his suddenly doll-like body up and bit his head off. As the blood flowed from the stump of his neck like a red, red ribbon, the Little Girl turned to smile sweetly at the Warsmith. “Thank you, papa.”

 

Pandemonium broke loose as every party save the Warsmith began shooting and hacking at one another indiscriminately in a frenzy of fear and hate.

 

Aboard the wreckage of the Grand Company’s battle barge, docked many kilometers away, first one, then nearly three thousand space marines stood to attention from the places they had long ago fallen. Slowly remembering with dim recollection their standing orders, the restored 49^th Grand Company marched grimly against the surprised and unprepared bedlam of the 3^rd Legion’s vengeance force.

 

The Warsmith calmly walked away from the spasmodic melee, disappearing to explore his new home.

 

+++++++++++++

 

The emissary of the Black Legion looked out over the city from the observation deck of the Warsmith’s Throne Chamber. The city stretched away at least 20 kilometers of factories, businesses, housing blocks, a museums. Closest to the artificial mountain that the Warsmith’s citadel sat upon clustered the temple-barracks dedicated each to an individual company of the Grand Company lined broad boulevards interspersed with expansive parade grounds. He looked down upon a vibrant city, full of life and activity, all dedicated to supporting the nearly three thousand space marines of the 49^th Grand Company and their many auxiliary soldiers and attendant warbands.

 

“The Warmaster requires this.” The Black Legion emissary spoke to the Warsmith without turning his gaze from the urbanized colony scene. Something tugged at the sorcerer’s mind. There was an emptiness in his soul, an oppressive melancholy. It had started the moment he set foot upon the spacehulk. Everything he set his eyes upon seemed too real, too vivid, yet perhaps a little ragged around the edges. There was a musty darkness pressing in from the corner of his vision, but only the dreamlike floating world of the Warsmith held before his direct observation.

 

“The Child of Calamity goes where I will it.” The Warsmith said calmly. “And I have not yet decided whether I will join your, what is it now? The seventh of your so-called crusades against the False Imperium. I may yet choose to fling you from this balcony instead.”

 

“Don’t be so impressed with yourself.” The Black Legion sorcerer sneered. “This pile of wreckage is nothing compared to the battlestations of the Black Fleet, and your thousands of Iron Warriors are a mere pittance compared with the Warmaster’s Legion. Cross the Warmaster and your petty ambitions will come to a crashing end.”

 

“You would hardly seem to need me, then.” The Warsmith chuckled.

 

“We need your fleet. We need your station. We need your manufactorums. We need your warriors.” The Black Legion sorcerer turned and hotly told the Warsmith. “We do not need YOU.”

 

The Warsmith, who was quite large even for a space marine, looked down upon the sorcerer. His eyes narrowed and his mouth set into a determined line, and for a moment he really did look as if he were preparing to heave the sorcerer off the balcony.

 

“My lord, your… sister... has sent you a communique.” A mortal messenger knelt before the pair of arguing space marines, still breathing heavily after having sprinted from the Control Room.

 

“That seems an unlikely conceit.” The Black Legionnaire snorted dismissively.

 

The Warsmith ignored him and bent to retrieve the slip of paper offered by the mortal crewman. He did not hide it from the sorcerer, who openly leaned in to look when he unfolded it. There was a only a single Eldar rune of elaborate and unusual construction printed upon the parchment.

 

“Call it destiny.” The Warsmith said, mood suddenly lighter. “I have decided not to hurl you screaming from this great height.”

 

“Oh I am relieved.” The sorcerer said drolly.

 

“I have been summoned, and I will answer, as I promised to do.” The Warsmith handed the parchment back to the mortal servant, who scurried away with relief. “The galaxy awaits!”

[Kierdale]

If there is demand I can still put back the deadline (and give Warsmith Aznable time to edit his ending if he wishes, though it's probably great anyway ;))...?

[Kierdale]

Well, we had only two entries for Inspirational Friday: Black Crusade – A Call To Arms. Not many keen on taking up the Black, I see!

Zhaharek is the judge but I’ll just make a few comments:

I don’t think Warsmith Aznable needed any more time to work on his entry! The first section dealing with his discovery of the ship which we have seen later become his home and his fortress was extremely interesting, as well as his forging of bargains with an Eldar farseer (we still need to hear about their initial meeting sometime, unless I’ve missed it in a previous entry) and That Little Girl. Inspirational Friday lived up to its name as I wholeheartedly intend to steal aspects of the Emperor’s Children you wrote about. Fantastic.

It was also good that the Warsmith did take up the Black Legion’s call,

as – if any of my story was to be believed and not put down as the drunken rumour-mongering of low-level renegades – the Psychopomps seem to have rejected it. Or did they?

Here begins our second challenge of Inspirational Friday 2017, one I had hoped to finish within 2016, but there you go...

Campaign IV – End Game

To end what was planned in Campaign I – Opening Moves, got started in Campaign II – Assault and got bloody in Tables Turn/The Crucible, we come to Campaign IV – End Game.

What fate awaits the Aspis subsector now that chapter master Barcar and the Aspis Eternal shield have fallen in the face of lord Carrack’s assault aboard Ember?

Will warsmith Bolverk lay low his quarry, the Word Bearers dark apostle Harnak, besieging him within his very own cathedral fortress upon unholy Sicarus itself?

Will we see a return to the story of the 25th Grand Company as we last saw them facing the greenskin horde?

And the Scourged assaulting Aesclepius? I want to see more of this!

To those who did not take part in any of the previous three sections of this series, or missed one or two, by all means do enter this one. Summarise the events which lead up to this end point if you wish, or just dive in at the deep, bloody end.

Show us the end of your warband’s struggle, be it one that ends in victory or failure. And remember that though the campaign may end, the war is never over.

Inspirational Friday: Campaign IV – End Game runs until the 3rd of February.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: Zhaharek.

To the chosen victor: step forward and claim the Octed Amulet:

[Zhaharek]

Sorry this took me a while.

Too excellent stories on both your parts, Kierdale, Aznable.

