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

[Kierdale]

Dramatis Personae

Lord Castor – former second captain of the Stygian Guard, now Lord of the Reapers, one of the premier champions of the Psychopomps.

Idago – warpsmith, junior to Thenaro.

Orodoni – Lord of Havocs, champion.

Thaenda – sorcerer, junior to the Naga Lord Holusiax.

Physes – Raptor aspiring champion.

Marophes the Tormentor – Hellbrute.

Dolos – Psychopomps warship.

Lord Sophusar – the Facinorous, former chapter master of the Stygian Guard, now high lord of the Psychopomps.

Part One – Planetfall

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“All power to engines! All power!” Idago screamed over the vox, his eyes frantically searching the glowing cogitator screens before him as his hands and the mechadendrites snaking from his backpack raced over the engineerium controls, shutting down systems shipwide and rerouting as much power as he could to the failing engines. The ship shook under the dreadful pull of gravity.

Just a little more power.

He had shut down the Gellar field capacitors, the jump drive, external comms, power to the navigator’s blister – if it hadn’t already been shot off during the clash in orbit – and life support – they were already in some unknown planet’s atmosphere and if it proved inhospitable the marines amongst the crew had their powered armour. As for the mortals: sod them, they were beneath him.

Only one bank of lights were still lit green with power. The gun deck.

“Orodoni! Shut down the guns and give me power! Shut them down!” the warpsmith bellowed into the vox.

No response. The ship shook violently. She wasn’t made for planetary landings and this hadn’t even been a planned one.

“Orodoni. Cease fire immediately and divert all power to Idago.” Castor now added his voice. Their commander, he had been the chapter’s second captain when it had been loyal to Terra. Now he was one of the warband’s premier champions. Not only a skilled warrior but also a cunning tactician. “Orodoni,” steel entered his tone.

“Nearly got the bastard! I’m not giving up on it!” A champion of the Havocs to the very end, Orodoni’s voice was nearly drowned out by the booming of the ship’s cannons around him.

Idago could not tell how near they were to impact – he could have brought up an altimeter on the screen before him but it would have been seconds wasted – instead he brought up another interface and tried to override the power supply to the gundecks. By rights – and while the ship had been a loyal one – he would have had full authority over the ship’s systems and could have shut down the cannons remotely, both energy and ballistics, but he suspected the Havocs had been at their domain’s systems...

He cursed as his suspicions were proven correct. They were blocking him.

“Orodoni!!!”

“ORODONI!” Castor added, the fury in his voice from up on the command deck telling Idago all he need know about their situation.

“Got him!”

And seconds later the ground took them. All went black.

The Dolos dug a trench a good four kilometers in length before coming to rest, its once grand towers crumpled, ornate domes punctured and shattered. In its wake was a stream of debris which had once comprised the lower decks and those who had resided within them.

The survivors, both renegade astartes and mortals of various forms, pulled themselves out onto the scorching hot sands of whatever planet this was, the mortals soon scampering back toward the shadow of the ship due to the oppressive heat. That they had not fallen about holding their throats proved that the air was breathable at least, albeit frightfully dry.

Dolos’s thick ceramite armour rang as Orodoni was swung into it, Castor’s claw fastened about his throat. His weapons had been stripped from him so he merely scrabbled at the claw - neither entirely daemonic nor wholly mechanical - his eyes flitting from his commander to his men. The Havoc squads, bearers of the warband’s heavy weapons on the battlefield and charged with the manning of its starships’ cannons in the void, stood off to one side, seeming contrite. The weapons of Castor’s own Reapers were on them, but Orodoni also knew that he would get no aid from his men as they were all too keen to see which of them would be able to replace him as master of Havocs. Whoreborn curs.

He gasped and spat, trying to speak.

“You speak too much, Orodoni,” Castor said coolly, his calm voice at odds with the titanic strength he was exerting through his clawed arm. “When you should have listened.” When the Havoc lord’s gave up trying to speak, Castor eased his grip a fraction. “Now you will speak, but only to answer my questions.”

He tightened his grip once more, harder, as the worm began to protest, anger in his eyes.

“You destroyed the Xenos vessel?” He eased his grip once more and Orodoni nodded. But Castor could see it in the other’s eyes. The desperation to please. To survive, perchance to exact vengeance for his debasement in front of his men.

“Are you absolutely sure?”

The moment’s hesitation was all the answer Castor needed and he gritted his teeth as he squeezed harder with his claw.

“HOLD! Perhaps he may still be of use!”

Castor gazed daggers at the newcomer, but he was not so proud as to dismiss the ideas of his lieutenants. Thaenda, one of Holusiax’s dark librarius and flanked now by his own acolytes, had been assigned to their mission and had proven himself. Perhaps now he might have insight into this `detour` they had had forced upon them during their return to the fleet.

“Lord Castor, warpsmith Idago tells me that all comms are out. If we are to get word to lord Sophusar we will have to employ other, more esoteric methods...” he glanced at Orodoni.

Castor threw the leader of the Havocs at the sorcerer’s feet, realizing what Thaenda intended to do, and spat upon the fallen marine. “Do with him as you will. I pray that you can summon a daemon into him less willful than he.”

The Lord of Reapers found his warpsmith within one of the ship’s cavernous vaults, his plasma torch’s actinic blue glow casting harsh shadows. As his mechanical arms worked on the likewise mechanical aspects of the form before him, his astartes hands – ungloved and inked with tattoos that etched out meridians down through his arms, across his palms and the backs of his hands and over his digits – worked on the daemonic matter. He was no sorcerer as Idago or Holusiax were, but the craft of the warpsmith required the renegade Astarte techmarine to mesh their knowledge of the machine with that of the neverborn, and to subjugate both.

Castor looked over the fallen dreadnought. Marophes had waded into the Imperials with the same wild abandon he had had when he had been possessed of a full set of limbs. Such wild charges had earned him a formidable tally and both the adulation and envy of his fellow Psychopomps, and had eventually seen fate deal him his comeuppance. They had managed to save him and had rewarded him with entombment within a captured dreadnought. Death had not changed his ways and the Psychopomps had cheered as Marophes the Tormentor had strode forth into combat, Doom Siren and blast masters blaring. He hadn’t taken into account he was now a larger target than he had been in life.

“Will he,” Castor stopped himself before I said `live`, “recover?”

The warpsmith did not look up from his work, his brow furrowed in concentration as he wove wiring and power cables alongside ichor-filled veins, covering them in a sheath of lilac neverborn flesh which was as clay in his hands. “He will.”

Castor nodded and turned from the dreadnought, looking about the vault. Sand was already scattered across the deckplates. It got everywhere. The vault was empty but for Marophes: their mission had called for a stealth culminating in a lightning fast raid, so they had not loaded the Dolos with rhinos, speeders or other vehicles. Not even bikes. The Black Stallions would not have been able to hold themselves back when needed.

Some vehicles would have served them well now, for basic scouting.

“Might I ask why you are not working on the ship, then? I’m told there is no sign of life here. Living or plant. We’ve gone over the passive auspex records from our...descent…and there’s nothing. Nothing but this hellish heat. I don’t think the mortals are going to last long here. They will provide us with sustenance, but I’m adverse to consuming the flesh of the Children of Slaanesh. It would be improper.”

He referred to the Slaangor. The Psychopomps had made pacts with tribes of the beastmen on a planet they discovered within the Eye of Terror.

“Just the cultists and crew then. They’ll last us a good while,” Idago muttered distractedly as he worked. He then looked up, flicking dark fluids from his hands, and gave his commander his full attention. “The ship is a wreck, my lord. We simply lack the materials to effect repairs. I understand Thaenda is working on some way to call for aid…?”

Castor nodded, running a hand over his own tattooed scalp. “He prepares to call upon one of the neverborn to invest within Orodoni.”

That brought a satisfied smirk from the warpsmith.

“Then we’ll see about contacting the rest of the chapter. I had hoped whatever-Orodoni-becomes might also be able to navigate us out of here.”

“Not on this ship, lord,” Idago went back to work on Marophes, elbow deep in ichor and wiring.

Part Two – We’re not alone

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It resembled a mollusk. Physes had eaten similar creatures on several planets, during extended deployments. Marines found nourishment wherever they could, be it animal, vegetable or indeed mineral, thanks to their enhanced biology. Some of the shelled animals had proven poisonous, but nothing his preomnor could not handle. Yet those he had consumed had been no larger than his head, but the shell of the mollusk he now beheld was over three hundred meters in diameter. From what he knew of tyranid vessels, a fleshy body would protrude from the far side of the shell and who knew how long its tentacles might be? He had seen them envelope starships, drawing them close so that huge razor-sharp maws could cut into their hulls before vomiting forth masses of lesser beasts within.

This had not been a planned clash. The Dolos had been returning from her strike in the Imperium and had decanted from the warp in this remote system for reorientation, the course change would hopefully throw off any pursuit. They had not expected to find a vessel of the Great Devourer in orbit. What it had been doing here the Gods only knew, a scout from a hive fleet, a straggler that had gotten lost however the tyranids crossed the great void between systems...Physes neither knew nor cared. Kismet. The will of the gods, perhaps. Either way, Orodoni’s Havocs had opened fire on it – perhaps rather rashly – and that had been that.

And it seemed it had survived the crash, to some degree. The shell was webbed with cracks in places where the impact had damaged it. Even from the distant hilltop from which he observed it he could see liquid – presumably blood – dried in streaks down the sides of the shell. And they were there: dozens of the bugs. Hunter-killers swarming about larger beasts. Their carapace was, like their monstrous vessel, a shiny black, with pale flesh like a bloated corpse. As the five Psychopomp raptors watched, looking out across the dunes, they noted that the larger tyranids seemed to be herding the smaller ones toward the other end of the ship, out of sight of the observing marines. They scrambled back down the hill and circled around, following the valleys between crests in the dunes. They could not use their jump packs for fear of being overheard. There was little wind on the planet, perhaps due to its seemingly slow rotation, and sound travelled very far. When they next peered out over at the alien vessel, their chestplates pressed flat to the hot sand, they saw a most curious sight.

The larger beasts were indeed herding the smaller species; herding them into the maw of a great maggot-like creature, its thick skin writhing beneath the surface. Whether this was some digestive process or the protestations of the xenos, they could not determine. That it was not armoured with carapace plates suggested to them that the maggot was not bred for combat, and the slickness of its skin in the desert heat indicated it was likely born recently. The crowd of termagants, under the gaze of the larger tyranids, did not attempt to flee and seemed resigned to their fate, if they even understood what awaited them.

“We’ll be eating our crew too soon enough,” one of the raptors muttered over the squad’s comm channel.

“I’m not hungry but I’m thirsty,” another put in. “You can eat one, I’ll drain ‘im.”

Physes, leader of the squad, did not comment either to join in their banter nor silence it. His attention was focused on the massive worm. With a shudder it appeared to defecate a length of its own intestines and only when its attending xenos gathered round and began to unravel the twisted flesh did he realise that he was not the creature’s own expelled innards but a sheet of living tissue. Slicing it with their claws a number of the creatures raced off with the flesh, scuttling over the surface of their ship.

“They’re repairing it,” he realized. “Get the plasma guns ready.”

Part Three - Hunter-Gatherer

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“They were using their own, digesting them, recycling them, whatever you want to call it, to repair their ship.”

Castor sat in the bridge’s command throne, the shutters across the broken portholes to keep out the scorching heat. The sun had barely moved since they had crash-landed and Idago estimated that the planet’s sidereal rotational period was around two hundred hours. He listened with barely hidden disinterest as Physes reported.

“Good. They’re too bloody close for comfort. The sooner they’re away, the better,” he nodded when Physes paused.

The raptor champion grinned and Castor closed his eyes in realization, running a hand over his face.

“We assaulted. The maggot blew up, sprayed hot fat everywhere after it was hit with a couple of good plasma shots. That gave us enough time to take out a fair few of the other big ones before we had to retreat.” His eyes were still wide with the high of combat, and whatever drugs the raptors pumped into their bodies.

Castor was on his feet and pushing past the other, opening a comm channel to every other squad leader. His bodyguards, stood in attendance, neither raised their guns at the raptor champion nor moved to unsheathe their blades, but from their body language he could tell they were ready to take him down at their lord’s signal. A small barely noticeable motion of his hand told them to stand down. While Physes was almost as willful as Orodoni, they’d need all the fighters they could muster, and deep down he couldn’t convince himself he wouldn’t have taken the same course of action had he been on the scouting mission. Slaanesh urged one on to great acts, often at the expense of strategic thinking.

“Castor to Psychopomps. Set up a defensive perimeter, immediately. Expect attack at any time. Marines: fortify the ship, fight from it. Make it our citadel.”

There was a hiss of static before a mortal’s voice came over the channel. The man’s fatigue was clear in his hoarse voice. “My lord, what would you have the Exalted Fecund do?” The largest of the warband’s human cults. The hundred or so humans had been struggling in the heat and the blazing sun. Several had collapsed too and none – mortal or Astarte – doubted that the ship’s stores of provisions and water was for the marines and the Slaangor alone.

“Slaanesh blesses you with the greatest of tasks. Separate into squads and find the high ground on the dunes surrounding our site. You are to be our eyes and ears. Castor out.”

One of the Reapers in his bodyguard was looking at him questioningly.

“They’re dead either way,” Castor answered, “and this way they either slow up the bugs in combat...or the bugs might stop to snack on their sunbaked corpses.”

The attack came within the hour, the screams of cultists clearly audible in the still air. The Psychopomps had set up facing all directions, knowing the beasts to be a cunning foe. Those to the west watched as cultists sprinted down the dune in a pitiful attempt to reach the safety of the starship. Some cheered and called to the dozen or so cultists while others jeered, egging on the pack of hormaguants that chased them. A shot rang out as one of the Psychopomps fired a long-ranged rifle which took off the leg of a cultist, sending him sprawling, rolling down the sand dune with blood gushing from his truncated thigh. The foremost of the beasts pounced on the fallen human but it was not enough to stop them.

“Havocs,” Castor called over the comm as he watched the tyranids from what had once been a tower atop the ship, an observation point with blown-out windows. It now served its purpose once again. Dozens upon dozens of the bugs came on like a glossy black tide. “Wait for my order!” Or at least bloody-well try to. If the bugs couldn’t be scared off or satisfied with a snack then he wanted them crushed: he had ordered the Psychopomps to hold fire until the enemy were in range of not only the Havoc’s cannons but also the Death Knell’s sonic weapons. That would crush the bugs or send them packing. Marophes the Tormentor, his systems repaired and his daemonic flesh healed, stood at the center of the Psychopomps line, shunning the defensive walls his living brethren had erected, his doom siren and twin blast master hissing and howling with static in anticipation.

Another couple of long range shots took down cultists and Castor watched with interest as the loping beasts ran down the rest of the humans – he had ordered the Slaangor within Dolos and would sacrifice them only if absolutely necessary – and stopped. They could clearly see the renegade marines manning the makeshift defences around and on the crashed spaceship, but they did not charge.

Fingers hovered over triggers and sights settled on the elongated craniums of the aliens. Castor – all of them in fact – could taste the thirst for battle, the hungry musk coming off the marines.

A cry of anguish went up as the creatures skewered the fallen humans with their lance-like talons and, rather than beginning to feed, they lifted them and began to retreat up the dune. Even encumbered by the dead and dying cultists they moved at a frightening pace. Castor doubted even the daemonettes of the Dark Prince could match their speed. Some of the Psychopomps opened fire, taking down the rearmost few hormagaunts.

Castor watched, Physes and his raptors at his side - his intention having been both to keep an eye on them and to direct them in a counter attack should the aliens besiege the marine camp.

“They’re leaving?” one of Physes’ men put voice to the question on the minds of many.

“We scared them off!” another barked.

Unlikely. They know as much of fear as an Astarte does. Castor turned to Physes, “Follow them,” and raised a warning finger. “Find out what they are doing.”

Though he had a sneaking suspicion.

“I must check on "Orodoni."

Part Four – The Trap

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“Is it him, the daemon, or the warp?”

The Reaper Lord stood in a chamber deep within Dolos. They navigator’s blister had been destroyed in the battle in orbit but Idago had managed to put together a secondary chamber. The former master of the Havocs was secured in a makeshift throne, bound to it with chains anointed with perfumed oils. Stripped of his armour, cables were plugged into the sockets dotted about his body. Usually for interfacing between his armour’s systems and his enhanced biology, they had been adapted to link him to the ship’s repaired systems.

But his body was no longer entirely that of one of the Adeptus Astartes for within him had been summoned one of the neverborn. The left side of his face still bore the gigantism characteristic to the Emperor’s angels of death, but the right had almost shrunken to the proportions of a mortal human – even more, perhaps – and had taken on an androgynous aspect. The cant of the eye, fuller lips which drew back to expose fangs, skin – once crisscrossed with scars – had gone smooth and been flushed with a lilac tint. It reminded him immediately of dark apostle Angra, whose countenance was clearly half marine and half daemonette. But while Angra’s transformation was complete and controlled, the possessed which lay strapped into the throne before him now was perhaps not. The eyes rolled and looked in different directions.

Thaenda shrugged in frustration. “I know not. My apologies, my lord,” he rubbed the knuckles of his gauntlets, splattered with both purple liquid and the bright red of marine blood. “I can attempt to banish this one and summon another.”