After reading and greatly enjoying both, my selection for this week would be Warsmith Aznable's entry as the victor!

Claim your Octed! 

[Teetengee]

Crawls out of the dank dark pit where he oft resides:

I guess I should finish that story then, shouldn't I.

[Carrack]

 

Vensominair's Affliction

 

Late entry for Black Crusader

 

Not now, I can't have signs of my affliction observed by those not tied to me by blood, or dependent upon me for income. In truth, those I trust with my secret failing are one and the same, relatives clinging to my name and fortune like being related to me was a profession. Yet I can at least trust relatives, I can't expose my weakness to the gossips and sycophants at this table. I must have drunk too much this stuffy evening at the dining table of Lord Marshall Mallet. For in the middle of an opulent diplomatic dining, I find myself drifting off as the conversation dies down, and lately, when I drift off, I drift far, far, off.

 

At first it only troubled me when I slept, vivid and disturbing dreams that I attributed to the rich and spicy food that had increasingly become my fare as my paintings have become fashionable. Not all the dreams were nightmares, but they all were so realistic that it was hard to distinguish them from actual experience, and unlike dreams, they did not fade into vague impressions moments after I awoke, but remained as concrete as any memory in my mind. My herbalists gave me teas to drink and powders to snuff. The dreams persisted, and worse, days later I would read and hear of the events from my dreams coming to be. I was dreaming the future.

 

By then I had acquired the means to employ a personal confessor and a team of discreet doctors, nieces, nephews, and bastards I had sponsored through seminary and scholam. I prayed. I took whole regimes of imported medicines, yet my dreams grew worse, not better. The futures I saw were frightening and bleak, and also certain. I prayed harder. I fasted. I scourged the flesh from my shoulders and back in righteous penance. Yet I could not escape my dreams. I suffered through shock ordeals, neurosurgeries, and even had a auto-hymnal chip implanted in my brain to drown out my dreams with praiseful worship, to no effect. Nor did I leave my fate to others, but I ceased all commissions, at the height of my fame, to work on the battle barge of His most holy Angels of Immolation, without remuneration. I spent what could have been my most profitable years painting the ceiling of Ember's Great Spinal Corridor, not for the fame, for few would ever see what is undoubtedly my best work, but as an offering to the Golden Throne, in hope for deliverance from my curse. The ceiling of Ember's central hall is by far my best work, my magnum opus. It is grand in scale as it is fine in detail. It is inspired by the depths of my faith, and I will never equal its quality again. My offering was to no avail.

 

My dreams not only continued, but in moments when I relax, when I allow my mind to rest and drift, my dreams come to me when I am awake. I now drink recaf by the gallon. I exercise like a man not on his third rejuvenat treatment. My workshop is alive with music and stimulating conversations. I bounce from one passionate affair with a young admirer to the next. Yet I can not avoid these tedious dinners hosted by potential buyers and worthies whose invitations simply can not be declined. My belly full, my head swimming, my mind starts to drift...

 

................

 

.... I am cast adrift in the Sea of Souls, like a drowning man clinging to a loose spar in the turbulent ocean of emotion. The spar is my faith. It is all that keeps me from sinking, but a terrible storm is pulling me into its violent embrace, promising me my destruction. The storm is the Eye of Terror, and intuitively I know that if my untethered soul enters it, I will never return. Yet it draws me nearer and nearer, and I and my faith are insignificant against its mighty currents.

 

As I futilely struggle against looming oblivion, a ship comes to my rescue. It is Ember, the battle barge of the Angels of Immolation. Perhaps my offering of my best work was noticed by His Saints, and they have sent His Angels to my salvation.

 

It is worse than I could have ever imagined it. The Arch-Enemy has seized Ember from its rightful owners. They have profaned its hallowed halls with their blasphemous presence and unholy iconography. I had poured my very soul into that fiery red and orange ship. Now it is a vessel of the blackest damnation, overflowing with the unholy. I weep at the sight, and real tears fall from my disembodied face to splash the mosaicked deck. It is the first time I have physically effected the environment from my dreams. If only one of my painting's intended audience was here, just one righteous Angel of Immolation, I am sure he would burn away all the heretics that walk beneath my painting. The heretics swarm up and down the corridor with no reverence or acknowledgement of my life's work above them. It's as if they were walking down a brothel lane, on their way to a dice game, or on their way to a murder.

 

If these cretins stopped to deface my work, I would be furious, yet I would also understand. The unrepentant sinner does not wish to be reminded of his sins.

However, the wicked would not, or could not take in my painting of victories of His Angels over heretics like walked the great corridor now. They left it be mostly, and went about their sinful business.

 

I huddled in the lee of a pillar, weeping at the state of my painting and my hopes for its deliverance from my affection. None of the damned seemed to notice me, as was usual during these dreams. Save one, a short, pudgy little daemon with ink stained fingers and greasy robes strutted over to me and accused, "Dream Sayer." I in turn called him, "Page Turner." I knew not why I named him such, but the label seemed to fit, for the beast nodded and sat beside me.

 

************^**

 

The sacrifices are marched to the bridge, naked save for gold jewelry and a coat of pitch dabbed over their entire bodies. They step as one, slowly, methodically at a half time count, a funeral procession pace. The sacrifices are flawless, chaste and without blemish they move with grace across the deck of the Great Spinal Corridor. It is as if their slow march is a well choreographed dance performed by a troupe worthy of entertaining commanders of worlds or their betters, yet the sacrifices are limiting their skill for the sake of the decorum of this procession. Their grace speaks of more than just well trained dancers, they are true prodigies of the performing arts.