Castor shook his head before coolly drawing his bolt pistol and putting a single round into the warped skull of the possessed Orodoni. The detonation was immediate and threw gore over the throne and walls of the small chamber.

The sorcerer looked at him in shock.

“Get out there and get digging along with the rest of them.”

Thaenda’s expression changed from shocked to one of confusion at being ordered to carry out such a menial task.

“Physes will no doubt be unwittingly bringing six shades of [expletive deleted] down upon us soon enough. I have another plan. It needs a big ditch. And you.”

As Castor led the sorcerer back out into the blinding sunlight he explained what was required of Thaenda.

The screeching of the tyranids – countless in number and forms – could be heard from kilometers away and served to warn those at the Dolos of the incoming attack. Cultists now hunkered down behind barricades, seeking what shelter they could, clutching their rifles and praying sand had not gotten into the workings as a jam would be a death sentence. Behind them were the Psychopomps, their roseate and pastel armour like some twisted mirage. They too checked and rechecked their weapons, breathing deepening and quickening. The sandy ground before the larger sonic weapons quivered and pitted as noise bled from barrels.

The flash of plasma shots in the air was the first sign of the returning raptors, autosenses zooming in could make out three survivors of Physes’ squad rocketing back toward Dolos, firing as they moved, ten times their number of winged beasts like some kind of alien gargoyles, snapping at their heels. Beneath them raced the mass of forces from the tyranid vessel, finally visible to the renegades as they crested the tops of the dunes surrounding the crashsite.

And battle was joined.

Alien bodies fell in droves as the Havocs and noise marines opened fire with their longest range weapons, both the collapsing bodies and the weapon blasts kicking up clouds of sand.

More and more weapons opened fire as range decreased, the bugs unleashing their own biotechnological cannons too, sending venomous salvoes against the Psychopomp’s shield wall. Screams went up as toxins and acids splashed the cultists. Those who were hit directly died too quickly to give voice to their agony. And the ranks of the noise marines behind them drank up the mortals’ pain, howling in excitement, firing faster and faster.

More raptor squads took to the air, eager to save and shame the returning scouts, and soon bodies – both gargoyle and the occasional marine – plummeted from the skies.

Castor looked on from his high command post, nodding at his men’s work. His own hearts raced and he adjusted his grip on his axe again and again. He was about to open a channel to Thaenda when the sand less than fifty meters in front of the Psychopomp lines exploded upward as if a huge anti-tank mine had been detonated.

With a roar that drowned out that of the battle about it, a huge multi-segmented wyrm-like beast erupted from the sands, cavernous maw wide, fangs drooling. Beady red eyes were barely visible beneath a forehead slab of carapace as thick as tank armour. It slammed back down and its limbs propelled it forth at a frightening pace toward the Dolos. He had seen such a beast once before, and he knew why it had surfaced when it had, rather than within the encampment before the ship. It had sensed his trap and been forced to surface early. He only hoped that it wouldn’t blow his plans.

“Castor to Marophes.”

There was naught but deafening feedback over the channel.

“I don’t know if you can hear me, but take out that burrower!”

A smile appeared on his face as the dreadnought turned its lumbering bulk, loosing a last salvo of missiles into the high side of a bloated, pregnant mother-beast, immolating the monster and its half-born brood. Spotting the charging wyrm, Marophes moved to the very edge of the makeshift defences, set his taloned feet wide and unleashed concussive sonic blasts. His first shots missed as its snaking body sidewindered across the sand but eventually hit, tearing a chunk of flesh from the beast’s flank and eliciting a scream of pain from it. This only drove him on, pumping blast after blast from his weapons. Again so many went wide, tearing into the smaller aliens and the great beast rose up as it neared him, infuriated and intending to crush him beneath its mass.

Marophes raised his bronze mask with its grill-mouth, and his weapons, unleashing his own scream as it fell, but while the bellow of the tyranid drove fear into the minds of the cultists surrounding the dreadnought, Marophes’ was a weapon tuned for war. For destruction. The combined cacophony of his blast masters and the doom siren mounted in his helmet caused the wyrm’s head to explode.

As it toppled, gushing gore from its truncated neck, the front ranks of tyranids neared the wall. They accelerated, eager to punch their talons into human and post-human flesh.

The noise marines of the Psychopomps swept their weapons back and forth in deafening, maddening waves.

And the ground beneath the alien assault gave way.

“Cultists of the Exalted Fecund!” Castor cried out, his voice magnified and echoing across the dunes, “Now! Now is your time!”

A cry went up and the mortals charged forth, autoguns spitting, knives flashing, descending into the vast ditch that the noise marines’ fire had uncovered. Into the mass of trapped monsters.

Once the majority were in, Castor gave the signal to Thaenda and his entourage of robed marines.

The sorcerer’s veins throbbed and blood streamed from his ears and nose as he began the largest summoning he had ever attempted. Larger than anything even his master in the dark librarius had ever managed.

Holusiax’s eyes narrowed as he observed the vessel on the auspex screen. Its beacon announced it as the Dolos, returning considerably overdue from its raid into the Imperium, yet its silhouette was different. He had the hardwired servitor enhance the image and his eyes widened as he took in the transformed battleship.

In several places masses of flesh covered the ship, in fact it seemed as much alive as it was ship. Further enhanced images showed bodies twisted together. Human, daemon...and other forms, almost insectile, that he could not place. A conglomeration of flesh and muscle. Even at this great distance he could sense the spoor of the neverborn.

As it neared he sensed the unique presence of Castor. So, the lord of reapers had survived. And no doubt had quite the tale to tell.

[Kierdale]

Four excellent entries in Inspirational Friday 2017: Desert Warfare! Not as many as the last challenge but some really great stories.

Lateral Thinking marked Warsmith Aznable’s return to Inspirational Friday (welcome back! You’ve been missed!). I really enjoyed this story. Lateral thinking indeed! I look forward to hearing about Ambrus seeking revenge (as I’m sure he’ll survive and escape).

And I’ve never seen anyone call a Primarch `grandad` before!

P3AKHOUR’s entry was The Oasis and marked the first entry to have Nurgle-forces as the antagonists. Inspired by GW’s recent releases I guess! I have no idea what it’s really like to be a member of a tank crew but you certainly made it sound authentic, while also adding in 40k-isms like incantations before using weapons, etc. The setting and locals were also very well written.

gunnyogrady gave us another very gritty entry with his Devils in the Ash. Another that, with current ongoing real world conflicts, was easy to picturize. Great writing here and I liked the idea of the Plague Idol.

And I couldn’t come up with a name for my own entry (suggestions welcome!). When I set this topic I tried to think about reasons why 40k forces would be fighting in a desert, and wanted tyranids versus Chaos. If you’re interested in the thought process behind the story...

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I pondered for a while about the objective/setting: a supply route - that lent itself to a raid/convoy defence piece, hmm, not bad...or fighting over some kind of installation for resources, or an oasis (as that’s where a settlement would be built), but what kind of resources? The image of tyranids racing over sand dunes came to mind but why would they be on a desert planet? No biomass there...but then again that would be why they’re attacking the oasis. But to get them there...I had the idea of the crash. Then thought “I may as well have the Chaos side crash too”, then got to the idea of the resources not being at the oasis, but actually being the survivors: the tyranids raid the crash site for biomass to repair their ship. Then thought: two can play that game. Have the Chaos forces use their own surviving cultists and the attacking tyranids in a summoning, and fleshcraft the resulting spawn.

I hereby close the 16th challenge of IF2017, but if anyone has more stories on that theme, at any time, please post them here with a suitable title.

And I very much look forward to reading Iron Father Ferrum’s thoughts on the entries and his final judgement!

And here begins our seventeenth challenge of Inspirational Friday 2017:

Abhumans and Mutants

To be Unclean

-That is the mark of the mutant.

To be Impure

-That is the mark of the mutant.

To be Abhorred.

-That is the mark of the mutant.

To be Reviled.

-That is the mark of the mutant.

To be Hunted.

-That is the mark of the mutant.

To be Purged.

-That is the fate of the mutant.

To be Cleansed.

-For that is the fate of all mutants.

First recognized during the Age of Strife, the expansion of Humanity across the galaxy, settling myriad worlds caused the emergence of recognized mutant strains: abhumans. Billions live within the Imperium, with the Adeptus Terra officially recognizing seventy-three stable abhuman strains (though only fifteen of these races are believed to still exist), from the hulking Ogryn (Homo sapiens gigantus) to the diminutive ratling (Homo sapiens minimus).

Though it is believed the Squat (Homo sapiens rotundus) hearthworlds were consumed by the Great Devourer, it is rumoured that refugees who escaped or were offworld when their homes were destroyed can be found scattered across the Imperium, their expertise and remaining technology coveted by the adepts of the Mechanicum.

Beastmen (Homo sapiens variatus), though severely persecuted within the Imperium of Man, fight on both sides of the Long War with penitent conscript squads selling their lives for the Golden Throne in Imperial Guard regiments. And each of the four powers of the Primordial Annihilator has their chosen forms: the Slaangor, the Tzaangor, Bloodgor and the Pestigor.

Then there are the more minor abhuman races of the Troths (Homo sapiens verdantus), the Longshanks (Homo sapiens elongatus) the Pelagers (Homo sapiens oceanus), Felinids (Homo sapiens hirsutus) and Neandors (Homo sapiens hyannothus).

Then there are the true mutants, those who have been singly touched by the taint (blessing?) of Chaos: acid excretions, arms that elongate at will, beweaponed extremities, bulging eyes and the ability to breathe fire, a crystalline body, enormously fat, eyestalks, headlessness, emitting a horrible stench or having a hypnotic gaze, invisibility or levitation, a mace- or scorpion-like tail, a pin or pointed head, razor-sharp claws or teeth, scaly or feathered skin, a skull face, a silly walk, suckers, three eyes, wings or the ability to timeslip.

Inspirational Friday: Abhumans and Mutants runs until the 22nd of September.

Let us be inspired.

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

To whomever is chosen as the victor goes, depending on their loyalty, the Aquila Helix or the Accursed Helix:

[P3AKHOUR]

Kierdale your story was amazing, you captured the hopelessness and hostility of the desert perfectly. I loved the descriptions of the problems a chaos warmaster would face trying to maintain discipline and a chain of command in an army of drugged-up superhuman psychopaths. My mind was full of imagery from the latest Mad Max movie. Tyranids are always a winner for me too.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

The winner for "Desert Warfare" is. . . .drum roll. . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

P3AKHOUR!  As someone who served in a counter-insurgency fight in Iraq, I especially liked the fairly true-to-life aspects of The Oasis.  The suspicion between locals and occupiers, the need to "buy off" locals when livestock are harmed, the fact that said locals use AKs!  All of it gave a tinge of believability to the story that I quite thoroughly enjoyed.  Congratulations to P3AKHOUR and thank you to everyone who contributed!

[P3AKHOUR]

Thank you IFF.  Your approval, as someone who's been in the kind of conflict that inspired my story is humbling. 

I have claimed my foul trinket in the name of the Emperor and will hasten to deliver it to the Inquisition as soon as I have, ah, completed my own research on it.

[Kierdale]

Well deserved, P3AKHOUR! :tu:

 

Thanks for the praise of mine but it lacked the grit of yours and gunnyogrady's entries. And I fear my entry sounded too much like the write-up of an RPG session :D

 

You're the judge now for IF: Abhumans and Mutants, but you can enter too, of course. Are there any Orgryns or Ratlings serving alongside those tankers of yours? ;)

[gunnyogrady]

A well-deserved win to P3AKHOUR! I loved how the story blended the realism of real-world conflict with the grimdark religiosity of the 40k world. Very fun to read!

 

This is awesome!

[P3AKHOUR]

Thanks Gunny, I thoroughly enjoyed your story too. I got goose bumps at a couple of points, a sure sign of good writing.  Your description at the start of the sniper team hunkered down in the ash was so atmospheric.  I'm hoping you submit something for this round.

[Carrack]

Prying Eyes and Hungry Mouths

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My dark and dirty robes hid me from prying eyes as I scurried up the alley. They were the prying eyes of the residents of this level, ever vigilant for interlopers in their own little private domain. They were the jealous eyes that worried my own eyes might see what they were salvaging and try to take it from them. Not just the raw materials they were unearthing from the ruins, but that they were salvaging a real community, a budding little flower of civilization rising from the ashes of its destruction. They knew that flower was delicate, and would wither under too much attention from strangers. I waited in the shadows until the salvage gangs of this hab-block broke off their conversations and returned to their habs to shutter the windows and bar the doors. Quietly, I crept underneath the sill of the Morrenoles first-floor hab and waited.

 

They were rebuilding the community now. The Morrenol family was feasting the orphans of the hab-block in an act of charity that not only fed the hungry, but dared the neighbors to match such generosity, or lose status in the eyes of the rest of the block. Other families would do the same, some giving more than expected, and others less. Typically, the Morrenoles could not afford much in the way of sumptuous fair, but they always made up for their bland provender with a masterfully told story from their patron. The chance to hear the story is what made me return here earlier than usual and risk being seen in the settled portions of this level. I eased up against the back wall of the Morrenol hab and quietly sunk down beneath their uncovered window. I waited a few moments and heard no one moving to find me. The prying eyes of the residents had not seen me sneak into position.

 

Of course, I had prying eyes of my own, and one of them was a little unusual, so to speak. I was born with two healthy normal eyes, but I lost one when I entered puberty a few years ago. There was no violence, no terrible accident, I had just lost possession of the eye. It was no longer mine. The first thing it did after it left my control was move. I remember feeling as if this strange eye that had once been mine was unhappy with the accommodations in my eye socket, so it picked up and moved. It made its way down my left arm trailing ganglia still somehow attached to my brain. The rebel eye looped around my arm several times until it nested in my left hand, then the ganglia constricted. The constricting nerves, hard as piano wire, cut into my arm and crushed its bones, and the lesions sprouted suckers, as the boneless limb transformed into an elongated tentacle with my lost eye at its tip. The whole process had taken days or minutes, I don't really know, but it felt like a lifetime of pain. The pain I can't really remember anymore, along with parts of my memory that the eye took from me when it left. I do remember the eye showing me what it saw as it migrated to my hand. It replayed me this horrifying vision every night when I laid down to rest. I wish it wouldn't. Worse than the pain, visions, and feeling of betrayal, was the isolation of my self imposed exile. I could no longer be part of the growing community. They had declared me unclean, unfit to pass on my name, and unwelcome in the inhabited portions of the level. I lived a lonely life on the outskirts of the level, scratching out a living against the hive's outer walls and the still unexplored ruins. These dangerous forays into the hab block are the light of my life. My only human contact, even if I could no longer reciprocate such contact myself.

 

I reach into the folds of my robes and retrieve my latest artifact. The artifact shows promise, it is some type of black monocular optic piece fitted with gold brackets. I think it belonged to a helmet of very large proportions. Technology is always valuable salvage, and the gold work, showed that this was no ordinary piece. I could potentially profit quite a bit from the optic. Or I could get nothing. The normal salvage gangs worked the main ruins of our level starting with those closest to the hab block. The rebel eye starts waving about with obvious interest in the artifact, which could draw attention to my hiding place so I put it down for the eye to inspect. Better to lose the artifact than be spotted. The eye-tentacle coils around the optic and caresses it lovingly. I feel uneasy as the sections of the tentacle that touched the optic take on a purplish hue, but I hear the backdoor unlock near me and quickly grab the artifact and shove it underneath the old paperboard crate that was the agreed upon stash spot.

 

I had hoped she would have waited till after the story, but I guess with the orphans' feast, she didn't want me around. I can't blame her. I am merely unclean, subject to exile, if she is caught aiding me however, she will be named collaborator, and will be lined up against the hab block wall and shot. The wounds of the war that tore this hive apart are still deep, and collaborators remain the lowest of the low, even lower than the unclean. As the door tentatively opens, I scurry around a corner further into the alleys of the hab block. I hear her singing. Gertrude Morrenol sang a baby's lullaby through tears in her eyes and emotion welling in her throat. It is the saddest sound I have ever heard. I watch as she wipes down a brick with a damp corner of her apron and carefully squeeze out a decent size gob of ration paste on it, sobbing. She leaves a disposable bag of water next to it and a bit of colored chalk. Abruptly she moves away from her offering and digs around the stash spot. The sorrow in her eyes is replaced with furtive glances as she checks to see if she was witnessed. Satisfied that her activities were not observed, she scoops up the optic but drops it immediately, glancing down at her hand. She tried again, with similar results, only I see pain across her brow. The third time she unites her apron and quickly picks up the optic using it as a makeshift glove. The door shuts and locks, a little forcibly, as she returns to her feast.

 

I wait a few minutes to make sure no one checks to see why Gertrude slammed her door, then return to my hiding spot beneath her window sill. I start to dine on the feast Gertrude had left for the son she had been forced cast out years ago, no doubt for being unclean at birth, and listened to the tail end of her husband's story. It was about the terrible Arch-Enemy that had reduced this hive to ruin more than three decades ago. It was a real horror story, a tale of the Devouring of Callebra Hive by the dreaded Black Maw. I closed my loyal eye and took small scoops of ration paste in between gulps of distilled water as I listened the resonances of Old Man Morrenol. I was supremely comfortable, eating bland but hearty food and drinking clean water, while listening to the best storyteller on the block. I may have dozed off I was so relaxed. My stolen eye spoiled that. It decided to let me see what it saw. It had slithered up the wall and in between the shutters of the window to peek into the Morrenoles hab. The Old Man had stopped talking and the orphans were gasping in horror. It wasn't my former eye and its tentacle that caused their reaction. On the other side of the table stood Gertrude, holding the black and gold monocular. Both her eyes had darkened to pitch, and impenetrable blackness poured from her mouth and ears. She was floating a half meter off the ground. A voice sounded from her lips that was clearly not her own, it was the thunderous voice of a warrior, ancient, precise, and cruel beyond imagination. The voice said, "We are the Black Maw of the Despoiler, and We are Returned!"