 

Their are 12 sacrifices, each similar, but different than the others. My unwholesome and unwelcome companion informs me that each represents a Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler. The sacrifices are a reminder of their offerer and receiver that they both serve a lord far greater than themselves. Each sacrifice bears a symbol, a ceremonial item representing the crusade. The first a great sword, Page Turner whispers, "Drach'ynen", but remains silent for the rest, until the last of the twelve comes bearing carvings of warships in ebony. Page Turner peers behind the procession as the twelfth sacrifice passes, lets out a gasp and prostrated himself on the deck. Never lifting his head from the tile, he whispers, "Enasyor, Legate of the Despoiler, comes bearing a thirteenth sacrifice. There is to be another Black Crusade." I look where the daemon's eyes lay, and see a thirteenth sacrifice escorted by a traitor marine in particularly ornate armor. The thirteenth sacrifice bears an ornate figurine of a golden throne. In lamentation, I fall to the deck beside the daemon.

[Warsmith Aznable]

Crawls out of the dank dark pit where he oft resides:

 

I guess I should finish that story then, shouldn't I.

 

Absolutely.

[Kierdale]

 

Crawls out of the dank dark pit where he oft resides:

I guess I should finish that story then, shouldn't I.

 

Absolutely.

Undoubtedly.

 

 

Teetengee, I'm sorry I haven't got back to you about the rest of your story (that you PM'd me) yet. Life has been hectic. I will read it when I have time to sit down and enjoy it. :)

 

And congratulations, Warsmith Aznable.

 

And Carrack, that was fantastic, both tying in with your other recent entries (though from a different and very interesting viewpoint) and fitting the 'Call To Arms' topic :tu:

[Teetengee]

 

 

Crawls out of the dank dark pit where he oft resides:

I guess I should finish that story then, shouldn't I.

Absolutely.

Undoubtedly.

 

 

Teetengee, I'm sorry I haven't got back to you about the rest of your story (that you PM'd me) yet. Life has been hectic. I will read it when I have time to sit down and enjoy it.

 

And congratulations, Warsmith Aznable.

 

And Carrack, that was fantastic, both tying in with your other recent entries (though from a different and very interesting viewpoint) and fitting the 'Call To Arms' topic

 

It's ok, it isn't like the story I pmed you is finished yet, just the section too "exciting" to put up here.

[Scourged]

...eesh, and I still need to part III of this one. My, I'm long overdue on my homework. We'll see what time shall bring.

[Warsmith Aznable]

Sorry this took me a while.

Too excellent stories on both your parts, Kierdale, Aznable.

After reading and greatly enjoying both, my selection for this week would be Warsmith Aznable's entry as the victor!

Claim your Octed! 

 

I do claim it.

 

And I fully intend to indulge myself on End Game since I'm out of competition.

[Kierdale]

Campaign IV – The Doom of Carth-Lar

Hidden Content

While ships both Eldar and Psychopomp still dueled overhead, inflicting grievous wounds upon each other forced to fight in such close proximity by the walls of the Webway shimmering about them, war raged across the battered and scarred craftworld of Carth-Lar. The only sections free from fighting were those exposed to vacuum due to breaches or fallen shields, or those which one side or the other had already claimed and now lay carpeted with the bodies of the fallen.

What had once been the Carthsward, the largest area of greenery upon the craftworld, from its vast open meadows to copses of sculpted trees to the forests which had been allowed to grow as nature meant, had become the largest battlefield in the struggle for not only the existence of the craftworld itself but also the souls of all those upon it. The servants of Slaanesh, that fourth Chaos god, birthed by the decadence and madness of the Eldar so long ago, had found the reclusive Eldar world and fallen upon it like harpies.

Decades earlier farseer Emrana had forseen the fall of the Stygian Guard astartes to Chaos and autarch Qarasion had led the craftworld’s fleet in a mercy mission to bring warning to the chapter, only to arrive too late. Since that point the renegades had chased the Eldar at their patron’s bidding, feasting upon their souls and desecrating their attempts to restore their once grand empire. The war had caused horrible casualties on both sides and had finally seen Qarasion herself stripped of her title and exiled from the craftworld after her theft of the craftworld’s avatar. She had attempted to put an end to the Psychopomps on the maidenworld of Viarphia. Though the embodiment of the Bloody Handed God had lain the renegade chapter master low, the avatar itself had been destroyed and the casualties to the aspect shrines calamitous.

 

Angra, dark apostle of the Psychopomps, had been drawn to the fighting at the Carthsward. He had felt the balance of fate weighing its heaviest here. He now looked out over the chaos of the Carthsward from a balcony in a ruined building at the park’s edge. His hands, one Astarte and the other an oversized claw, gripped the banister’s wraithbone, the material flaking at his accursed touch.

Wave upon wave of daemons charged at the battered Eldar lines, mobs of cultists and Slaangor mixed in with the daemonettes and mounted seekers. The Psychopomps in their pastel-hued armour too felt the call and charged forth, weapons blazing. Long gone were the slow, cold tactics of the Stygian Guard.

Arrayed before them were thousands of living Eldar: all those aboard the craftworld fit to fight had taken up arms as guardians, lead by what few aspect warriors remained and a scattering of warlocks and other seers, but now the ranks of the dead had joined the living in defence of their world: wraithguard played their terrible weapons back and forth, banishing daemons back to the warp and tearing the souls from mortals, occasionally wraithblades sallied forth, blades and axes decending to slay those who made it dangerously close to the Eldar lines. Taller wraithlords strode back and forth lending their own heavy firepower wherever it was most needed, and a single wraithknight towered over all but the tallest of buildings which still stood. Ghost glaive in one hand and a huge wraithcannon built into the other, it was the keystone to Carth-Lar’s survival.

A whole half of his soul now daemonic, Angra felt their patron’s thirst for the xenos souls: those still locked in their bodies of soft flesh and those who had in death sought sanctuary in soul stones. The grinding, shattering and even base consumption of these crystalline phylactery sent those souls to feed the ever-ravenous Dark Prince. From the zeal with which their forces attacked the Eldar lines, Angra could see the esurience was felt not only by those whose souls were divided, but also by the lowest of devotees. It was a madness which gripped them all.

Though a scintillating blast shot out from one of the warband’s conversion beamers, sending the wraithknight staggering yet failing to fell it and causing a dozen Eldar about it to disappear in a flash of released energy, the astartes side of Angra – what remained of the cold, calculating chaplain - knew that the conflict playing out before him would likely see both the Psychopomps and all Carth-Lar consumed.