I missed this contest and am glad to be back

Edited September 22, 2017 by Carrack

[gunnyogrady]

Hey folks! This theme really got me excited about the world of 40k, and was an opportunity for me to work out the origin story of a couple of my Regiment's/World's characters.

 

Also, I'm excited to read what you all have to offer!

 

+Edge of the World+

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Of all the hive cities on all the worlds of the Imperium, this one was his, and she had been too, but now she was gone. And of course she was. Nothing in this festering gutter of a city stayed for long. At least nothing good. Investigator Remington Emyrich stood in the threshold of his favorite establishment.

 

The sign above the door, a flickering neon invitation to drown your sorrows in amasec, read only Marty's. Balanced on the great, grey dividing line that separated the industrial slums from the true underhive, Marty operated this small haven. Those above, citizens and factorum-workers, didn't come because rumors said the gangers and mutants of the darkness came here to drink. Those below, gangers and mutants, didn't come because rumors said showing their tattooed or wretched faces this far up was a recipe for getting captured and killed. But somehow, for years longer than any generation could remember and any upperhiver cared to document, this bar had lingered in the twilight of rumor and reality, a sorry smoke-filled sepulcher for the anonymous ghouls of the hive.

 

Marty himself was a shell, and anyone who knew him when he had been more man than servitor had died a long time ago. A memory of his personality existed, and his banter was warm if not vapant, like a character played by a bad actor in a play no one was watching. Although this was not the underhive proper, the steady drip of sewage from the city above still fell in rivulets from rotting wood beams overhead, caught in a graveyard of buckets that had to be emptied every few hours. The smell of decaying wood and bar top antiseptic lingered in the air, and an ancient box played music from grooved discs. Behind the bar, a set of fake windows showed a simulation of gorgeous sunset with fiery red clouds and the hint of starlight. This far down, the fake skyline was the closest many would ever see to actual horizon. Marty would occasionally clean the windows with a spray bottle of liquid, wiping imaginary grime away with the towel slung over his shoulder.

 

Investigator Emyrich sat down at a barstool just as Marty finished another unnecessary wipe-down of the fake window. The Investigator lit a lho stick and nodded to his friend. Marty took a second to evaluate the scene, cloudy eye-simulators whirring for a moment.

 

"Remy!" He said at last in a booming voice. His voicebox was due for replacement. A metallic static accompanied all of his words.

 

"Marty." Remy said.

 

"Attention customer, there is no smoking in the bar." Marty said automatically after processing the presence of the lit lho stick.

 

"Marty, Marty, Marty..." Remy said, "How long have you known me?"

 

"You've got one last chance, buddy." Marty said in the same pre-recorded cadence.

 

"Override: Firebrand, Remington Emyrich." Remy said.

 

Marty straightened up. Remy could hear the servos behind his eyes whirring.

 

"My apologies, must have been daydreaming there!" Marty said at once, "What can I get you, Remy?"

 

"Oh you know me, any old swill will do." Remy said. He knew that the various amber bottles lining the bar wall all had the same bootleg amasec in them. The illusion of choice was an enjoyable fantasy, but the Investigator had been coming here too long to play along.

 

"Comin' right up, Remy." Marty said, and zoomed away on his wheeled base to pour the drink. The Investigator reached over the bar, and grabbed a glass to use as his ashtray. He took a long drag, tapped the lho stick on the edge of the glass, and peered into the fake sunset view.

 

"What do you know about mutants, Marty?" He said.

 

"Mutants? I don't know much, but they don't come 'round here. That much I do know." Marty said.

 

"Of course, of course. Quality establishment here, I'm sure. Do you ever wonder, though, why they disgust us so? Why they terrify us? I've seen my fair share of mutants, working down here, my little beat on the border of nowhere. I look into their eyes and... I wonder sometimes if they're not so different from us. I mean, if we wouldn't be exactly the same, if we lived just a few miles down in that pollution and poverty."

 

"Mutants? I don't know much, but they don't come 'round here. That much I do know." Marty said. Remy sighed heavily, stamped out his lho stick, and lit another promptly.

 

"Override: Hospitality, Remington Emyrich." He said just as the Bartender was setting the glass in front of him. Once again, the servitor straightened up and processed.

 

"You know, it looks like you had a long day. How about a double, on the house?" Marty said, and poured the extra free portion.

 

"Why that's very sweet of you." Remy said distractedly, still staring at the fake sky. If he let his mind wander, sometimes he forgot it was a simulation. He pretended he was standing on the enviro-controlled banister of some hive spire family home. He wondered if the sky was actually this color, or if it had any color at all. Why would the sky be red, or orange, or any other hue? Red. Like her dress on the last night he'd seen his wife alive. She had looked beautiful. He snapped awake to see Marty looking at him expectantly.

 

"I'm sorry Marty, what was that? I was lost in a reverie." Remy said.

 

"I think that man behind you wants your stool." Marty said.

 

All of a sudden, hair stood up on the back of his neck. No one came to this bar. At least no one that the Investigator hadn't invited first. Slowly, lho stick still hanging out of his lips, Remy swiveled around. A giant in black-plated carapace stood behind him.

 

"Nice place you got here. Took me a week to find it. You are Investigator Remington Emyrich?" The Arbitrator said, sticking out a meaty gloved hand. Remy shook it reluctantly. Deep down, he suspected it was about to become a hell of a night.

 

***

 

The two lawmen sat across from each other at a deflated booth on the wall opposite of the bar. Marty cleaned his immaculate window again.

 

"Don't drink?" Remy said.

 

"Don't drink." The Arbitrator said.

 

"Hard man to trust, then." Remy said.

 

"Not as hard as you are to find."

 

"Well. I can't trust anybody who is too dumb to find me. And down here? You don't want to consort with anybody you don't trust."

 

The Arbitrator was silent for a moment. He still had on his darkly visored helmet. If Remy had to guess, he would have thought the man was sizing him up.

 

"It is humorous." The Arbitrator said. "I know of a man who said something similar to me just recently."

 

"Smart man." Remy tapped his lho stick on the edge of the glass. His strange guest regarded the action, and looked back up at the local Investigator. Then he reached up, undid a couple latches from his helmet, and lifted the thing from his head. With the hardware sitting on the table, Remy finally got a good look at the man's face, and a helluva face it was.

 

Craggy and crossed with suture-scars, the Arbitrator had a shaven head and two ice blue eyes, one of which was set back into his face like it had been damaged and re-set in some kind of reconstructive surgery. His head was in scale with his body, which was to say massive. Truly a brute of a man with a troglodyte's dome to match.

 

"Forgot to introduce myself. Arbitrator Roboute Hamme."

 

"Hamme? Holy Throne, that's appropriate." Remy said.

 

"Compliment accepted." Hamme said. "Now, Investigator Emyrich, tell me what you know of mutants."

 

"Call me Remy. And what do you mean? What do I know about mutants generally, or what do I know about the mutants in my beat?"

 

"If you see enough mutants, Remy," the first name sounded foreign in his mouth, "you come to realize that they are all the same. Petri dishes for corruption." He let that sink in for a moment, gauged the Investigator's reaction. "So it's all the same to me. Tell me about the ones in your district. What did you call it? Your beat."

 

"Well, I'll tell you I've got murderers. I've got thieves, drug lords, and solicitors, more than a team of a dozen people could catch. But the Abhumans? Well, our job down here is... complicated." Remy said.

 

"Complicated?"

 

"I know them. A lot of the mutants, their families, living down there." Remy gestured out the door with his lho stick. "The gangers and criminals, they're rotten. But a lot of the mutant strains, the abhumans... well, their genetics were fully human not too long ago, usually just a couple generations. Somewhere in their family history, they used to be somewhere better, higher up. I find that if I know them, show them a little leniency, they can help."

 

"Leniency to the mutant?" Hamme said, huge shoulders tensing slightly. Remy locked eyes with him, waited, chose his words. Lho smoke drifted up from his fingers, which danced on the edge of his amasec glass.

 

"Like I said, my job is complicated. Maybe the better word is impossible. I can't stop the crime from happening. There's too much, I couldn't possibly stop it all. So what can I do?"

 

"Kill the guilty." The Arbitrator cut in, making the sign of the Aquila on his chest. "Every pure life serves the Emperor. But every Just death does, as well."

 

"Kill them. Right. Kill them, and then what? Wait for the new gangers to move in? For the same crime to come back? Assume I could survive, killing gang after gang filtering into my district. I would be the sheriff of a kingdom of corpses!"

 

"I am an Arbitrator of the Adeptus Arbites, I do not require a lesson in the tenacity of corruption. What does this have to do with your mutants, Investigator?" Hamme said.

 

Remy leaned back in his booth. He took one last long drag of his lho stick, sucked it deep into his lungs, and crammed the butt into the glass. "Alright. A long time ago, I learned: what if, instead of stopping it from happening, I could just make sure the murder, and the drugs, and the kidnapping only happened somewhere that people didn't see it? Where they didn't care if it happened? Keep the trash in the trashcan. I don't have to stop the crime. I only have to stop the crime from happening to people that anybody cares about. And as for the mutants? Yes, they help me. They help me stop the plots and schemes from belching up from the underhive. And shame keeps them down there. The mutants wouldn't dare show their faces up here, too much shame... there's so much shame..."

 

Arbitrator Hamme couldn't be sure, but it felt like the temperature in the room had dropped a few degrees. The music box in the corner was skipping on its track. Marty stared blankly, as if trying to process something he couldn't quite see. A small trickle of blood fell from Investigator Emyrich's nose.

 

"It's true what they say about you then." Hamme said.

 

Suddenly, the music kicked back on, and Marty resumed his pre-programmed activities.

 

"I can't imagine what you could be talking about." Remy said, wiping his nose with a bar napkin and standing to get his jacket.

 

"I mean you know the mutants of this district, Investigator Remy! Nothing more. Unless there's something I should be told?"

 

"Right. Well, I appreciate the brotherly drop-in Arbitrator Hamme. But I do have a job to attend to. Can you remind me again what you're doing here? And where exactly are the rest of the Arbites?"

 

The Arbitrator regarded him coldly. A heavy silence filled the room. Marty started spraying his window again.

 

"The Arbites are sweeping the hive, teams mostly, routine searches and judgements. I have been sent here to find a particular mutant. I was told they roamed this part of the hive."

 

"Well, sorry buddy, you want to track down some mutants? You can bring the boys down here with your electro-clubs and boltguns. If I bring an Arbitrator down there with me? Throne! None of the underhive families would ever meet with me again. Unless you have any other questions, Arbitrator." Remy put on his jacket, nodded at Hamme, and headed towards the door without waiting for a response.

 

"Well, actually, I didn't come for your help, Investigator. Just for some information." Hamme said cooly. "The mutant I'm tracking down. I am told she was your wife."

 

Remy stopped at the door. His chest seized with sudden panic. His heart throbbed in big, endorphin-pumping beats.

 

"What in Terra's name do you want with my wife?" Remy said in a growl.

 

"Take me to the underhive, Investigator." Hamme stood up, facing Emyrich. "Take me, and you can see your wife again."

 

Remy flew across the room, snarling inches from the towering man's face.

 

"What do you want with my wife!?" He yelled.

 

"If she is mutated but pure of spirit I will leave her unmolested." Hamme said, looking down at Remy without flinching.

 

"And if she isn't? Pure of spirit?"

 

"Then she will die, Remy. But you already knew that. Help me find her, or I will find her myself, and you will have no chance to influence my decision as to her guilt."

 

Remy stood in front of the bullish man, feeling like a sea breeze blowing against an immovable glacial wall.

 

"Alright. Alright. Come with me." Remy turned and flew out the door. The Arbitrator followed close behind him. Remy stopped, and spoke without turning. "And Hamme. You're going to want to bring your helmet."

 

***

 

They stood on the edge of the abyss, looking down into it. Few who descended to the underhive ever came back up. It took cunning and willpower, not to mention brutality, to survive for even a few hours there. Clawing your way back up was another matter entirely. Arbitrator Roboute Hamme and local Investigator Remington Emyrich were silent for a moment.

 

“You sure you want to do this?” Remy asked plainly.

 

“My mutant querry, she is down there?” Hamme replied.

 

“My wife went down here, last time I saw her. I can't promise what we'll find.”

 

“We'll find her, Remy. It is the Emperor's Will.”

 

“I'm sure it is.” Remy said, putting out his last cigarette.

 

The Arbitrator held out a hand, halting Remy for just a moment.

 

“One last thing: did you pay that man, or, that servitor thing? The one always cleaning the windows?” Hamme said.

 

“Marty? No. I own the place, use it for meetups with upright individuals such as yourself. It's a useful place for when you want to brace an upperhiver."

 

“Of course you do. Well then. Lead the way, Investigator.”

 

In Investigator Emyrich's beat, it always seemed like it was raining. The sewage from the hive above fell in sheets like spring rainfall, a constant deluge of human waste that washed through the streets for as long as anybody could remember and as long as anybody would ever know. He never really knew what it was in the hive spire above that caused the downpour, but he suspected it was some kind of badly leaking centralized septic facility.

 

Above, a million tons of structural steel sat atop the sprawling, foetid base that was the underhive. For every ton of steel, there lived a hundred thousand souls. The cascading spire of the city was a decadent monastery to industry, audacity, and disregard for human life. As much as the weight of the city itself, the wretches of the underhive were pushed down by the weight of the clamoring masses above them who were desperate to keep their own pathetic place in the hierarchy. And to live down there, in the darkness and the deep, was a fate worse than the many imagined hells of man. They crawled within caves in the mountainous rockrete foundations and the labyrinth of sewage pipes. They squeezed between habstreets barely wide enough for two men to walk abreast. They lived, drenched in the dark of abominable manmade night, in a state barely better than death.

 

Hamme followed Remy through the streets. Even the puddles that they splashed through in the cramped thoroughfares were lethal gangrenous pools. Remy had pulled his leather jacket and hood fast around him, while Hamme let the foul rain plink loudly off of his steel helmet and carapace. All the while, invocations of the Emperor's Justice slipped from his mumbling lips. Motes of light - neon signs, flickering candles, glowing streetlamps - were like lonely watchers in the downpour.

 

“Throne, Hamme, cut the babble.”

 

“The Emperor Protects, Investigator.” Hamme responded.

 

“He sure does, but you stand out like a sore johnson down here. These people are no friend of the Emperor.”

 

“Heretics?” Hamme said loudly.

 

“No!” Remy wheeled to address the Arbitrator quietly. “Keep that talk quiet! They're not heretics, they're survivors. They don't care about the Emperor, they don't care about anything unless it helps them keep breathing.”

 

“The Arbites will have to come here, when we have finished this business. You know this, right?”

 

“If we finish this business.”

 

“Your resolution waivers?”

 

“You don't know what we're getting into here, Hamme. My contacts, they got me a lead. But where they told me to go... she's deeper than I've ever been. Even up here, the gangs offer a high bounty for the head of an Imperial Servant. Down below, they'll kill us just for the sport, and the new tattoo it earns them.” Remy said.

 

“Your wife is down below.” Hamme reminded him.

 

“It's not her I'm worried about.” Remy said.

 

“Do I go from here alone, Investigator?” Hamme said. It was an ultimatum.

 

“You don't get it do you? Alright, c'mon.” Remy said.

 

They climbed down streets that were little more than excrement sluices. They came to a brief respite from the foul rain, a wide tunnel system that had been carved through the bedrock of the city's foundation. There, the disgusting masses huddled for some shred of warmth, a throng of markets and living spaces overlapping in a tumultous bustle.

 

“This is it. My tipoff said she'd be here.” the Investigator said.

 

“Throne, Remy, look!” Hamme said, pointing his sausage-finger at a woman swaddled in robes. Emyrich looked.

 

Slowly, the woman stood up. As her barbed spine unfurled, it became evident she was a few heads taller even than Hamme. She turned, and the Arbitrator saw her hideous face. Her eyes were yellow slits just above her cheeks, and her nose a hole spewing cloudy mucus. Her skin looked pale and hard. Suddenly two slits in her neck flapped open, gills that had adapted to the constant rain. Hamme reached for the bolt pistol at his hip.

 

“Don't!” Remy said, grabbing the Arbitrator's wrist.

 

“She is beyond salvation, Remy. This woman must die.” he said.

 

“I know the family, they are respected.” Remy whispered intensely. “If you shoot one of these people, the crowd will tear us apart!”

 

Hamme's eyes stayed fixed on the mutant, knuckles white on the grip of his sidearm.

 

“She is not who we came for!” Remy said.

 

The woman turned and disappeared into the dark and rain, unaware that her life had been moments away from receiving the Emperor's Benediction. From behind them, they heard a voice.

 

“Fancy armor.” The voice said. The lawmen whipped around. A scraggily, pale man regarded them. His neck and limbs were bone-thin from malnutrition. His face was covered with additional milky eyes that rolled and blinked on their own accord. “Whose ya friend, Remy?” he said. He spoke with the thick dialect and slang of the underhive.