A fate the daemonette half of him found exhilarating.

His astartes hand reached up to the commlink in his ear which would project his voice across the battlefield with such power that he hoped it would cut through the furor and lust racing through his brethren’s veins. His fingers shook as they touched the small device and his breathing accelerated. If they could regain a measure of composure, a brief pause for their training to take over once more, he could see that they might survive.

But while the left half of his body was neverborn, ichor pumped through his veins and he could hide naught from his otherself.

The jade eye in the left half of his head turned uncannily as if to gaze across his face at his human eye.

”No. Give your all, or be abandoned.”

The capillaries of his human eye filling with violet, it turned, jerkily and ever so slowly turned, to regard the bloodshed before him once more.

He beheld the majesty of it. He came to understand the ceaseless thirst and true power of Slaanesh.

His clawed hand once more resting atop the banister, he opened the comm and broadcast to all the Psychopomps present.

“Slaanesh thirsts for souls, theirs and ours! Kill the Eldar! Strike them down and offer them up to the Dark Prince! Fear not death for paradise awaits! KILL! KILL! KILL!”

 

 

Alecto screamed as much in pleasure as in pain, the cry of the bitch-warrior having cut though his helmet’s dampners with ease, and a reflex burst of his jump pack’s engines took him out of the way of her sword, which would have opened him up just as easily.

The three remaining Erinyes – the Psychopomp Warp Talons – were deep within the Craftworld’s aft sections, driving hard toward its engines and carving a bloody swathe through its defenders. Hacking down guardians had become tedious for the possessed hunters and they tarried no longer to collect trophies beyond soulstones, only now finding their match: faced by three bone-armoured, scarlet-maned warrior women with exquisitely curved blades as deadly as they were beautiful. And their screams! Such deliriously exotic agony!

So taken by the gloriouis pain wracking his body was he that Tisiphone did not feel it when one of the Banshees took his left arm off at the elbow, his whip of daemonic skin dropping along with his hand and forearm. Only as he attempted to lash at his foe did he notice his truncated limb and he let out an enraged scream of his own. Batting aside with his lightning claws the aspect warrior’s return stroke he drove the stump of his left arm into her face, his dive taking them both to the ground. The visor of her helmet smeared with rapidly coagulating blood and the great weight of the Warp Talon upon her, the banshee knew she could not slash him with her sword. Before Tisiphone could drive his claws into her, he found the Banshee encircling him with her legs, crushing him with her thighs as she raised her sword and reversed her grip on it. But the thews of Astartes – especially those possessed – are far greater than that of Eldar, and with a slash of his claw he took her own arms as she had taken his, and finally drove the arcing lightning claws, blood spitting and sizzling upon their surface, into her chest.

He arose to find his kin, Alecto and Megaera – so named by master Angra for the ancient Furies – equally bloodied but victorious.

And so they turned to the final portal, to find stood upon the steps a single figure, his flowing robes and the plates of his armour covered in runes which seemed to branch, tree-like from the outline of his bones. He was clearly no warrior, but nevertheless raised his staff, it too seemlingly moulded from a single shaft of the alien wraithbone, to fend them off.

Oh what secrets might the mind of this one hold? How delectable his soul?

 

 

Stars.

The mistiness of the tunnel fell away, blinked away as if by sleepy eyes soon to forget it as a dream, and space asserted itself once more. A woeful cry went up from every Eldar who could spare a moment to gaze at the skies above their ill-fated world, from those fighting frantically against skittering daemonettes and braying Slaangor in the thickest streets, to those piloting what few fighters and voidships that still flew, to the thousands who fought upon the Carthsward.

They were no longer within the Webway.

The realization was punctuated by the detonation of Spear of Brionach, the last dragonship that had managed to follow its craftworld into the alien nexus. It was torn apart by a terrible barrage from above, fired by a far larger and far deadlier starship.

Charon.

Burning through six times six aether-sighted possessed, the flagship of the Psychopomps had managed to keep pace with the even larger craftworld despite being cut off from it by the webway.

Parts of the Eldar line began to crumble. Over a dozen skirmishes and battles across the surface of the craftworld ended bloodily in that moment as Eldar hope faltered, only the Wraithknight rallying those within sight of it as it played its cannon back and forth, silencing the victory cries of the mad horde before it.

 

 

The Erinyes had succeeded!

The return of the stars indicated thus and that their flagship now cast its shadow over the battlefield was as a deathknell. The roar from the Psychopomps, their slaves and daemonic allies was deafening. Each was driven on as they had been at Angra’s roared call bloody minutes earlier.

At the fore of their assault now rode the naga sorcerer Holusiax, first of the Stygian Guard to turn from the light of the Emperor, first to feel the Prince’s touch. Until this moment he had held himself in check as his kin had drank in the madness about them, but as the shadows darkened about him: the great Wraithknight stood behind rank upon rank of wraithguard and cast its shadow over those who would ruin its world, he opened his mind fully to the whim of Slaanesh, and cast his four hands out toward the ghost-bound forms before him.

Even sealed within the stones - the tears of the goddess Isha herself - the sheer hunger of the god the race had themselves birthed, focused now by one of his most devout, loyal and vile of servants, tore forth the souls of those long dead Eldar. The revenant spirits stolen from them, the ranks of wraithguard and wraithblades began to topple as the sorcerer screamed in exultation. The spirits of the dead channeled through him, feeding him, and though him the ambrosia of their existence was supped by She Who Must Not Be Named.

But there was one soul he could not strip, for it was bound tight to that of another: its still-living twin.

Sparing no lament for its fallen kin, the wraithknight trampled the smaller, fallen constructs beneath it, raising the wing-sized ghost glaive high as the chaos bike and the sorcerer in its sidecar sped toward it.