 

“We don't want any trouble, Zim.” Remy said.

 

“Z'at why he's got a grip on that boomstick?” Zim said, his extra eyes looking at Hamme's pistol while his primary ones stayed locked on Remy.

 

“You kill him, you'll have to kill me. And if you kill me you'll get another Investigator down here in a week. Do you think your family will make it long when the new guy sees them? Sees the spread of the mutation on your daughter, those eyes on her chest and legs?”

 

The mutant swallowed hard. All of his eyes blinked in a ripple across his face.

 

“You a real monster, Remy.” Zim said.

 

“Monster. Survivor. Just like you. Make yourself scarce, now.”

 

Zim nodded, and stepped back into the crowd.

 

“Zim!” Remy called after him, “You know a mutant goes by the name of Rosandra?”

 

“Witchmother, yeah!” Zim's voice floated out anonymously from the crowd. “She'll be at the church at the end of the Tunnel. Best keep ya' eyes open. She don't take well to Lawmen!” He laughed and melted into the crowd.

 

Remy looked at Hamme. “You need to lose the armor, Hamme.” Remy said. “We're getting lucky with the gangers so far. But if one of them notices an Arbite sigil on you, we're done. Zim noticed, and he's an idiot.” The Arbitrator thought for a moment, hesitated only briefly. It wasn't ideal, but the logic was undeniable. He nodded grimly and began unlatching the heavy carapace. “Alright. Let's go.”

 

They began weaving through the throng to the end of the great Dry Tunnel. The deeper they got, the more horrors they saw. There were those born with new additions: extra limbs waving and grabbing, extra skins shedding in sloughs, cornucopias of extra organs hanging painfully from ruptured hernias. Then there were those born without: stunted, hairless, faceless, without limbs. Fully human gangers stalked among them, covered in elaborate tattoos depicting the great gang wars of their forefathers, stylized scenes of brutal executions and brawls.

 

Finally, they arrived at the end of the Dry Tunnel. Beyond the stringlights at the threshold, the blackness of the underhive consumed all. On the edge of this abyss, a small building made of rotting wood stood against the rain.

 

“The church?” The Arbitrator said.

 

“I reckon so.” Remy said, looking around. He picked up a flea-infested blanket from the dirt. “Here, wrap yourself in this. We gotta look like we belong.”

 

Hamme took the blanket, and regarded it with a look of disgust on his face.

 

“C'mon man, you don't have any hair anyway. We'll shave your eyebrows once we get back to Marty's.”

 

“Investigator, I should be honest with you about the mutation that your wife has.”

 

“I know the mutation that my wife has. It's the rarest and most terrible of any of them.” Remy looked up at the steeple, a bare tower with no symbol on top.

 

“You knew your wife was a Psyker?”

 

Remy looked at the Arbitrator with a sadness in his eyes. “Why do you think she came down here? It was to avoid people like you.” The words hung in the air. “Yeah, I knew. It's funny, but I'm nervous, almost like... it's stupid to say it, but it almost feels like my wedding night.”

 

“It is time, Remy.”

 

Remy pulled his hood up, and the proud member of the Adeptus Arbites wrapped the putrid blanket around his shoulders and head. Together, they walked through the doors of the church.

 

***

 

Inside, rows of ramshackle pews all faced a pulpit. The sound of rain against the side of the building was a comforting patter, like the sound of life heard from within the womb. It was a small space compared to any Imperial cathedral, but impressive for a building of the underhive. The creaky wooden doors shut behind the two men of law. At the pulpit, back turned to the door, a single figure stood in red robes.

 

“Gentlemen, I would tell you that there is no service until tonight. But then again you are no creatures of the underhive, are you?” She said, her voice an intimate moan in their ears.

 

At this provocation, Hamme took the first opportunity to cast off his robe.

 

“Witch, your eyes are sharp.”

 

“My eyes? My eyes?” She said, and laughed. “Tell him, my love. Tell him about my eyes.”

 

Roboute Hamme felt the temperature of the room drop. The sound of the rain was suddenly distant. He looked at Remy, whose nose had started to trickle blood once again.

 

“My love?” Remy said incredulously. “You leave me alone for all these years and then have the audacity to call me love!?” he called out to the woman at the pulpit. Hamme stepped between the Investigator and the woman in red. He looked Remy in the eyes, desperate to keep him focused on the task at hand. He spoke low and quick.

 

“My friend, keep your head. Your wife is the leader of Witch Cult. Or if she is not now, then it is only a matter of time before she is. The Emperor cannot allow-”

 

A long white blade punched out of Hamme's stomach. His eyes went wide, and his mouth contorted into a soundless scream of pain. With a flick of her wrist, the woman in red tossed the Arbitrator flailing into the pews. She now stood before her husband, and he beheld her distorted beauty.

 

Her face was as pale and beautiful as ever, but her eyes were sunken pits that she had gouged out years ago. The scars had healed, leaving just black wells into which any man could pour the remainder of his sanity. The soft skin of her body was starting to turn a sickly purple hue. Her arms had changed since he last saw her, each forearm now just a boney blade. The right arm dripped with Hamme's blood. Remy stared into the bottomless cavities of sorrow that had once been his wife's beautiful eyes.

 

“Your eyes, Ros. Your eyes were so beautiful.” He stammered.

 

“I had to take them out. They kept me from seeing. Truly seeing. The way that you could see, if you gave in to it.” She said. She hovered close to him, her breath hot on his lips.

 

“Ros, I had hoped that I might come down here and find you. And that you would be different than I remembered. Maybe your... your mutation had receded. And maybe if that was true, maybe mine would recede, you know? I'm... I'm so sorry.”

 

“Join me down here, my darling. Join me, and the sorrow will recede!” Her eyes filled with a sickly light as she tried to impress her will upon him. Both of his nostrels trickled freely with blood, and he reeled as he felt her presence. But he had a psychic will of his own.

 

“No, Ros. No it won't.” he said.

 

Remy lifted a revolving autogun from his jacket, leveled it at his wife, and emptied all six chambers. She screamed and her jaw unhinged into an unearthly maw. The slugs stopped in middair.

 

“You fool! You think I have survived this long down here in this hellhole without learning how to stop a few earthly bullets? Now, you die!” She screamed, and the bullets went hurtling back towards Remy. His eyes rolled back in his head, becoming black orbs, and the blood hemmoraged in spurts from his nose. The bullets hurtled towards his body. He held up his hands and screamed.

 

In the middle of the room, between the two star-damned lovers, the slugs hovered in a quivering constellation.

 

“Release your will to me now!” The Witch screamed. “I will make your death painless and fruitful!”

 

Remy faltered. The slugs lurched towards him, but stopped again. He struggled to speak, tried a few times to say something. Every time, bubbles of blood spewed from his lips.

 

“G-goodbye, my love.”

 

Arbitrator Hamme, holding a sucking wound in his abdomen, leveled his bolt pistol to the Witch's head and blew her corrupted psyker brains across the wooden pews. Remy collapsed. The suspended bullets clattered to the floor. Before he lost consciousness, the last sight he saw was his wife's face in a pool of spreading blood.

 

***

 

My Lord,

 

You will pardon my delay in sending you this note. The chirurgeon you requisitioned proved more than adequate for my minor wounds, and she would not permit me a state of consciousness long enough to pass along the news of your bidding.

 

I have gone to the wretched place beneath the Hive City, and pursued the powerful Psyker you have tasked me to find. I had to pose as a member of the Adeptus Arbites to gain authority and cooperation from the locals. It was only a small deception, and one that I hope you will not hold against me.

 

You will be pleased to learn that, after a long search through the darkest of places, the Psyker was finally apprehended. I administered a test of willpower, as you suggested, to determine if this specimen would be suitable for the Black Ships, or if I should instead proceed directly to execution.

 

I am happy to report that he passed the test admirably. We tracked down his wife, another Psyker of moderate power (perhaps an Epsilon? Nothing serious). Using his considerable shadow network in the underhives, we found her, the two fought, and she was slain.

 

It would appear this man is of suitable willpower to be trained in the Scholastia Psykana, and of suitable grit and resourcefulnes to be educated at the Schola Progenium. Based on what I saw of his untrained powers, he's at least a Gamma level. Perhaps a future member of your retinue, my lord? Not that I would ever presume to know your intentions. I do wonder sometimes how you dig these people up.

 

I look forward to hearing how this man fares as an agent of the Holy Ordos, if that is indeed his destiny. He is unorthodox, to be sure, but certainly cut out for the work. And for whatever it is worth, I like him.

 

Ever your faithful servant,

 

-Acolyte Roboute Hamme

 

Edited September 22, 2017 by gunnyogrady

[Scourged]

Have a thing.

 

Hidden Content

Abnormal

If this kept up they’d start asking questions. He couldn’t keep slipping away when they weren’t looking to… “take care” of the problem. His supervisors were starting to notice - the cogitators were no doubt logging his increasing declines in productivity. Blaming his absences on taking breaks to drag lho sticks would only get him so far. The supervisors only supported those addictions when the stims boosted productivity, not hurt it. Any day now Jakoby would come by, jowls shaking, asking about his constant breaks. Thone, that is the last thing he needed.

Ormean had noticed, too - not the “problem,” thankfully, but his recurring absences. He trusted Ormean, but he still couldn’t tell his friend. Ormean knew he wasn’t running off to the designated dragging zone for his lho stick breaks; Ormean would have seen him there. Ormean knew he was escaping to the lavatory each time. He told his friend it was distress from the rations - a believable enough excuse. So many other workers could barely process the rations. When in the lavatory he heard many workers voiding themselves all while he pretended to. But Ormean didn’t believe him anymore. He was gone too long. He was gone too often. And he was always returning looking too ragged and pained.

The “problem” had been so easy to hide at first. Just a quick scrape with a fingernail and the growth would be gone. Easy. Done. But then it came back again, but bigger. Then it was going deeper. Then bigger still. Each time he took it off, it came back worse and worse. Fingernails were traded for files. Files for clippers. Clippers for shears. And now, shears for a serrated blade. What had started as just an odd blemish easily scraped away had become a growing tail that could only be sawed off.

It was growing bony knots. It was growing spines. It was starting to slightly sway and wag when freed from his working wear. It was hideous. It was freakish. But above all else it was blasphemous! No one could know he was… was what? Changing? Mutating?! Thone on Terra, the very thought sickened him. Was he really becoming a… a mutant?!

No, that was not him. That is not who or what he was, or is! He is a human, and a faithful servant of the God-Emperor in his shining Imperium. He abhorred the mutant, as is his duty as a citizen. He was not to be one of them! No, he would continue to cut away the tumor until it stopped. It would stop. He would stop it. And no one would know. No one.

***

He was out of allocated illness leave. He would have to return to the work pits at the start of the new cycle. Requesting any further days would see him without an occupation, and without habitation. There was no leniency within the Guild, even if Supervisor Jakoby didn’t already despise him. But… but… there was no way he could go in! Not like this!

He couldn’t cut it off anymore. It hurt to bad. What had once been painless was now akin to slicing off any other limb. His… his tail was part of him now. He could move it. He could feel it. He hated it. He wanted it gone. He wanted to be normal again. He wanted his mundane life in the work pits back. But he feared it would soon be lost forever.

Binding the tail to his leg has briefly worked. But it hurt. A lot. It didn’t want to bend that way, or so much. And he couldn’t sit. His work gear barely concealed the bound lumps on his leg. It forced him to limp, blaming a bum knee he never had. But that was when the tail was smaller. That was when the spines hadn’t shredded the thick weave of his gear. That was before the knots of bone started to growing much larger at the tip. That was before he was forced to submit his leave of illness.

Night after night he prayed, down on his knees. He begged the Holy Emperor for forgiveness for whatever sins saw him so punished. He pleaded for redemption. He asked and asked and asked for salvation. Night after night passed with him sobbing quietly to sleep, with each morning feeling his tail ever more prominent. His prayers were not being answered. The God-Emperor could not hear him. Was he already so forsaken?

Ormean was worried. A lot. Constantly stopping by, asking to come in, to make sure he was okay. But he wouldn’t let Ormean in. He couldn’t! No one could see him like this. No one could know. They… they would tell someone. And then… and then the Arbites would come. They would take him away. Or kill him on the spot. Or give him to someone far, far worse. Ormean was his friend, but was also taught to abhor the… mutant. A mutant like him...

***

The freighter was docked in port, just like the shady man said. A quick shuttle ride at peak hours had concealed his approach, just like the shady man instructed. No one in the busy industrial zone was paying him any mind, just as the shady man assured. So no one in the bustling crowd was attentive enough to see him climb into one of hundreds of storage bulkheads slowly filling with merchandise and supplies. Just as the shady man promised. That man - that shady man in the alley, the one knowing far too much and having far too many answers - had not steered him wrong yet.

Staying on his home world would bring him death. He wasn’t safe there. Mutants are not tolerated for long, or at all. But to flee? That might see him live, in some manner or form. He just had to ride this freighter off world, then continue hopping ports. He had to get… to get away from Imperium worlds. So he would do as the man said. He would travel the freighters, stowing away in bulkheads and bilges, scrounging for sustenance. He would go farther and farther, until finding safe haven.

He knew had to learn to live in this new abnormal world. He’d have to wait in silence as crews scuttled through the ship, lest they find him. He’d have to learn to move like the vermin he hunted and trapped in the endless blackness of the ducts and tunnels permeating the massive freighters. He’d have to deal with creatures of the dark to learn of new passage to a world where he would be safe. He’d have to earn his keep among the other refugees, the other mutants. That would mean bartering with hunted vermin and scavenged clothing instead of the coins and credits of life lived in the Imperium. That would mean forming shaky friendships and shakier alliances among the renegade populations stowed away. That would mean accepting that he was one of them. And that was the hardest pill to swallow.

But to shed his ties to the Imperium? To renounce all his beliefs in the name of survival? That was the heaviest bag for him to carry. All his life, he had known the God-Emperor’s touch. Yet now, since the tail - since his mutation - that part of his soul felt empty. There was no place for him here anymore. He had to leave, and hope to fulfill that emptiness once more somewhere else.

***

He killed the scaver. He had to. The scaver was coming at him, gnashing needle teeth together while it snarled some beastly noise. He just wanted to eat his first actual meal in peace. He just wanted to have a stomach full for once in many months scrounging in the cold dark. He just wanted to feel like his old self, the self left behind. He just wanted to remember what it meant to be an Imperial citizen, just one last time. But the scaver had smelled his food, and came running.

He had moved on instinct rather than with any practiced motions. He rolled himself away from the lunging scaver. And as he rolled, he kept his body spinning, his tail flying out and swinging like a spined club. Back and forth he rolled and moved his body, dodging bites and slashes by the scaver. His tail flailed with him, striking his attacker once or twice with little but a glance. But all it took was one lucky opening and one failed feint by the scaver. The shockwave of impact rang through his tail and throughout his body.

He felt as well as heard the crunching of a skull. He heard as well as saw the body of the scaver fall with a dead slump, ragdoll limp and just as lifeless. He saw as well as smelled the fresh blood spilling out of the pulverized head of the scaver, pooling everywhere. Pooling all over his food. Even in death the scaver ruined his meal. The meal he traded a fresh pair of synth-leather boots - with laces! - and three days on guard rotation for. The meal that was still warm, still steaming in his frozen corner of service tunnels. The meal that… that…

...that he was still going to eat.

***

He traveled. Port after ort. Planet after planet. System after system. Each time further and further away from those that feared him. With every new destination he had to hide himself less and less. The people did not care. The people had their own problems, their own baggage, their own mutations. They were like him. He was like them. Outside of the Imperium’s oppression, people like him were normal.

He met abhumans of all manner of size. He met mutants with all manner of oddities. He met aliens from worlds he’d never imagined. And none spared a second glance at his tail. None considered it anything but the norm. He felt welcomed. He felt at ease, for once in so long. He no longer feared for his life because of his uncontrollable existence. And all because he escaping the choking grip of the Imperium.

Wasn’t that the true cause of his strife, after all? “Abhor the mutant” rang the creed. But why? What had he done that was so terrible? He worked, he paid his tithes, he prayed to the God-Emperor. He did all that he was asked, even as the flesh grew more and more against his wishes. Why was he no longer good enough?

He had never stolen, until forced to flee. He had never killed, until forced to survive. His renegade life and all that it required was forced upon him. He would have never chosen to live like this. He would have stayed in his home and continued to serve. But the Imperium, and its laws… its dogma demanded that he abandon all he once held morally right and true in the name of living. He was not to blame for his actions. No mutant was to blame.

Here, on this world - Dhalean, or some such place - no one cared about his tail. No one questioned his loyalties. If anything, his physical status was embraced by these people, cheered on when worn proudly and in the open. Here, on Dhalean, a world without the Imperium’s touch, he would live far better than ever before. Damn the Imperium - if it would forsake him, then he would forsake it!

***

The tavern had been closed for an hour, but he stayed behind with Chakka and Piel to listen to the Giant Man. He had watched carefully as the Giant Man entered the small speakeasy, noting the delicateness of movement. He could tell the Giant Man was not Ogryn, or some other swollen mutant. This.. this was something else. Something better. Something beyond an ordinary human. Something that demanded great respect.