 

But the great sword did not fall, its swing arrested by a great fleshy tentacle stretching out to encircle the knight’s svelte arm. A second later the possessed drop pod slammed into the back of the wraithknight, its other two tentacles fastening about the knight’s head and other arm. Akin in silhouette to the dreadclaws of the Great Crusade yet devolved from a drop pod, the monstrosity was an amalgam of armoured plate and undulating daemonic flesh. As the Wraithknight staggered and tore frantically at the weight upon its back, deep wounds were torn in the meat of the pod, only for more tentacles and pseudopods to be born from these wounds.

The petals of the pod could no longer open, having been fused shut by the organic matter offered up in the ritual which had brought about its possession, but egress was now granted via a great maw, hideous in its shocking similarity to that of man, yet tortured and torn at as was all the Psychopomps lay their hands upon. That mouth puckered as if to kiss the knight upon its spine, before yawning wide and emitting a torrential blast of heat. The Wraithknight shook and flailed, crushing daemon, marine, beastman and Eldar alike underfoot as it staggered. Wraithbone blistered, cracked, melted and ran.

Holusiax howled with joy as the great alien construct struggled with the limpet-like daemon engine fastened to its back, and directed both his bike, the accompanying riders and other renegades on into the panicked Eldar lines.

 

With a moan of pain which was as much felt in the spirit as heard with the ears, a blast of warpfire erupted from the chest of the wraithknight as the daemonic pod burned through. Ponderously, seemingly ever so slowly, the knight toppled forwards, smashing to the ground and sending up chunks of sod and clouds of dirt.

As rhinos, bikes, shrieking speeders, capering daemons, beastmen and cultists ran past, the naga sorcerer had his driver bring them about, circling the fallen knight with the parasitic daemon engine still affixed to its spine.

He dismounted from his chariot-like sidecar and approached the glowing hole in its chest. Where the pilot’s compartment had presumably been was now a smooth tunnel with rippling sides, the innards of the machine – and presumably the living Eldar who had been within – rendered liquid and now rapidly cooling as the stink of the warp rose from it in curling smoke.

The ruined war machine tilted then, but not with any residual life: from that blasted tunnel, indeed through the knight itself from the pod, strode a towering figure hefting a great axe, the sight of which caused the sorcerer to prostrate himself in the burned grass.

“My lord, you are returned to us.”

 

 

“Am I forsaken? AM I FORSAKEN?!”

Lord Sophusar stood over the corpse of the farseer Emrana. He had been the last of Carth-Lar, living or dead, to fall, and had died within the council chambers. Only fitting that those who had tried to steer the craftworld away from peril, away from what other craftworlds saw as their responsibility, should from that very chamber see all they tried to save perish and fall to ruin before they themselves died.

The former chapter master of the Stygian Guard, the lord of the Psychopomps, stood restored before his men, the blood of the xenos witch upon the smile of the great Falx Horrificus, the pale pink marble of its blade having absorbed not only the farseer’s blood but also his very soul. He had fallen in combat with Carth-Lar’s avatar, been born back to Charon by the neverborn and had ever since lain in his chambers – thought dead by many, particularly those of great ambition – attended only by the greater daemon, Ki’magu’reh.

It was the Keeper of Secrets who was now the target of the lord’s ire.

“How many souls? An entire world of Eldar!” He spat through his grill-mouthed mask of leather, turning as he spoke, with his hands outstretched to encompass the devastation about them.

There was a question going unvoiced, though all but the dullest of minds present could fathom it.

What greater price? What more could be asked for in the bargain for apotheosis?

 

The greater daemon’s size seemed, to all those who beheld its fell form, to be mutable. It was at once no larger than a man, its humanoid hands resting upon his shoulders as it whispered enigmas into his ear, and another moment a towering monster inflicting pain with its huge claws. It grew now before them, growing in size as its tittering giggles turned to bawdy laughter.

“Not all, dear lord, dear maestro of pain.”

Sophusar spat.

“Slaanesh would have me hunt down every scout, every ranger, every trader of Carth-Lar who was lucky enough to escape the slaughter of their kin?”

The daemon’s great bovine face swayed from left to right once.

“You require a pawn of the architect.”

 

 

Epilogue

Years Later

Hidden Content

As soon as Indulgence returned to the Psychopomp fleet, Castor had his men transfer their prize to the flagship, Charon, and the awaiting lord Sophusar. Aboard the vessel he mused over the mission and their allies in it. Talioch, Talio – a retribution or punishment whereby an evil is returned perfectly like that committed against us by another. No doubt the Scourged had been aware of the etymology of his name. They all had their daemons to bear.

 

The maimed Rubric was soon bound in barbed chains of iron, each individual link etched with wards of spite and pain, upon a catafalque of green-veined marble within the librarius’ quarters. The serpent-bodied Holusiax looked over the baroque azure armoured warrior while his sorcerers formed a circle about them.

The Keeper of Secrets, Ki’ma’gureh stood in the shadows at the chamber’s wall, silent but for the occasional tinkle of its jewelry and the sound of its breathing from the flared nostrils of its bovine face.

Castor stood opposite Holusiax, at the Rubric’s right side. He had earned the right to witness this act and learn why he had been tasked with the Thousand Son’s capture.

And at the head of their captive stood lord Sophusar in his ornate terminator armour, brass pipes and daemonic faces rearing up overhead. Three Slaangor bore the great Falx Horrificus, his massive weapon adorned with the faces of Eldar gods hewn from statues along with other more grisly trophies. The lower half of the Chaos lord’s face was covered by a mask, his mouth by a brass grill. He carefully removed the mask, undoing the buckles and pulling it loose to reveal the hideous scars dealt him by the Avatar of Carth-Lar years before on the maiden world of Viarphia.

Holusiax spoke first. “I have divined that this was once battle brother Alim, master. Of the sixth fellowship of the fifteenth legion.”

“Alim? Let us hope this `wise man` will grant us a measure of his knowledge,” Sophusar replied, his voice smooth despite his disfiguration.

“The Infernal Engine, my lord?” Castor inquired. This device was one the Psychopomps had created from the Pain Glove of her parent chapter, which allowed another to pierce the conscience of a captive undergoing torment.

“Brother Alim here would likely feel naught,” Sophusar replied. “Sadly, I shall have to take his very essence in order to get the answer I seek.”

With that he put his great gauntleted hands on the sides of the Thousand Son’s helm and began to pull as if to remove it. The Rubric marine did not initially resist but as the master of the Psychopomps increased his strength the captive began to thrash.

“Soon this false existence will be at an end, brother Alim. I commit your soul to the Great Sea...and to your master, the Architect of Fate.”

This sacrifice to Tzeentch was unheard of within the chapter, but it had been Ki’ma’gureh’s own instruction to the lord that the answer he sought could only be attained thus.

There was a sound like ancient, corroded seals being drawn open and a howl of air which almost seemed a scream as the helmet began to separate from the Rubric’s neck armour. With a final flash of baleful green from its eye lenses the helmet came loose and the scream died without an echo.

Particles akin to sand began to pour from the truncated neck of the torso for no meat body resided within, and likewise the helm itself was filled with a similar dust.

Sophusar bowed his head in reverence before raising the upturned helm, as a chalice, under his nose. With a great intake of breath he inhaled much of the dust and his eyes rolled back in their orbits.

The Keeper of Secrets’ jewelry jingled as it looked on with glee.

Lord Sophusar staggered a couple of steps backwards and the Thousand Sons helm topped from his suddenly limp hands, shattering like a cheap ceramic upon the ground as if having aged eons since its removal. He gurgled as his mind was wracked with visions and light poured from his eyes, illuminating his clamped-shut eyelids from within.

“What...what do you ask of me?” he whispered hoarsely. “What is the price I must pay?” His words from the fall of Carth-Lar came back to his lips once more. “I presented the Dark Prince with no less than a world of souls!”

“But not all,” Ki’ma’gureh spoke in a voice almost teasingly, to itself.

 

Finally the light died in Sophusar’s eyes and he began to breath once more, opening his eyes. He looked from Holusiax to Castor before revealing his epiphany.

 

“The key to my apotheosis lies in the unslain daughter of Carth-Lar. I must find her.”

“She dances with a broken heart, soon torn asunder,” whispered the daemon.

 

“Autarch Qarasion.”

 

 

 

With about 24 hours to go...

Do members need another week?

 

I usually update in about 9hrs time, and am off to bed now :) If there aren't entries (or requests for an extension) by the time I would update then I'll push it back a week anyway. :)

[Carrack]

The Tempering 

Aboard Ember, immediately after the Battle of Garland System.  

 

Gaboc had nothing left.  His muscles had become aching jelly.   His hands bled and his eyes had cried the last of his tears. The chapter he served had been defeated.  The fires of the Angels of Immolation had been extinguished.  His master, the master of his chapter, Barcar, had fallen.  Gaboc had seen the headless body of his beloved master lying prone on the deck of the Great Spinal Corridor. He fell to his knees, as much from the shock of remembering that awful sight as physical exhaustion.  The Shield slipped from his bloody hands and clanged off the deck, coming to rest with its polished but gouged boss reflecting an image of his hollow face.  It was an image of failure and defeat.  

 

Gaboc had known crushing defeat before.  He had failed the Tempering.  As a boy on distant Punicia, he had been selected to prove himself worthy of joining the Angels of Immolation.  He had won the race across Carth Ridge.  Hundreds of boys, from as far off as the Kalim desert, had taken part in the race.  Only Gaboc and the eleven fastest had been deemed worthy of The Tempering.  Most of the racers had fallen early, some to thrown rocks from their competitors, others to the treacherous paths of the ridge.  Most of those had survived to return to their homes with broken bones and stories to tell of how close they had come to becoming legend.  The boys that had made it further into the wild ridge had to contend with the Carth lions that hunted the ridge, where a broken leg, or an exhausted heart was not just a failure, but fatal.  The circumstances were similar to what Gaboc faced now.  He was racing to abandon his master's ship, and he was hunted.  Gaboc hadn't seen his hunters aboard Ember, like he never saw the lions on Carth Ridge, but he knew they were following.  He could feel it.  Gaboc thought of that race and found some hidden reserve within himself, and rose to his feet.  He cranked open the last hatch that led to the salvation pod and picked up the heavy shield at his feet.  The airlock in between the hatch and the pod was burning.  Gaboc was to endure a second Tempering.  Hopefully he would have the fortitude to endure this one.  

 

There had been no respite after that race across Carth Ridge.  He had crossed the finish line and been ushered into the fortress monastery of the Angels of Immolation.  Gaboc remembered the awe he felt at that moment of being in the presence of the holy Angels for the first time.  They had ignored his stammering and handed him an enormous sword blade without a hilt.  Like the Shield in his hands now, it had been heavy, and cut his hands to hold it.  The blade had been meant to cut though, the Shield was not.  However it's grip was designed for a marine's armored gauntlet, and like the blade, not meant for bare hands.  The blade was but part of the test, Gaboc was ordered to carry the blade across the foyer of the fortress monastery that had been covered in burning coals.  If he made it across with the blade, he would join the Angels of Immolation as an aspirant brother.  Gaboc had fallen halfway, unable to carry on through the pain of his burning feet.  After being taken to the apothecarium and healed, Gaboc had been given the opportunity to serve the chapter as a serf.  He had done so honorably, but not a day had passed that he didn't think of his failure, and what it cost him.  Now he had a second chance.   

 

Gaboc stepped into the burning airlock, damaged by the battle that had taken the chapter's flagship.  His delay at the hatch had allowed his hunters to close.  In spite of the battle damage to the airlock, the salvation pod looked intact.  Gaboc ran as fast as his burden allowed.  Flames licked his head from the burning ceiling, catching his hair afire.  He kept moving.  His hunters were close.   Strangely, in spite of the flames of the burning airlock, green flies swarmed his body and the Shield he bore.  More flames burnt his shoulder and caused him to stumble just as he heard his hunters reach the hatch.  The strange flies were unaffected by the flesh searing flames.  Gaboc wanted to fall, to give in to his exhaustion and pain, but he could not.  He dove for the salvation pod with the last ounce of drive he had, and slammed the red button that was the pod's only control.  His hunters screamed as the pod's door slammed shut and the pod rocketed out of its berth into the void.  Gaboc had endured his second Tempering.  