The Giant Man’s voices boomed low and deep, but was still rich with a sonorous sweetness and lyrical grace. The Giant Man was a born orator, gifted in delighting all that would lend an ear the message carried. And as he and Chakka and Piel listened more and more to the Giant Man, the better the message sounded. The Giant Man knew this, and spoke more and more with greater and greater fervor.

Yes, of course the Imperium is rife with lies and sin! Yes, of course it is deserving of damnation! Yes, there is no reason people like him and Chakka and Piel should be ostracized and forced to flee for mutations they can’t control. No, it isn’t fair that the wealthy and corrupt feed on greed and nepotism to orchestrate the lives of the weak. No, the Imperium should no longer be allowed to stand! Yes, the God-Emperor must be nothing but a false idol, intent on enslaving mankind instead of setting it free! Yes, only in the Imperium’s ashes can man be free to live however! Yes, yes, yes! Death to the Imperium! Death to the False Emperor!

***

The autogun in his hands was heavy and foreign. But he wielded it with a fury that burned deep. He would do as the Army of Giant Men demanded, and he would march through the city and reap the Imperium of its sin. He would bring death and Chaos to their doorstep, just like the endless legion of his kin surrounding him. World by world they would all cleanse the galaxy with fire and bullets.

 

[Kierdale]

Salvation for servitude

Hidden Content

Even now as their guns slaughter my guards and their hammers batter through our defences, I am confident that none could have resisted the temptation. The magos of the priesthood of Mars do not gamble, but were I still possessed of enough of my humanity to engage in such frivolity I would bet that none of my peers could have resisted the prize set before me.

I hastily encode this message and pray to the Omnissiah that the signal may breach their fields and make it out. That it may be picked up by another exploratory fleet. That they might wrestle the treasures from those who now seek my head and my soul.

This is the last transmission of magos Phi-Rho. Home in on the attached coordinates, for here lies a trove of lost technologies. And come in force as the price they ask is too high. The bargains they offer demented-

 

********

 

The small planetoid had been detected as Mercury Dawn had swept the Jopeus Reach, suspected of being one of the narrowest breaches in reality that made up the Cicatrix Maledictum: the vast rent in the fabric of space through which the madness of the Warp flowed forth in a great tear across the galaxy. They had sought safe – or as safe as could be found – passage through the region, hoping to cross the winding, wending crack as it wove through old, core systems. Systems thought long dead.

The augury servitors were sent for ritual cleansing upon the discovery of the planetoid, they having not spotted it until a signal was received from it. The servitors’ overseer claimed that the body simply had not been there during their initial scans, but his protestations fell upon deaf ears and he was sentenced to join his charges in lobotomised servitude.

The head of the Adeptus Mechanicum exploratory force ordered the signal checked and rechecked before he accepted it and prepared his response:

Magos Phi-Rho would be honoured to meet with the representatives of the Hearthguard, brotherhoods and their lords.

 

********

 

The technologies of the diminutive race were legendary. Though they shunned the worship of the Omnissiah, such blasphemies had been long overlooked by the priesthood of Mars in exchange for the expertise of their guild mechanics and access to their archives. Expertise and treasures thought lost when the hive fleets of the Great Devourer had descended upon their worlds, stripping them bare of all life.

Yet somehow this planetoid had escaped devastation?

 

********

 

The Age of Founding, The Age of Isolation, The Age of Trade, The Age of Wars and The Age of Rediscovery – names that meant little to those not of their sub-race but all was painstakingly retold to Phi-Rho, their long history imparted to him by the stout Hearthguard general Rehiba Stonebrow, who welcomed the technopriest and his entourage as they disembarked from their shuttle. The long annals of the proud race washed over the narrator’s audience, too distracted were they with the scenery outside and the conveyance they now rode within, responding only with perfunctory nods.

So distracted that they noticed not when his tale ceased, nor in the manner it ended.

Beyond the thick windows lay expanses of barren rock and silt and Phi-Rho mentally confirmed his suspicions that even this rogue planet could not have escaped the predations of the Tyranids. But how then had the dwarven abhumans survived?

“Rich in ore, your excellence,” the Hearthguard officer put in, mistaking the look upon the magos’ face – for Phi-Rho still bore a face of flesh, it aiding his interaction with those who found the mechanical visages of his peers disconcerting. “The guildmaster permits me to inform you that we have much to trade with those willing to strike pacts with us.”

This drew his attention immediately and the magos nodded warmly, picking lint from his crimson robes and interlacing his bifurcated fingers upon his lap.

One of his attendant technoflamen caught his attention, motioning to the cabin they sat within, atop a huge land-train. Shorter but longer than one of the titanic Capitol Imperialis of the Astra Militarum, the juggernaut ground its way with surprising speed across the desolate landscape. Though he doubted any of them had been used in centuries – had the devastation of their worlds not happened so long ago? – the spine and flanks of the towering carriages were studded with bulky weapons of designs Phi-Rho and his entourage had heard of but never observed first hand. Such lost wonders! His enginseers could spend decades, if not centuries alone in studying this very vehicle. How the forces of the Imperium might be bolstered. The archives of Mars expanded. He himself extolled!

The techpriests watched with unabashed wonder as a bulbous form breached the thick cloud cover, a belly of blue as dark as night, ribbed in brass. Even the bronze skulled heads of Phi-Rho’s scyllax guardians turned to watch as the Overlord airship hove into view, majestically descending into view and flying alongside the land train, presenting its broadside, before turning northward and flying off across the plains and up again into the clouds. The magos smiled at the well orchestrated display, not believing for a moment that the huge flyer’s appearance had been a coincidence. The squats were renowned as master enginseers...and traders. What he had caught of their winding history – his cortical implants had recorded it all and he would review it should he ever find himself faced with a more tedious task – they had in the past traded with both the Eldar and the Greenskins. General Stonebrow had unashamedly spoken of this as if they were proud of it! Well, they would work with the Adeptus Mechanicus from now onward. He would ensure that.

As the land train moved ever onward the beings of flesh and metal asked more of their host and guide: of the planetoid’s thick asteroid belt – to which the general replied that he was no expert in such matters, but explained that the great rocks of that belt often fell to the surface, rich in rare ores, that the belt was so thick that the land beneath it was eternally as dark as night, and that the belt had been key to their salvation in the face of the Great Devourer. He had not given much detail here, explaining that such was for his betters to explain upon their arrival. They asked how many of his people survived: to which he replied eight brotherhoods and guilds. How they did so: as his people always had – living underground, trading with each other and living off what they had. As a general he spoke at length of battle with the invader, describing in vivid detail several combats with the Tyranid menace, in such detail in fact that those of the Mechanicum bade him move on and distracted the old soldier with more questions. Why they had not tried to contact the Imperium sooner and how they had shrouded their presence. At the former he had bridled, his warrior’s pride injured, and before they had managed to warm his mood enough to answer the latter, the train’s course suddenly angled downward and they descended into darkness.

 

********

 

Labyrinthine subterranean cities. His eyes took in all they showed, and via his cranium’s enhanced sensors he explored beyond the scope of the visual and the audible, yet still he could not tell how large the brotherhood settlement was. It appeared to stretch for dozens of levels beneath them, with caverns, shafts and transit tubes spreading outward like a vast web, presumably to the other brotherhood strongholds, and deep into the depths of the planet. The ore. The minerals.

This discovery outweighed forging a path across the Cicatrix Maledictum. Leave that to the Navis Nobilite, to the rogue traders and their ilk.

His eyes passed over their architecture, the ancient runes and fine masonry, over ossuaries filled with skulls, always seeking out the next technological gem.

Even as the Mechanicus party met with the heads of the brotherhood, the stronghold’s warlord himself, and oversaw a parade of their forces – more showmanship – within a great cavern　with buildings carved into its sides their eyes were ever fixed upon the fine weapons and vehicles displayed before them. They saw not the faces of those who wielded them. Overlooked the ferocious ornamentation, the painted, mouthless masks sewn into the faces of some of the hearthguard.

He applauded, the sound thin and tinny as his alloy palms and digits clashed, as the parade came to an end and he turned to the warlord at his side, the dwarven officer’s thick hands resting atop bleached skulls which made up the armrests of his throne. Not human skulls, he noted idly, nor those of Eldar or Greenskin, nor indeed any species of tyranid spawn he was aware of. Homo sapiens rotundus crania, if he was not mistaken. This warlord, to rule over his people in such dire times, was no doubt possessed of an iron will. Harsh punishment. Phi-Rho smiled at the challenge of negotiating with him.

“Warlord-,” he paused, having to access his short term memcoils to recall the squat’s name, “Hovega Runewrath, we of the Adeptus Mechanicus are much impressed. On the behalf of and via the priesthood of Mars, we would reunite you with the glorious Imperium of Mankind. We would be your avenue of trade. Of salvation.”

The warlord’s laughter boomed out from their observation balcony and across the cavern.

Phi-Rho misunderstood, and nodded, smiling. “We offer you trade with countless worlds, and gene therapy to save your race.”

The squat’s laughter abated and he wiped spittle from his sable beard. “We need not your therapy, magos.”

“But I believe you do,” he interrupted, recalling his passive scans of the city, “I estimate there are so few of you that, even breeding with the other brotherhood strongholds we have been told of, your race is not genetically viable, warlord.”

The squat rolled his eyes at the techpriest’s analytical attitude.

“The stubbornness of homo sapiens rotundus is renowned, but do not let it be the price you pay for extinction, warlord.”

Runewrath grunted dismissively, half a snort, half a laugh. “Oh, we have paid our price, magos. As will you.”

The magos bowed, “You are slaves to your fine artisanry.”

Rising, Phi-Rho looked out over the assembled brotherhood warriors and vehicles on the cavern floor. Hundreds of them wore mere flak jackets and bore lasrifles – he ignored these automatically, likewise the guild bikes and trikes...foolish weapons not suitable for the battlefield – and gazed covetously at the stocky suits of exo-armour, the mole-mortars and thud guns, the termite and mole diggers and other wilder machines of war he could but guess at the purpose of.

“You would strike a deal with us, magos? These machines, our artifice, we would grant you them, for a price.”

He nodded, his eyes moving from the machines to the warlord’s beady eyes and back. The gargoyle-muzzled weapons entranced him.

“You have but to tell me the price, warlord. Just tell me the price.”

“Not I, magos,” the stout warrior shook his head as he stepped down from his throne. “Not I. I think you are ready to meet with our living ancestors. They can explain the nature of our salvation. And the price we ask of you.”

 

********

 

Unlike a hive city in which the nobility resided in the highest spires, the sun setting for them hours after darkness had taken the lower levels (and how many millions lived deeper, never witnessing the sun’s light in their entire lives?) and indeed unlike a great many of the forge-palace of the mechanicus in which servitors and the like toiled in the lowest reaches, overseen by a hierarchy that stretched up to the lab-apartments of the magos, the stronghold of the squat brotherhood were the reverse: he knew not whether it was for safety or for their isolation, but the journey to visit the brotherhood’s living ancestors took them down.

Deep, deep into the planetoid, past mining veins both still active and long extinct, the lift car descended seemingly forever. And as every minute passed he felt the separation from his retinue, his bodyguards: the car was designed by and for homo sapiens rotundus, not homo sapiens sapiens or cyborged variants thereof, reducing Phi-Rho’s attendants to a single savant amanuensis: his arms terminating in a glowing tablet, quill-arms of brass snaking over his hunched shoulders to scribble and scratch as the magos sent him memos via the noosphere. The prospect of long-lost knowledge was greater than any threat he felt from this admittedly warlike diminutive race.

“You keep your, what was the term, `living elders`, in the deepest part of the stronghold?”

The warlord, flanked by a pair of exo-armoured hearthguard, nodded. The two bodyguards wore armour that made them as wide as they were tall. If records were correct, the suits were as tough as tactical dreadnought armour though far more compact. Designed for combat in the narrow tunnels of squat settlements and mines.

“Our living ancestors, yes. Our Spirit Lords. Nine of them survive. They are our greatest treasure, beyond the artifice of the guilds, a font of our race’s wisdom. A link to the oracle of our salvation.”

As Phi-Rho opened his mouth to enquire further, the lift stopped, the mesh door sliding noisily aside and revealing a winding passage hewn from the very bedrock. They moved on, into the catacomb-like passage.

The living ancestors appeared to reside in a single circular chamber, the low dome-ceiling and walls decorated with bas-reliefs. He cast a brief glance at them, the cogitators implanted in his brain recognizing quickly that the images depicted the history of the brotherhood, though his attention was drawn to the room’s occupants before he could finish his study of their abode. Lit by flaming braziers, fueled no doubt from natural gas reserves the squats tapped, the chamber was awash with bright yellow light and stark, dark shadows. Nine plump, short figures reclined upon couches spaced about the chamber, one at each of the cardinal and intercardinal directions he estimated – noticing that his internal navigational systems failed him at this depth. An effect of the thickness of rock about them? – and one seated at the very center. While the eight around the room were evidently exceedingly old, their beards so long they were as grey blankets upon their bodies – their naked bodies, he noted – their faces creased with wrinkles like old leather; this latter could have been mistaken for a corpse, so pale of flesh he was. His face was so wrinkled and shriveled that his features were barely recognizable, as if it had been compacted by the fist of a dreadnought. Only the slight, slow raising and falling of his chest indicated life.

The exo-armoured guards bowed and stepped to the sides of the threshold as warlord runewrath lead the magos within. He bowed his head, intermeshing his knuckles in a cog-namaste.

“Spirit lords, I present to you magos Phi-Rho of the adeptus mechanicus. He comes to us offering trade for our artifice, and our salvation.”

There came a sound that could at first have been mistaken for a sudden draft, a whispering of wind through a rocky crevice, until it increased and he saw the chests of some of the ancestors rise and fall more rapidly, the sound increasing to a series of harsh laugh interspersed with hacking coughs.

Phi-Rho straightened his spine, the crown of his head now touching the ceiling. He was tiring of the attitude of these diminutive abhumans. Their manners grated and wore at his desire for their treasures.

The laughter faded to unintelligible whispers, the mouths of all but the central elder moving at the same time. Phi-Rho looked to the warlord but before he could respond, the whispers appeared to coalesce into a single voice.

“Trade...we...offer...but salvation...we have...found. And offer…you.”

The satisfied smile spreading across the magos’ fleshface faltered, “The mechanicus needs no salvation. The Great Devourer is no threat to us.” Such hubris!

“Not...the alien…the void...the great tear...shall consume...all.”

“The Cicatrix Maledictum? We seek safe passage across it.” Could they also aid them in their pathfinding mission? He would be rewarded with his own forgeworld at this rate!

“It can...be…granted…at a price. Our salvation…from the tyranids...”

“Yes…?” he replied, stepping forward toward the middle of the chamber, looking from one ancestor to the next, trying to determine which – if any single one of them – was talking. Were they in their twilight years, some form of gestalt?

A cracked, dry voice like a desert wind came from behind him, startling him. From the 9th ancestor. He turned to see a crevice widening in its craggy face. Presumably its mouth.

“Salvation...came...with...such…a price.”

He staggered backward as images appeared in his mind. Alarms went off and error messages flared in his peripheral vision as his mind, both meat and metal, attempted to rationalize the sudden invasive sensory input. He fell to his knees and his chest tightened as he saw endless waves of tyranids, thousands upon thousands of smaller forms, with towering monsters striding in their midst. He saw the warriors of the brotherhood stoically defending their world even as great beast-ships hung in the skies, vomiting forth winged monstrosities and clouds of spores. Vegetation dissolved where the alien seeds fell, and flesh melted and ran into pools of protoplasm only to be sucked up by lumbering insects which had no right to have grown so big. His heart swelled as he saw the engineers of the guilds unleash their great weapons: overlord armoured airships loomed overhead, firing broadsides into the alien swarm while iron eagle gyrocopters dueled with harpies and other flying monsters. Massive triple-barrelled thunder-fire cannons and even larger goliath mega-cannons launched shells larger than battle tanks into the enemy ranks. Shells detonated with thunderous booms, obliterating those within the blasts and knocking down all those within hundreds of meters beyond the fireball itself. Smaller critters were sucked back into the infernos as mushroom clouds rose. Mole-mortar shells detonated from beneath, casting bodies up into the air. Towering Leviathans, Cyclops and Colossus mobile fortresses ground the enemy beneath their huge tracks while firing their weapons about. The ground erupted behind the alien lines and a termite carrier breached the surface, exo-armoured hearthguard quickly disembarking, half of them torn apart by blades and living bullets before they could bring their own weapons to bear and blast apart one of the largest beasts in a surgical strike. A suicidal strike though, for while they slew their target they were soon pulled down and torn apart. Dozens upon dozens of critters poured into the tunnel the termite carrier had burrowed and a cheer went up from the squat lines as engineers detonated charges within the tunnel, bringing down tons of earth and rock upon the aliens within, and sending those on the surface plummeting into the crevice.

But the cheer was not long-lived: the sky lit up like dawn as one then another of the overlord airships exploded, their bulbous bodies perforated by incendiary rounds from biotechnological artillery. Carnifexes and other monsters with claws as long as a knight’s reaper chainsword charged forth, cleaving into the squat mobile fortresses. More beasts appeared within the squat trenches, tearing through the short defenders in such crampt conditions.

He watched as fate turned on the squats, and his view changed, racing through the earth, deeper and deeper. He recognized the chamber in which he now stood, not nine but twelve ancestors, more active and able of body, heatedly debating their course of action. Nothing they had seen in their centuries-long lives could aid them. And the torch flames guttered and spat, failing – so like their own hundreds of meters overhead. How long would it take for the beasts to worm their way this deep and feed upon the tough flesh of these elders?