 

Searching 

 

Garland I

Brother Sergeant Gisco looked over his squad as the drop pod fell from the heavens.  This was to be his first mission in command of the squad, his squad now.  The abstract weight of responsibility seemed almost enough to overcome the real weightlessness in the pod as the squad, his squad, fell to the surface of Garland. Gisco went through the normal routines of a drop, checking coms for the third time, reviewing mission parameters and intelligence reports, and watching the auspex of the landing zone, but was not afforded the normal few exchanges of banter with his brothers.  That time was spent observing his squad's checks, ensuring that they were doing what he had done so many times before.  Of course they did, they were the Emperor's Finest.  

 

The drop pod fired its retro thrusters and barely arrested its plunge before slamming into the desert.   The doors blew open into a cloud of sand and dust so thick it obscured even Gisco's enhanced vision.   With practiced precision, Gisco's squad fanned out into a wedge as they began to run north.  As soon as they cleared the dust cloud caused by the drop pod, Gisco signaled to Brother Bomlicar to take his team to search the secondary objective.  Gisco led his team towards the primary.  Brother Bomlicar, still toting the squad's multimelta, took four battle brothers to search the vicinity of the downed salvation pod.  The salvation pod was the last to leave their flagship, Ember, and had broadcasted its beacon on arrival to the surface, along with the ident code of one of its occupants.  Chapter Serf Gaboc, an armor attendant for the former Chapter Master Barcar, had been aboard the salvation pod.  Codicier Milkherem, now the Chief Librarian of the surviving Angels of Immolation, had received a psychic premonition that the serf had something of great importance with him.  Bomlicar was to go search the salvation pod, and Gisco was to search the grid coordinates where the prayer beacon from the salvation pod's survival pack had transmitted its one recorded distress call.  Gisco only had 95 minutes to recover Gaboc, any other serfs aboard the pod, and whatever they were carrying that Milkherem had sensed.  After that point, extraction would not be possible for the foreseeable future, as Pyromania was leaving the system to assist the Dark Angels attack on Tancrea.  Brother Captain Mago had ordered Gisco to recover the serf and his prize regardless of the timeline.  

 

The Angels of Immolation were not the only ones hunting the serf in the Garland desert.  A Storm Eagle had been spotted leaving Ember before the heretics fled with their stolen flagship to the warp.  The Angels of Immolation had no such craft in their bays.  The ancient assault craft had dropped several jump pack equipped traitors to the surface, near the salvation pod, and then disappeared in the flotsam and debris of the post battle Garland orbit.  The heretics' interest had confirmed Milkherem's premonition.  Something was here that the heretics were willing to indefinitely maroon their traitor marines over.  

 

Gisco slowed his combat squad as they approached the primary objective.  It looked to be a taller dune than the others in the area, but the wind was cutting it down for having the audacity to stick its head up in this cruel desert.  It was a good position to send a signal on a distress beacon, unblocked by other dunes to reach the broadest range of its transmitter.   Gisco gave the order to circle the dune from the right.  As his marines followed him, untroubled by the shifting sand with their power armor assisted and enhanced physiques, he received a vox from Brother Bomlicar.  The salvation pod had landed intact and was abandoned.  Only one set of restraints had been used in its flight.  A stretcher, the survival pack and extra water had been taken from the pod, and the medipack had been ransacked.  Judging by what had been missing from the medipack, gauze, antibiotic / antiseptic / healing ointments, and plastiflesh spray, the serf had suffered severe burns.   The enemy had found the pod first, although there was no signs of struggle, other than that the pod's internal beacon had been shredded by a lightning claw.  

 

Brother Sergeant Gisco completed his circle of the tall dune finding no sign of Gaboc.  The desert was quick to wipe away footprints and traces of passage, even those of Gisco's, whose feet sunk deep with the weight of his massive body and heavy armor, were gone in minutes.  Gisco signaled Bomlicar to reform the squad, and then led his squad up the dune.  From the height of the dune he saw a vast desert that was devoid of features, just dunes after dunes.  Two things gave him hope in his mission.  The first was the rising sun.  It was painting the desert in oranges and reds, his chapter's colors, and Gisco could not ignore that.   The second source of inspiration came from one area to the northwest.  There, the loose sand gave way to rockier, but still sandy terrain. That would be where Gaboc would have gone.  A burned serf, likely carrying a heavy burden, would be looking to find real cover from the rising sun, and any enemies that might be pursuing him.  

 

Gisco led the squad, his squad, towards the rocky ground at a pace timed to allow Brother Bomlicar to join him before they reached it.  As his complete squad first stepped into the rocky area, a light streaked across the morning sky.  Gisco signaled Pyromania and fanned out his squad into a wedge at search pattern interval.  Near simultaneously, he received two voxes.  The first from Brother Shafat, had reported the discovery of tracks, two grooves on the ground consistent with a stretcher being dragged by a man like a travois.  The other was from his captain.   Brother Capitain Mago told him that a Dark Angels drop pod was falling to the surface, and was projected to land near the downed salvation pod.  Gisco adjusted his squad's formation to allow Brother Shafat to take the point tracking Gaboc, and began voxing the Dark Angels, using all common frequencies delineated in the Codex Astartes.  Finally he received a short reply from one of them who didn't bother to identify himself, "You have your orders Sergeant Gisco, I have mine, stay out of our way and cease communication.  Dark Angels Out."  