A whisper in the darkness. A promise of aid, for a price. Servitude for salvation. Power for bondage.

As the earth shook once more and cracks shot across the carved ceiling of their chamber, the living ancestors, the spirit lords of the brotherhood, made their pact.

 

He watched as roseate-skinned monstrosities with arms longer than apes bounded and cavorted across the battlefield, magical fire spurting from mouths and fingertips. Where one was slain, two more, blue of skin, emerged cackling from the corpse. Manta-like creatures swam impossibly through the air, their horned and razor-sharp bodies slicing through the aliens with ease. Legless creatures with skirts of skin danced across the battlefield, jets of hellfire rocketing forth from the mouth-like ends of their limbs and towering birdlike lords strode through the stunned squat ranks, great swathes of the enemy disappearing or dissolving into gruesome forms where they swept their staffs. Only when the spirit lords themselves emerged upon their thrones, held high by their transformed heathguards, did the squats rally behind these fearsome, newfound allies. Where the living ancestors cast their wrathful gazes the enemy withered. Lightning leapt from stubby fingers to immolate their foes.

And when battle was done, the sky overhead was no longer that which they knew, for their savior had plucked their besieged world from the heavens and taken it within his realm.

 

“Now you see the power we offer. The price asked of us, which we now ask of you,” the warlord looked at him with bloodshot eyes.

[Kierdale]

And one more, because I had to do a beastman story.

 

Damnatio Ad Bestias

Hidden Content

So much dust, dirt and ash was kicked up by the wind and the wash from the dropship engines that his optical implants struggled to make out the beings alighting upon his world. His were high quality implants, better even than any crackshot skitarii hardwired into an arquebus could ever hope for. He could spot hairline fractures at a meter's distance, a bad welding at several, and he had the Omnissiah-given authority to most severely punish whoever was responsible. Yet war had come to Alceforge, dragging him from his forge and his iron throne to a rocky outcropping overlooking a silt-swept plain.

Long ago stripped of flesh and coated with alloys to make his visage more becoming for one of his rank, his chrome face could not show his disgust at what he observed, but his attendants caught the angle of his head before the noospheric halo above him darkened.

[What is it, master?]

[Homo Sapiens Variatus.]

He watched as the hunched humanoids moved in a semblance of marching from the dropships, rifles and brutal-looking hand weapons adorned with talismans in their long-nailed grips. They squinted their beady eyes in the dust-swept plain and the wind carried their barking and braying. Patterns and script decorated their skin, but not holy electoos, no; it was primitive black ink injected or hammered in with dirty needles, he didn't doubt.

Such blasphemous creatures. The taint upon them was revolting. So far from the human form, and thus even further from the perfection of machine.

Chaos, where he strove for order.

At a blink his eyes refocused on his immediate surroundings and he turned to the army formed up behind him, squads of skitarii clad in the black and silver of Alceforge. Electropriests chanting incantations to the Omnissiah and blessings over the weapons of the Kataphrons. Behind them, towering over the infantry, loomed Ballistarii and Dragoons, and the bulky, solid forms of Kastellans. He knew his Sicarians were already out there, scouting out the enemy's positions.

When duty had last called upon him to play the officer he had possessed considerably more of the body he had been born with, and had commanded far fewer forces. Stood before his macrocarid explorator, he now raised his staff, the bone-and-iron skull icon of the Mechanicus atop it, and swept it toward the mass of beastmen.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

"Father Wilyem of Kierda-"

The grey haired old priest was cut off by a blare of angry vox static from the black robed figure before him.

"What is the meaning of this!?" The magos switched to Imperial Gothic, raising himself up on his mechadendrite limbs to tower over the short man, his tonsured scalp shining. The priest was clad in robes of black as was magos Chi-Eta, though those of the mechanicus lord were of the purest black and a field hummed about him, keeping him clean of dust and grime. The priest's robes on the other hand bore the mark of a fighting man: they were stained, holes hastily sewn up and torn with at least a few bullet holes. A shotgun was in a holster across his back. And the stench of his charges was upon him.

"Father Wilyem of Kierdale's Shrineworld 665th. The Faithful Kin, magos," he hastily interlocked his knuckles in an admirable semblance of a cog-namaste and bowed.

Chi-Eta looked once again over the assembled abhumans. The faces of canines, bovines and caprinae. Some seemed more human than others, tainted only by stubby horns upon their foreheads until he noticed the cloves hooves upon which they stood. Beasts.

"You dare befoul the holy earth of Alceforge with these," the magos' skeletal, golden hand emerged from his voluminous sleeve as he gestured to the abhumans, "...these beasts...these mutants?"

Father Wilyem bowed as low as the old man's back would allow. "Units of penitent Homo sapiens variatus have served in the regiments of Kierdale's World since the days of deacon Kierdale himself, magos, when they served as his chosen men. If their presence here desecrates Alceforge in any way know that it is only their warped flesh, and they are here so that Alceforge does not get its soil or soul fouled by Chaos, magos," replied the priest before indicating his flock. "I say once again that these men and women are the Faithful Kin," he said and raises his voice so that it could be heard by the hairy, tattooed, barely-clothes abhumans, "No more pious guardsmen in the whole Militarum, eh?"

He was answered with a thunderous braying.

"Their souls are the pure souls of pious Men, magos. They want nothing more than to cast off their Chaos-touched bodies and offer up their souls to He upon Terra for forgiveness. I vouch for them."

Penitent, Changeling, Born unto Sin, Righteous of Heart, Sinner, Retribution, Mutant, Contrite...he saw now quite clearly their tattoos. Alongside the script and prayers were images: the Aquila, thunderbolts, daemonic figures impaled upon flaming blades, twisted figures in supplication before a golden throne.

It was several long seconds before Chi-Eta replied.

"You will be held responsible for your flock, father Wilyem. They will be permitted to fight upon the soil of Alceforge, to spill their heathen blood and sacrifice their tainted flesh in its defence-"

"No Imperial Guardsman could ask any less," the kindly old minister put in, folding his hands over his paunch.

"-but they are not to tread upon forge lands. They are not to step within the bounds of Mechanicus facilities or you will be held directly responsible for their trespasses."

The priest nodded and went back to his flock. The largest of them, a brute who stood proud, the shoulder pads of a Guardsman's armour incongruously attached to his webbing over his naked torso, approached once the magos was out of sight.

"Problems, father?" He grunted.

"None, my son."

"They trust us?" Wilyem was a poor liar, and Tumnus had shared a great many battlefields with the old preacher. The beastman idly fingered a pendant made from a bolt gun casing, hanging on a chain at his neck.

Wilyem smiled, "Have faith."

There was a loud crack as a banner of dark cloth was unfurled, the wind easily taking it and stretching it out for all to see. Upon it was scrawled, in dark red text Damnatio Ad Bestias.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

Chi-Eta had withdrawn, directing the priest and his charges to dig their trenches beyond the defensive lines of the forge's northern reaches. Though he despised their presence he could at the same time do little but welcome it: his sources had confirmed that the chain of industrial accidents over the last months had gone from coincidence to proof of sabotage and, with the enemy expected to show themselves at any moment, he had had to accept whatever form of aid the nearest Imperial Guard recruitment world had been able to dispatch. He duly shuffled his own forces, checking and rechecking them, calculating probabilities and always coming back to the unknown that was the Faithful Kin.

[All forces are deployed, master.]

He nodded to his amanuensis.

Stood within the highest tower of his forge, with a commanding view of the two approaches to his fortress. Though there were manufactorums and supply depots across the planet -ripe targets for raiders- the true treasures of Alceforge were greedily held within the vaults of his citadel. Located in the deepest part of a valley, the high mountain ranges running north-south to each side of it would hinder any attack that did not come directly from the north or south. His fortress was the pupil of the eye, the mountain ranges to each side its lids. As well as shielding his fastness from the worst of his own industries' radiation and pollution - some greenery flourished here in the valley and only here, a paradise he tended to - it also meant that the umbrella shield had to cover a smaller area and was thus stronger. It would have taken considerable orbital bombardment to wipe him off the surface, and the unleashing of such ordnance would have destroyed all a raider sought to take. The outlying manufactorums could be rebuilt, restaffed with servitors crafted from those who failed him and brought about this attack. But not his citadel.

His eyes wandered over the ranks of skitarii -rangers and vanguard both- behind their Aegis lines. The Ballistarii stalking back and forth, groups of Ironstriders waiting out of sight behind high silos, ready to sally forth in a counter charge. Aye, the south was well held. The south was secure.

And his eyes wandered once more toward the north and the source of his vexation.

Imperial Guardsmen, men of pure flesh and blood, he could have trusted. Even if they fled, their commissars would have instilled discipline. But what could be expected of these beasts? Could they be trusted? His agents had been convinced that the cults responsible for the recent 'accidents' -sabotage, he thought to himself, let us be clear now- were no doubt agents of the Primordial Annihilator. Could the presence of servants of the Four not cause these tainted pariahs to spit upon their faith and answer the call of their blood?

His gilt fingers tapped idly upon the armrests of his throne, the many legs of which scuttled to carry him across to the northern balcony once more.

[Have the Ordinatus redeploy to the north landing pad] he communicated to his attendant, not taking his eyes from the dust clouds that obscured the mouth of the valley some kilometres distant. Almost at the extreme of his eyesight he could see tiny figures, the portly priest and his creatures, toiling away in the dirt.

[Master,] the amanuensis started, [intelligence reports -which you yourself reviewed- indicated concentrations of enemy landings toward the south. There is an eighty-seven point-]

[Do not tell me the probabilities,] Chi-Eta snapped in a harsh bark of code, [have the Ordinatus redeploy. I do not like dealing with unknowns.]

 

* * * * * * * *

 

The first casualties of the attack on Alceforge were six of the Faithful Kin. Father Wilyem sent a scouting party out to reconnoiter an old minehead at the mouth of the valley and by dusk they had not returned.

The enemy showed themselves at midnight, when the planet's crescent moon had risen above the eastern range. There came an eerie ululating cry, stretched out far longer than the lungs of man nor beast could maintain, and it was soon joined by braying. It was this that woke father Wilyem from his sleep, his shotgun soon in his hand and the crisp sound as he ratcheted a shell into its breach steadied him. As he made his way out of his dugout he was reassured that the caterwauling was not coming from his own men, but his heart sank and the hymn upon his lips faltered as he saw the silhouettes upon the mountains.

Lithe beings, slimmer than beastman or human, cavorted upon the crags, cartwheeling and bounding. Others appeared to dance and it was their partners that shook him: the hunched bodies, horns protruding from foreheads. And the braying. He could not accept that he was observing his scouts, his own men, consorting with these devils. They could not have fallen! They would not have renounced their faith!

And perhaps some relief came to the old minister as, the performance continuing as the moon rose higher, six haggered and stumbling figures were forced into view.

From the curses of the Kin about him he knew that his scouts had been taken, and taken alive. The Kin knew their own in a way he never could. As some moved to leave the trenches he barked an order to remain where they were, backed up and passed on by Tumnus, the largest of the Kin and his de facto 2IC. Wilyem understood their anger, their desire to rescue their comrades, but he knew -and deep down they too knew- it would have been folly: the distance too great for their battered and beaten weapons. The terrain, the climb too treacherous.

And so they had to watch as the six were held by the larger beasts and assaulted. Degraded. Mutilated.

But not one cried out.

Not one begged for mercy.

As the last scout's innards were dragged from him and held up before his dulling eyes there came a cry from the Kin.

A defiant cry.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

They could do naught but investigate the night's slaughter. Their consciences demanded it. The Kin demanded to recover the bodies of their slain, and Wilyem knew it was his duty to check the old minehead. Thus Wilyem, Tumnus and twenty of their number ventured forth into the morning mists. None complained as they shouldered bodybags and half the squad returned the lost to their trenches while Wilyem, Tumnus and the others moved on.

 

The skin of the Faithful Kin was dirty, some had horns, warts, blemishes and masses of hair, but the skin itself was coloured the natural tones of man's many races. But not these beasts, Wilyem noted as his shotgun's blast took one full in the chest. It's flesh was a vivid pink, and covered in black tattoos in swirling patterns that ached the eye. The beast collapsed to its knees, unable to scream as his blast had opened its lungs. He kicked its face as it fell, his boot connecting with the spikes, rings and chains piercing its mouth and nostrils. The sentry down and no doubt the alarm raised, the Kin ran past him and into the small gathering of buildings about the old mine shaft, their lasrifles and autoguns up. Conscripts and penitents by birth, they were also Imperial Guardsmen and while they lacked the training of their pureblood peers of other regiments, they had been drilled by their priest overseers and commissars. Four more of the pink-skinned beastmen fell as soon as they rushed from cover, blades raised and foul prayers to their fallen god upon their lips, the Kin quickly forming ranks and opening fire. It was the first time any of them had seen the enemy up close.

They were big. Not as big as Astartes, but bigger than any of the Faithful Kin, even Tumnus. Well fed -more likely enhanced by drugs- or blessed by the power they worshipped? Wilyem recognised the mark tattooed upon them but dared not let its name pass his lips. He spat upon their corpses and fired a shell point blank into the tattooed chest of one, obliterating the offensive symbol tattooed there, and looked up to find the Kin looking at him, heads tilted, eyes wary and questioning.

"They are heretics. Filth. They may look like you, but they are not. They are corrupt of mind and shall never find peace with the Emperor. Move on!"

 

And more they found, drawn by the gunfire. The enemy were more cautious now, some taking aim with their own rifles and pistols while other Slaangor attempted to flank the Kin. And between them, far off but nearing, working their way through the ruins, Wilyem could see Astartes. Their armour was a similar hue to the skin of their Slaangor thralls and many had helmets adorned with horns, daemonic visages and strange vents.

Wilyem ducked the machete of another Slaangor and blasted out its legs with his shotgun before stumbling backwards, his face slicked with sweat. He was old and out of shape.

"Kill them! Purge them with fire my Faithful Kindred!" He shouted, phlegm spraying from his mouth as he ranted, ratcheting another shell into his rifle and firing again as he stepped out. "Show them! Show them the fury of your faith! Earn your redemption!"

Five of them died in as many seconds. They were outnumbered. Yet Wilyem drove them onward, shotgun blasting, and the Kin followed as if he led the way to the Golden Throne itself. He walked straight up the main street of the old mining installation, a halo flickering about him as his conversion field caught incoming fire. Slaangor and human cultists fell to the preacher's shotgun and the rifles of the Faithful, but the latter dwindled in numbers as the enemy massed.

Wilyem paused to reload his weapon, still stood tall in the middle of the road, Tumnus and the only other survivor now sheltering behind him, leaning out to fire controlled bursts.

BOOM!

Tumnus' face was splattered with gore as Wilyem's body flew through the air, a bolt round having penetrated his shield and taken off his right leg at the knee. Tumnus grabbed his Kin and dragged the other penitent into a side alleyway before he looked back toward where the priest lay. Save the able bodied, Wilyem himself had always taught them.

Through gritted teeth the old man raised himself to sit in the middle of the road, pumping his shotgun as he did. Disoriented he looked about and a weak smile appeared on his face as he found Tumnus and the other.

"Onward, Faithful!" He screamed over the incoming fire, more rounds sparking in the air as they hit his failing energy field. His shotgun roared again. And he looked back to Tumnus, still in the alleyway.

Tumnus shook his head.

"Onward! Onward, I say! Onward your baseborn cur!"

Tumnus turned, pulling his comrade behind him, and ran.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

[Homo sapiens variatus inbound, master,] came the reedy voice of the amanuensis.

[show me!]

Over two hundred of them, weapons in hand, sprinting from the north.

Toward the lines of his own Skitarii warrior. He could see their confusion already in the noosphere.

It was that bastard priest's Faithful Kin. 'Faithful' indeed! Chi-Eta could see the priest nowhere. Only the rapidly advancing mass of beastman. Mutants. Screaming as they came pelting toward his forge. His holy sanctuary.

And them from behind them, from the mists a further kilometre on, at the mouth of the valley appeared more. Bigger ones, vivid pink of skin yet tattooed all the same.

More of them! They had lead their kin in!

He opened a channel to the Ordinatus Ulator, then widened it to all his forces, [This is magos Chi-Eta. Open fire! Eliminate them all!]

[Kierdale]

I honestly wasn't sure how many entries we would get for Inspirational Friday 2017: Abhumans and mutants but, being a beastmen (and squat) fan myself I really wanted to set the topic and see what we got. And I was more than relieved as entries appeared!

My comments on the entries (best not read if you haven't read the stories. Spoiler alert)

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It's good to see you returned to us, Carrack! The description of the protagonist in Prying Eyes and Hungry Mouths I found particularly nasty yet innocent. Particularly the process of his eye's...migration...that has stuck with me even days after reading it. Thanks for that The mother's love for her son was a good aspect and I thought well written. A nice twist at the end too (though I'd like to have heard more about the optic he gave her).

GunnyOGrady gave us The Edge of the World. An outstanding piece of 40k noir! I really liked this piece! The setting, locations and characters were excellently written. Damn, man.

Scourged never fails to disappoint. I liked the description of the tail's gradual growth and the mutant's flight. You made his flight from oppression-turning-into-fighting for the forces of Chaos very believable. A quite reasonable view of the Imperium, in fact!

I squeezed in some squats in my first entry. I wanted an excuse for a squat world to have been saved and ended up combining that with rarely-seen Chaos squats. My first idea was to have them Khornate, cannibals but figured that Tzeentch, via their psykers (the living ancestors or 'spirit lords') would be a more fitting saviour. And then threw in an AdMech rep (inspired by the coming Codex) presented with the prize of the squat tech, for a terrible price.

And I love beastmen. I have a penitent conscript squad in my Kierdale's Shrineworld army over in the IG forum and have Slaangor in my Psychopomps army here in the CSM forum. How could I not have them face off? The AdMech world of Alceforge has featured in the background of my IG a couple of times and I think we'll see more of the conflict there.

About nine hours earlier than usual but I'll be busy later so I hereby close the 17th challenge of IF2017, but if anyone has more stories on that theme, at any time, please post them here with a suitable title. (within the next nine hours and I'm sure P3AKHOUR won't mind considering them for judgement)

Whose entry will P3AKHOUR choose as the most fitting the theme?

And here begins our eighteenth challenge of Inspirational Friday 2017:The Primordial Annihilator versus the Adeptus Mechanicus

The Adeptus Mechanics. The priesthood of Mars. Worshippers of the Omnissiah, they hold a monopoly over the technology of the Mars and the Imperium of Man itself. It is via the boon of the Mechanics that the armies of the Guard are armed and armoured, and that the very chapters of the Adeptus Astartes are created.

Without these enginseers Mankind would fall, defenceless, into the darkness of oblivion. Yet the priests of Mars are greedy and exact a high price for their craft, and there is rivalry between not only forge-worlds but also the masters of individual forges. Many an ambitious tech priest would see their superiors cast down, lobotomised into servitors, so that they might rise and gain access to the secret vaults and knowledge denied them.

Forge worlds are a key yet difficult target for the forces of the Primordial Annihilator, with the armies of forge worlds ranging from legions of skitarii through sicarians and electro priests to kataphrons and lumbering cataphract robots, with Ballistari and Ironstrider towering over them. Some forge worlds still have access to technology dating back to the Horus Heresy and the Great Crusade...

And then there are the forces of the Dark Mechanics, overseen by Chaos Hellwrights.

Tell us this time a tale of the Adeptus Mechanics versus the forces of Chaos.

Inspirational Friday: Chaos versus AdMech runs until the 6th of October.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: IP3AKHOUR.

To whoever wins Inspirational Friday 2017:The Primordial Annihilator versus the Adeptus Mechanicus goes the Octee amulet - to covet and bask in the jealousy of their fellow renegades and Chaos worshippers, or to deny those debased heretics their prize (and perchance to study it secretly in the depths of their forge. Go on, you know you want to, you lapdog of the Emperor Omnissiah).

[Heliomanes]

Apameia

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«I don’t care. The world is on fire. We have to get the Archmagos out, even if she is unwilling to see reason herself.”

The metallic, prefabricated walls of the manufactorum were wailing. Their echoing cries drowned out the rest of the conversation. Pressure. Heat variables. The distant sounds of collapsing rockrete, explosions and gunfire.
Hertos was trembling. The young adept had expected little more than the continuing cycle of disappointments and vague promises of distant rewards he had grown used to back on the forge world proper. This somehow felt like the terrifying consequences of all his idle daydreaming of excitement and wonder. Some benighted part of his mind felt like this was all his fault.

“Unlock the door. Engage the elevator. You know that this is the right thing to do.”

He engaged the mechanism with a thought. Its spirit responded with a blurt of binary. It was a matter of factly thing. A door’s soul didn’t have much room for doubt. What a blessing that could be.

“Good. Now get us down there. Lead us to the Apameia.”

The ride never failed to steal his breath away. The frosted glass revealed gargantuan columns as far as the eye could see. Enormous structures that seemed like stalagmites perforating a cavern that could house an entire world and still have room to spare. Cables and vines had weaved together through the ages, forming strangely beautiful tapestries covering the ancient engines. The sleepers were, miraculously enough, still there. Dormant and expectant. Buried in their wondrous machine beds.
The doors parted with a purr of code as they left the elevator for the subterranean world of marvels set before them. The journey felt like a pilgrimage. From the chaotic world of human worries and fancies, to this, somehow more real, world below. A dreamlike realm of crystals, strange fog, the smell of exotic fumes and vegetation, and the impossible machine pillars.

“Very good. We’ll be able to save the Archmagos. We’ll be able to save all of her work.”

And there she was. Still tending lovingly to the insides of the ancient migration ship. Her mechadendrites were caressing, tweaking and mending the vital mechanisms that had kept the settlers from Old Sol alive through the long night of the millennia since they set out for their new home. Millions of men and women. Perhaps from Terra. Perhaps from Mars. Or someplace else. Gene-pure. Housed in a wondrous Ark that now, finally, breathed its last – downed by some long forgotten sin, and lost between the stars it set out to colonize.
She turned, and looked at him. Her optical lenses whirred and zoomed, while the mechadendrites on her back turned and coiled upwards. He thought they looked like angry serpents. With a defiant burst of code, she reached for her plasma bistol and blew out the side of her head.
“We’ve come to save you.” He heard himself say, as the warped data entity tore out from his cranial implants, and poured into the Apameia like a torrent.

“We have returned to make you whole.”

[P3AKHOUR]

Abhumans and Mutants provided the theme for some truly excellent entries. 

 

Carrack with his tainted twist on Oliver Twist was extremely well-written and captured the pitiful and tragic life of the mutant and the people who still love them.

 

The piece from Scourged focused on the mutant as a victim of circumstance, suffering through no fault of his own under the intolerance and fear of the Imperium.  The final paragraph was such a triumphant contrast to the misery of the rest of the piece, it almost had me cheering for the forces of Chaos, almost.

 

Kierdale brought two vivid narratives to the table, an embarrassment of riches.  I always love reading about the Mechanicum, and your knowledge and imagination shines through in both of these stories.  I really appreciate how you bring life to some of the more esoteric and underappreciated factions in the 40k universe. I especially loved the relationship between Father Wilyem and his flock, even if it didn't end so well for the padre.

 

But first prize must go to Gunnyogrady.  The Edge of the World was a stunning piece, with all the best noir tropes perfectly interwoven with the 40k universe.  The description of the tortured lawman and his tense meeting in the front/bar was so richly described I could almost smell it.  The twist at the end was equal parts sinister and unexpected.  Wear your helix with pride!

It was an honor to be allowed to judge this chapter of Inspirational Fridays.  I look forward to reading and hopefully contributing more in the future.

Your humble servant,
P3AKHOUR

[gunnyogrady]

Oh my gosh, thank you! I will take up the mantle of judge for the next competition with pride!

 

I hope everybody continues to contribute work, because it has been awesome to read these stories!

 

I'm just very excited! Yay!

[Kierdale]

Though it’s not required reading, my last entry (Damnatio Ad Bestias) occurs in the middle of this one. Since I set that one on an AdMech world I thought I’d flesh out that conflict.

 

Machinations

Hidden Content

Machines are precise, exacting. Working to tight parameters. They need naught but regular oiling and the appropriate prayers said over them. They can perform the same monotonous tasks ad nauseam for all eternity.

But the flesh...the flesh is weak and requires stimulation.

 

“Absent?” The overseer’s tone conveyed the shock that his chrome face could not. It’s mirror-like surface reflected the furnaces to one side and the stacked ingots to the other. “Tell me the individual’s name and he will spend the rest of his days servitor for his dereliction of duty to the Omnissiah.”

The supervisor bowed his head as he pulled up a list, data scrolling up the air between the two red-robes figures, projected in glowing green from emitters imbedded where his eyes had once been. Smoke from the forge curled about them and with the heat one could have mistaken them for devilish slave-masters in the depths of some pagan hell.

The overseer was speechless as names scrolled in the air before him. Not one individual but dozens had failed to punch in at the last shift change.

“The effect on productivity?”

“A four percent drop, overseer,” came the reply after a few seconds.

“Why was I not informed of this? It began with this shift?”

The supervisor’s legs whined as he took a couple of uneasy steps backwards, head bowing once again. “Allow me to...”

A mechadendrite whipped out from the overseer’s voluminous sleeve like a snake, a dataspike punching into the jack in the supervisor’s right temple, opening his mind for the overseer’s scrutiny. And the truth was laid bare. The true drop in productivity, no measly four percent; the supervisor’s attempt to cover for his charges by falsifying data; the months of growing absences and manufacturing mistakes from those who had attended; the famed reports of shipping difficulties...and the supervisor’s own growing addiction.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

With all born on Alceforge implanted with ID chips as soon as they were drawn from the womb - be it flesh or synthetic - it was not difficult to find the first of the sim-dens. The magos ordered skitarii to cleanse the den, to make an example of those who would shirk their duty to the Adeptus Mechanicus. Thus the rangers went in with rad weapons.

They questioned not why those they found, from lowly serf and tech-thralls to manufactorum overseers, were hooked up to jury-rigged machines of unknown origin, some with their bodies limp and looks of exquisite peacefulness upon their faces, a calm they could never find in their daily lives. The limbs of others thrashed, bodies undulating as the machines they were tethered to flooded their minds with new, intoxicating realities. The skitarii only slew, and those they did not slay outright they dragged from the disused warehouse out into the dim light of day, flesh sloughing from their bodies, to die slowly where they could be seen by their peers. A message sent.

 

This served to drive deeper underground those who sought escape from the tedium of their lives, their toil upon the anvils of Alceforge. And those who knew not why so many had been publicly slaughtered began to ask questions, for Man is a curious beast. And those who hid their secret pleasures from their betters were not so greedy that they would not share: they welcomed those with questions. They could not answer all, but they enlightened a great many to hitherto unknown secrets, experiences and vistas. Realms beyond life, which made reality as pale, tasteless and torturous as the ash that lay upon the plains between forge complexes upon their world.

What had been a recreational activity, a game shared between friends, a twist on sanctioned technology, became an addiction. A cult. One which the initiated would not - could not - give up. Hiding and fleeing turned to sabotage, first to hamper the hunters, then to spite those who would deny them.

 

And, as time went on more and more failed to turn up for their shifts and took to hacking their ident chips from their palms, the presenting of one’s open palm to show the scar becoming their password at meetings and dens. Upon the discovery of this the overseers had the chips of all those still loyal to them replaced with more invasive versions and soon new converts showed their faith by presenting truncated limbs. These poor individuals were rewarded with new hands and feet in the image of their lord’s servants. Industrial pincer-claws replaced hands, reverse-kneed legs capable of great speed let others walk once more.

And still magos Chi-Eta knew not the full extent of the heresy and rebellion upon his world, for his minions feared his wrath and the punishment of the Machine God itself. His amanuensis, Aleptaw, was the choke point for word of the crisis gripping their world and he chose his words carefully as he reported to his master. The blood of millions was upon his chrome, multi-bifurcated hands before rumour came that the techno-blasphemers has called for offworld renegade assistance, and he informed his master, the highest priest of the cult of Mars on all Alceforge, of the acts of sabotage conducted upon his forges.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

That assistance had been called for was not quite the truth -though by this point Alceforge was mired in such lies that truth mattered little- rather those who had fomented unrest and had aided in the smuggling of the corrupting devices to Alceforge had signalled they believed the planet ready.

 

Magos Chi-Eta had scattered his lifters, shuttles and tenders across the planet such that none could be seized in any great number, thus to hinder any attempt at piracy by the coming enemy. And those bulk transports and other vessels in orbit he commanded to hide themselves about the star system for similar reasons, with orders to return at a designated hour. Some sought the silence of the system’s outermost void, others dove as deep into gas giants as their hull integrity permitted and a few positioned themselves as close as they dared to the system’s star, bathing in its radiation, blinding themselves as they veiled their ships from enemy sensors. In a calculated gambit his warships he sent away too. And they waited.

 

The first ships to arrive were not the anticipated fell raiders but rather a sole troop ship of the Imperial Guard. Alceforge’s call for aid had been answered yet the reply, judged by its size, was little but a whisper.

The drop ship landed upon the plain at the mouth of the lush valley within which the magos’ citadel lay, and Chi-Eta’s heart sank as dozens upon dozens of mutants made their way from within the vessel. Beastmen, headed by a rotund priest who went on and on about the piety of his flock. The magos had directed the preacher and his filthy flock to the northern mouth of the valley, to dig their trenches beyond his own defensive lines, with strict orders that the mutants were to set foot upon neither the holy ground of forge facilities nor greensward of Chi-eta’s paradisical valley. His multi-faceted mind had turned to other matters before the priest had finished talking; the Mechanicus’ own defences had to be redirected to take into account these new arrivals. Be they little more than a buffer or cannon fodder...

 

The distress call from the Guard dropship was the first sign that the enemy had arrived. A battleship by the name Priapus’ Lance blew up the ship as it sought concealment, before boldly moving toward an orbital position. Sensors indicated its weapons were preparing for bombardment.

Chi-Eta’s chrome features did not allow human expressions anymore though they would have creased in a joyful grin as he ordered ground batteries to open fire. Evidently the raiders were in a hurry, moving into orbit so quickly. One battleship against the defences of a forgeworld! Desperate fools!

Missiles as tall as battle titans launched from subterranean silos and vast turbolaser batteries opened fire, their blasts striking the ventral shields of the battleship far faster than it took the missiles to reach escape velocity. But even as the battleship’s defensive cannons opened up to intercept the incoming missiles, Chi-Eta was reevaluating. Far fewer silos and batteries had fired than should have. Not nearly enough to take out the renegade ship. It should have been smote from the heavens in the first barrage.

He did not monitor the missile impacts, confident -if dismayed- in his projections.

Sabotage?

The truth was revealed as a second wave of missiles launched, from the other silos. Missiles streamed aloft and he allowed himself a moment of relief -nanoseconds to readjust his projections- before they turned and fell

-guidance malfunctions? Tainted propellant?-

upon those silos and batteries which he knew to be loyal to him.

And then the battleship opened fire.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

64.72 percent of his body was divine. Laser-etched and chrome-plated, piston driven and cybernetically enhanced. That flesh which remained of Ranger Alpha-Zeus-4’s birth body was barely recognisable, his central nervous system had been replaced with neural networks, his retinas replaced with sensors far more sensitive than the human eye, he was no longer sustained by food or drink consumed in the primitive, inefficient manner of Man but by nutrient soups injected via plugs. What waste was produced was automatically recycled. But his ears, his ears were the enhancements he treasured most. With them he heard all. While his eyes could see the noosphere, his ears heard the Canticles of the Omnissiah, at this very moment the glorious Benediction. It’s perfection focused him, honed him, and through him the skitarii of his squad.

The feed from the squad’s arquebusier enlarged in his visual field, those of the other skitarii shrinking. The rifle’s scope had picked up the heat signatures of two figures moving in the forest at the mouth of the valley, and he sent the marksman an order to track the nearest while simultaneously searching for additional targets. He also ordered him to hold fire until the signatures could be identified. This wouldn’t need old-fashioned an old-fashioned ‘visual’: the skitarii had detailed files and would be able to match the heat signature to their bestiaries if potential targets. Delaying that data back to the citadel and receiving a kill order would take microseconds. He estimated that both of the individuals, if they proved to be enemy, would easily be dead before they exited the wood.

[signatures identified (96% accuracy): Homo sapiens variatus x2]

[Relaying...relaying...relaying...awaiting response...awaiti- hold fire and observe. Repeat: hold fire and observe]

Two beastmen broke from the near side of the wood and, one helping the other, ran into the valley. Toward their own trenches some two hundred meters beyond Alpha Zeus-4’s Aegis line. He recognised them from when the mutants had arrived on-planet 26.27 hours earlier. The priest was conspicuously absent.

[Disengage. Resume perimeter scans]

The two beastmen leapt into their trench, filled with more of their dirty breed. Alpha Zeus-4 could not help but divert part of his awareness to monitoring them. He could not understand how such malformed creatures allowed themselves to live. They were a blasphemy to the form of Man and thus so far from the Machine Perfect.

There was a commotion within the trench and in the next second over two hundred beastmen mounted the rear side of their ditches and began running toward him. Screaming. Some bore weapons, others had cast their rifles aside and advanced with their claws raised.

From the wood’s edge came more, the flesh of these vivid pink, black tattoos swirling across their malformed bodies.

[This is magos Chi-Eta. Open fire! Eliminate them all!]

The Benediction of the Omnissiah in their ears, the ranks of Skitarii opened fire.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

Tumnus screamed at his truncated legs, blown off by the blast of an Onager’s cannon. He screamed at the bodies of his brethren fallen about him, their hairy bodies twisted and torn. He screamed father Wilyem’s name, cursing it and the priest. The bastard had sought glory where Tumnus himself had sought survival, but not only that. He screamed this too, knowing that his message would never reach those who needed to know it. That the enemy had captured the old mine beyond the valley.

Shots streaked last through the air, felling more and more of the Faithful Kin, and he watched as his blood pumped out onto the verdant green grass of the magos’ valley. He screamed his loyalty, even now, to He upon the Golden Throne.

And was obliterated as the Ordinatus Ulator fired.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

[Priority order to all Alceforge forces: regroup at the Crags. Citadel lost. Ordinatus Ulator disabled by enemy sappers and captured. Magos Chi-Eta has been terminated.]