 

The Hunt for the Shield

Garaduk followed the green fly, and by so doing, followed his god, the Lord of Flies. Long ago, Garaduk had left his warband, just as he had done recently, to pursue his own goals. Then, he had left the Black Maw to seek the Garden of Nurgle, to find relief from a wasting disease that was attacking his body on a genetic level. In the fetid swamps of Nurgle's "paradise", Garaduk had given himself over to the god in exchange for relief from the disease. The cloud of flies that had followed him through his pilgrimage through the swamps had never left him. He had tried to rid himself of their presence, and by extension, their symbolic presence of his god, countless times. They were ever a nuisance, buzzing in his ears as he tried to rest, distracting his vision, and most painfully, harrowing at the wound where one of his eyes had been. He had tried to swat them, burn them away, freeze them, even expose them to the vacuum of the void, yet they persisted. They were eternal.

 

They weren't really flies, they were the will of a god, and that will was showing Garaduk the god's desires by turning one of the flies green, and that fly was leading Garaduk to a relic desired by Nurgle. The relic too, just like the flies, was a symbol. It was the Shield, it was the symbol of the subsector the Black Maw had invaded, and Nurgle wished for Garaduk to sacrifice that symbol to his putrid hands. Garaduk himself, could care less.

 

Garaduk had followed the green fly since it appeared after the Battle of Garland. The fly in turn had followed a serf of the Angels of Immolation who had looted the Shield off his dead chapter master, and fled his lost battle barge in a salvation pod to the surface of Garland. Garaduk One Eye had taken a retinue of his Vulture Raptors and left Ember, the Angels of Immolation battle barge the Black Maw had seized in the battle, and followed the salvation pod. On the desert surface of Garland, the green fly had led Garaduk to the salvation pod, and from there to the survival tent of the serf. However, a prayer beacon lit by the serf had been answered by a squad of the serf's masters who had survived the battle aboard the thinbloods' remaining strike cruiser.

 

The thinbloods in red and orange armor had reached the tent first, even though Garaduk had made planetfall first and had moved faster with his jump pack equipped retinue. The green fly had not led him directly to the tent. Garaduk figured either the relic was hiding its presence from his god, or his Grandfather had betrayed him. Both possibilities had happened before. The loyalists had blocked out the tent with a by-the-codex perimeter, two marines to a corner, and the sergeant and odd marine out having entered the tent as much as their bulky frames permitted. Garaduk charged.

 

Charging was Garaduk's way since he had won the honor of joining a reaver squad during the Great Crusade. His way was to get close, thin the enemy with fire from his retinue's pistols and meltaguns, along with his own ensorcelled flamer, than slam into the enemy. Once he was stuck in with the enemy, he would take their worst, and dish out his best, and ultimately outlast them. Blowing sand had obscured Garaduk's approach, but the loyalists were alert, they put up a withering hail of boltgun fire as Garaduk closed. Vulture Raptors dropped to the storm of fire, and Garaduk took a shot to his right shoulder that punched through his thick pauldron to shred tendons and muscle. He still charged forward. Garaduk tried to lift his flamer, to burn a pair of lapdogs at the near corner, but his shoulder gave way, having not yet knitted itself together. His retinue did returned fire, cooking a pair of loyalists with their meltaguns, and knocking another pair onto their backs with pistol fire. Garaduk doubted they would stay down, but they would be out of position when his charge hit.

 

With jets firing from their packs, Garaduk and the Vultures leapt into the fray. Almost. The Angels of Immolation's flamer bearer had sprung to his feet from his shoulders, armor, backpack, weapon and all, just in time to catch Garaduk's retinue in a wicked crossfire. The crossfire was enough to break the raptors momentum in their final push to get to grips with the enemy. Garaduk and his surviving retinue fell short and checked their advance momentarily to consolidate and see how many they had lost in the blanket of fire. Garaduk spun off from his bodyguard to leap into the flamer bearer, shredding the marine into ribbons with his lightning claw, then dispatching his brother and taking a crushing blow from the brother's boltgun to his wounded shoulder.

 

The rest of the loyalist were withdrawing away from Garaduk further east, firing over their shoulders as they went. The serf and the Shield were thrown over the sergeant's shoulder. The Shield was slipping away from Garaduk's grasp. Garaduk turned his eye back to his retinue to command them to commit to the charge, but to his dismay, his retinue was cut down from behind. Another squad of loyalists had appeared out of the blowing sand from the west, these loyalist clad in the green of the First Legion. The Dark Angels advanced relentlessly out of the sandstorm, thundering out a more ferocious storm of bolts and plasma into the backs of Garaduk's Vultures.

 

Garaduk knew he could not handle either squad of loyalist alone, and certainly not both, so he fired his jump pack to head north into the desert. When he finally came to a rest to cool his jets, and to make certain he hadn't been followed, he looked about for the green fly. It was no where to be seen. The Shield would remain with the slaves of the Corpse God. Garaduk felt nauseous and weak.

[Kierdale]

Unless Carrack (as he has already submitted his entry) or Warsmith Aznable (as this theme's judge) object, I'll put back the deadline one more week (to 2/10) for more entries.

 

If either does object/cry "Get on with it!" (Which is fine :D), I'll then post the next theme with a deadline of 2/17).

 

Does anyone have anything in the works but just ran out of time?

[Warsmith Aznable]

It is disappointing that only two entered within the time frame. If anybody is actively working on something I would like to see it, especially if it completes a series being told through earlier stories in the history of these competitions.

 

But if nobody chimes in and Kierdale closes this iteration, I will happily judge between these two and present my own at the same time.

 

Anybody?

[Teetengee]

I'm working on a thing, but the last one I missed needs to be finished first, so go ahead and judge as far as I am concerned.

[Kierdale]

With only Teetengee raising a hand to indicate WIP, but also suggesting we get on with the judging, I'll update the thread tomorrow, end the topic and open the next one.

[Scourged]

I'll have an entry. But nowhere near in time for this deadline. Though, a thought... perhaps we could have an impartial party read each story in its entirety and judge the sum of the parts together? I feel like we've all worked (or are working) very hard on these long stories, but only each part in isolation has seen the gaze of adjudication, and over the long span of time. Once we've collected the full tales from each of us willing, having someone bear witness to the whole things could be fun. Just a thought... and forgive me if the idea has already been long considered and in the works by our fearless leader.