The Ironstrider rocked as it carried Aleptaw across the wastes toward the distant mountains. Formerly the magos’ amanuensis, he was now by default the magos and lord of all Alceforge. The other forces that had managed to escape the attack trailed behind him. Survivors and those he had purposefully delayed the arrival of. The Mechanicus ships would return soon. On his schedule rather than that he had been ordered to transmit.

Still possessed of a flesh-face, he allowed himself a smile.

All was proceeding as he had planned.

He just needed to drive off the renegades and secure his hold on the planet. In due course the passing of Chi-Eta could be reported to Mars.

The magos is dead, long live the magos.

His comm crackled to life.

“Destrier to Alceforge. Destrier to Alceforge. Emperor’s blessings and salutations. We have arrived with further reinforcements from Kierdale’s World. Please report your situation. Over.”

His smile widened.

[Kierdale]

Around 60 hours remain until I close the current topic (for the purposes of judgement).

I have another idea for a short piece I might be able to hammer out tomorrow but I hope we will have some more entries :)

[Carrack]

Backwards

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Calebra Hive was in ruins. It's past glories were barely recognizable. Mankind had once had the audacity to build a gleaming city that defiantly rose from the bones of the world to tower over the very clouds, a city that shined with brightness that could be seen from space. Calebra Hive had been a monument to man's capacity for greatness, a single building that dominated the trade and culture of a subsector, and whose magnificence was admired from across the Imperium. The enemy of man could not stand for such grandeur, and had come to devour the brightness of Calebra Hive with a Black Maw of destruction. Three decades ago, an assault followed by an orbital bombardment from the forces of the Arch-Enemy had destroyed much of the once great mega hive. Both necessary purges, and unnecessary civil wars had further reduced the city to a shadow of itself. Buildings were destroyed, streets were clogged with rubble, even the outer walls had been breached in places, leaving sections exposed to the toxic atmosphere.

 

Magos Chi 8 knew much of Calebra Hive's history, including its defeat at the hands of the Black Maw Warband. He also knew secrets that weren't part of the common Calebra Hive history. Chi 8 had discovered the existence of the Brotherhood of Light, a secret society whose creation was intertwined with that of the mega hive, and whose purpose was to guard a potent artifact from the Dark Age of Technology. Knowledge was power to an ambitious priest of Mars, and Chi 8 intended to discover what had become of the fabled Candle of Light. He had no intention of sharing in any discovery he made, so alone he journeyed to the ruins of Calebra Hive and down into its once beating mid-hive heart.

 

In spite of the ruined state of the hive, a crowd was starting to tail Chi 8. He had been forced to cut through inhabitable portions of the ruins to reach the last known resting place of the artifact. Skinny wretches clad in rags had stopped digging in the ruins as he passed. At first they just gawked and stared blankly as he bound through the alleys on reverse jointed augmetic legs. The younger ones had never seen robes as magnificent as Chi 8's, much less someone with such glorious and obvious blessings of the Omnisiah. The older ones had never expected to see such glory again. As he passed however, some of the gawkers stopped picking through the ruins and started following him. Before long, a mob of poorly fed and poorly clothed men and women had started to form in his wake. The crowd were being somewhat discreet, keeping outside of the effective range for their pistols and their eyes downcast deferentially, when he rotated his skull faced visage 180 degrees back to observe them. Chi 8 blasted off a proximity warning to the crowd on all common frequencies, yet they refused to take heed. Chi 8 would not stand for such insolence, nor any interlopers on what could be his greatest discovery, so as he climbed the debris, he carefully kicked out a piece of rebar that was supporting much of the pile, leaving it on the verge of completely dislodging. He made another quick calculation and shifted a plastic board to expose a section of spiked metal gate. When Chi 8 reached the top of the pile, he extracted a heating coil from a damaged mechanical stove and a still sealed five liter container of solvent from the debris with his servo arm. A few quick passes over the coil and solvent with his fine manipulators and he placed them prominently at the top of the pile. After cresting the mound of debris, Chi 8 used his inertia dampeners to leap down the opposite side of the pile. Between the dampeners and the flexing of his reverse jointed limbs, he took the fall without sustaining system damage or even slowing his rate of travel.

 

As Chi 8 closed on the last known location of the artifact he had been sent to recover, his audio pick-ups indicated that the Omnisiah had blessed his calculations on the mound. His exposure of the spiked gate had channeled the crowd towards the slope he had weakened by kicking out the rebar, and the coil he had charged had heated the container of solvent. The unstable slope had collapsed under the weight of the trailing crowd, and the survivors of the subsequent avalanche had been sprayed with hot solvent as the container burst on impact in their midst. The volume of their screams indicated that Chi 8 was unlikely to be followed. Chi 8 was thankful that he would never feel such pain himself, having replaced all but sections of his brain with blessed machinery in reverence to the Omnisiah.

 

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

One building remained standing among a particularly damaged block. All the other buildings had been blown apart or collapsed as chunks of the level's ceiling had fallen onto their roofs. In contrast, the cracked and holed ceiling of the level had sagged down to rest on the surviving building's two story structure like a pillar. At first glance the remaining building looked like one of the minor miracles of war, a simple structure that had somehow escaped the fate of all its neighbors. But it's survival was no miracle. The building was a secret fortress, its ferrocrete blocks were reinforced with thick steel beams, its frame strengthened with metal, and its plastic board door hid a layer of ceramite in its core. In times past, people who had discovered the strength of the building had assumed it had been used as a ganger stronghold to store money or obscura within. It had been used to store something far more valuable. The building had at one point been used to house the Candle of Light. It was the building that Magos Chi 8 was coming to search. The enemy was within.

 

Ancient warriors lurked within the secret stronghold. Cruel giants clad in baroque black armor lay in ambush around the door. They had come to the House of the Brotherhood of Light for the same reason as the magos. They came in search of the secrets of the Candle of Light, a relic their erstwhile brother had stolen thirty years earlier, and that they wished to discover the secrets of its use. The Magos dispersement of the mob had been heard by the villains as they were tearing apart the interior of the stronghold, frantically looking for manuals, notes, or diagrams left hidden by the Brotherhood of Light. At the sound of the avalanche, the enemies leader had tapped into the stronghold's vid network and broadcasted it to his squad, replaying the carnage wrought by the advancing magos.

 

As the warriors took positions to waylay the magos, the leader haughtily told one of his warriors, "See young Copil, the actions of this magos are a metaphor for the Adeptus Mechanicus he represents. An uncaring priesthood searching through the ruins of their civilization for scraps of their once mighty empire. Causing misery to mankind in their quest to hold onto technology that is ever slipping away into disrepair. They are alway looking backwards, never forwards." The legionary Copil, an eight millennia old Veteran of the Long War and Chosen warrior of his lord, seethed at yet another "lesson" his brothers were berating him with. For thousand of years they had arrogantly instructed him as if he were their pupil. Copil's harassment continued with another of his brothers sounded off with a voice mimicking the tones of an erudite professor, "You see young Copil, while 'tis true this tech priest represents the Adeptus Mechanicus, the greater metaphor is this hive. Calebra Hive is the Imperium. Both are mere shadows of their former glory, ruined by war. Both will never live up to their promise, or even their better years. The Imperium's subjects toil away like the scavengers here, hoping to regain some of the Imperium's past splendor. Like the Martian priest, they too are only looking back, only looking to regain what was lost. Not realizing that they could move forward instead. Calebra Hive is the Imperium, and the scavengers are the slaves of the False Emperor.

 

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

Magos Chi 8 scanned the structure as he approached its door. He detected the armor concealed in the door and brought his servo arm to batter it in, charging forward to add momentum. Unexpectedly, the door was unbarred and swung wide as he careened into the stronghold. Before he could check his advance, an enormous, energized fist reached out from a power armored warrior beside the door, and grabbed him by the base of the neck. Chi 8's legs and body swung forward and left the ground as his head and neck's movement was abruptly arrested. The crushing fist then squeezed, separating his head from his body. Chi 8 watched his machine body go limp without the control of his head. He was helpless now, his cranial implants could keep his head alive indefinitely, yet he was left a powerless observer without his body, at least until his sensors lost power.

 

The warrior whose power fist had captured Chi 8 turned his skull to face his captor. The warrior was helmed in black ceramite adorned with gold and crested with the horns of a terrible beast, Heretic Extremis, a traitor marine. Chi 8 knew of no worse possible captor. Perplexingly, the warrior boomed out of his vox grill, "Perhaps this adept should have been looking backwards like his brethren. Maybe then he would have seen me." Chi 8 heard cruel cackling booming in response, and the order, "Take what's left of him to the ship for interrogation."

[P3AKHOUR]

Great entries so far. Sorry I got a bit muddled up in the posts. If it's up to me to nominate the judge for this topic, then I nominate Gunnyogrady for this task.  Go forth guardsman, the Emperor protects. 

[Kierdale]

Yes, as you chose Gunny’s entry as the best of the mutant entries, he gets to judge the AdMech theme :)

[Shinespider]

Threw a couple of hours into this. Had fun. 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Machinery hummed out of sight as the platform descended the shaft at an even, measured pace.

 

"Do you understand, Inquisitor, that humanity is not much changed since our ancestors first cobbled together their simple homes from mud and sticks?"

 

The Magos's voice rasped through his breathing apparatus with a grating, but entirely expected metallic tone. His name was Tholivar Seht, and he was not pleased for the Inquisitor to be there.

 

"Of course, Magos."

 

He did know that, of course, but more importantly he would not give the Magos the satisfaction of his ignorance.

 

"Sixty thousand years, and the fundamental form of humanity remains virtually unaltered. Place a child on a savage world, and he becomes indistinguishable from its inhabitants. All of the great works of humanity become as foreign to him as to a beast of burden."

 

Did the Magos have a point to make, or did he just like to hear himself talk?

 

"Knowledge, Inquisitor. It is the only thing we have ever truly gained. And it is the only thing we should ever fear to lose."

 

That much, at least, He agreed with wholeheartedly. Inquisitor Arnur Dai had sacrificed much for knowledge - more than the cold creature beside him could possibly guess.

 

The lift came to a halt at last, and a clean metal hall opened before the pair. Servitors could be seen trudging to and fro in the passages beyond, along with the occasional guard - some Skitarii, some Inquisitorial. Ideally, neither would have reason to question his presence. Ideally.

 

The orbital facility - Containment Unit 93-Rho, by the Magos's typically sterile naming convention - had been commissioned by the Inquisition to contain some of the growing number of dangerous items and individuals being seized across the sector in recent years. Sterile facilities floating in the vacuum of space minimized the risks associated with storing such things. Since the appearance of the Cicatrix Maledictum, the need for such facilities had increased astronomically.

 

So dire was the need, in fact, that some items had been placed into the facility before its construction was even finished - including a certain object of great important to Arnur Dai.

 

It wouldn't be stealing, not really. It was the property of the Inquisition, after all.

 

Seht began pointing out various rooms of interest as the pair passed them. One contained the frozen body of some tremendous mutant, the next a shard of metal that twisted in form whenever it was not being directly observed, and another a variety of arcane implements seized during the purge of a cult on the planet below.

 

Dai shuddered slightly while looking into the last room, as much of its contents were familiar to him. The brutes who had dragged it all to the vault had no respect for esoteric beauty of a Cyclopae Mask or a Prosperine Rod, and half of the items in the pile were just ordinary jewelry. Under the guidance of such blind zealotry, humanity had no hope for the future.

 

The Magos continued to stomp forward, his massive metal boots (feet?) maintaining a mathematically perfect rhythm even as they slightly shook the hall. Dai kept pace.

 

"The null generators will be operational within the month. Then, at last, these tainted things will be made to behave."

 

Tainted? The only taint in this place was ignorance. The statement may also have been a jab at Dai's own psychic talent, but he let it slide.

 

Arnur had sponsored that so-called "cult." With the greatest care and discretion He had funneled resources and artifacts to an organization of scholars on Symnos Prime. Under his tutelage they had flourished, growing from a lose network of academics and mystics to a world-wide institution dedicated to uncovering the truths of the galaxy and sheltering psykers from those fools who would burn them alive. So successful had they been that they had drawn the eye of the Inquisition, who had judged them too bright, too transgressive to be allowed to exist. Only a handful of scholars and psykers survived.

 

He pushed the thought away, and reordered His mind to exclude anger or frustration. Neither could be afforded in that moment.

 

At last, they arrived at their destination: a purpose-built containment unit for Arnur's prize. The Magos stepped aside, and indicated a data-reader. Arnur approached it, and pressed His rosette into the screen. A rune lit, and then another as the cryptographic datastream of his badge of office was understood and given the appropriate priority. The doors slid open with surprising speed.

 

Arnur stepped forward. His prize was within reach. The Acularium was a bronze construct that appeared at first glace like a sort of astrolabe, with small objects arranged in an orbital pattern around a central sphere. In truth, it was itself a vault: a puzzle box that revealed its prize when the "planets" were moved into precisely the correct alignment.

 

In the Inquisitor could barely contain himself as He stepped forward. Only once the Acularium was within arm's reach did he realize that the heavy footsteps of the Magos had not followed His. Dread crept up His spine, and He knew what was going to happen a moment before it did - the great metal door slammed shut behind Him. Machinery continued to thrum quietly beneath His feet, but otherwise, silence.

 

No anger, no frustration.

 

"What is this, Magos? What are you doing?"

 

"Open it."

 

His voice came from every direction at once, carried into the room by speakers. He considered issuing threats or ultimatums, but either would be pointless. The Magos had gone this far, he wasn't going to be cowed by Inquisitorial authority alone.

 

"What makes you think I can?"

 

"That is the question, is it not? You wouldn't be here if you did not think you could open it. But where might a loyal servant of the Emperor have acquired such knowledge? Torn from the lips of a captive heretic perhaps?"

 

A totally reasonable explanation. If he intended to accuse him of something illicit, he had not yet done so.

 

"Perhaps."

 

He stepped towards the Acularium and began moving the orbital bodies. He had planned to open it in any case, so he may as well make a show of indulging the Magos.

 

"What do you hope to gain from this, Tech-Priest? The contents of the Acularium are hardly of any interest to your sort."

 

"There is very little that is not of interest to "my sort.""

 

He rasped out the last words with obvious disdain. Good.

 

"Is that so? Such curiosity may lead to dark places indeed. Walk with care."

 

If hypocrisy was to be his game, Dai could play it too. The final piece moved into place, and settled with a gentle click. The central orb spun, stopped, and then opened. A small jewel dropped out and fell to the ground with a distinctly unimpressive clatter. Near-silence reigned for a brief moment as both parties waited for the other to comment. Dai began to walk towards the jewel.

 

"See, Magos? Some rich noble's pride and joy. Nothing more."

 

A lie, perhaps an obvious one, but what else could He do? The Magos did not respond. Dai's footsteps were the only sound above the distant mechanical thrum.

He knelt down, and picked up the stone. It felt strange in his hand: empty and ephemeral, as if it were not wholly there. Still, it looked normal enough, so perhaps He could still get out of this without resorting to extreme measures.

 

"Are we done with this silly game, Magos? Let me out of here."

 

"Perhaps this is a game to you, Inquisitor. Perhaps you think I am a piece on a board, that you can maneuver above and around as you see fit. You are incorrect."

 

The constant thrumming beneath the floor grew louder, and Dai began to feel the slightest sensation of acceleration. They were moving. The entire facility was moving, and had been moving for a while.

 

The time for reasonable discussion had clearly ended. Arnur Dai drew his pistol - an ornate plasma weapon - from it's holster and aimed it at the door. The thick metal was a substantial barrier, to be sure, but unlikely to stand up to a few plasma bolts. His mental discipline began to waver as anger crept into his voice.

 

"I'm done with your posturing, priest. This door is opening, with or without your consent. And then you and I are going to have words, face to face."

 

"I think not, unless you can fly."

 

What?

 

Every moment of the past hour raced through Dai's head as he tried to fathom that statement. Had the Magos fled in a ship? Unlikely. He thought about the layout of the facility as he had observed it, the shape of the lift and the halls, the arrangement of the rooms.

 

The pieces clicked together in his head. The facility was modular. The room he was standing in was a distinct unit - self-sufficient, and capable of being ejected from the whole should its contents become too dangerous to contain. The metal door he had just threatened to shoot through was probably the only thing protecting him from the vacuum of space.

 

He lowered his weapon.

 

"You arrogant fool."

 

Dai spat the words, as his mind continued to race. The possibilities of escape were narrowing quickly. He gripped the jewel more tightly and began to muster his modest psychic talent, shouting into the void. His acolytes back on the shuttle should be able to hear him.

 

"Arrogant? Arrogance is among the most laudable traits of mankind. Arrogance is what drove us to ascend from the muck of our ancestors' pitiable existance. You have not yet seen the beginning of my arrogance."

 

The thrumming of the module's engines was suddenly joined by another, entirely more dreadful sound, and Dai felt a crushing weight on his psyche. Null generators, in full working order. The damned Magos had lied from the start. On top of that, he immediately felt a much more literal weight as the room's artificial gravity was magnified.

 

He fell to the ground as the jewel rolled away, its secrets lost to him. The walls of his mind drew in as his senses were dulled by the oppressive veil of the null field. He had lost.

 

But that didn't mean the Magos had won.

 

Dai grunted with effort as he raised the pistol. His arm screamed with pain as it pulled against the gravity field. In his last moments of consciousness, he leveled it at the jewel on the ground before him, and fired.

 

He expected to destroy the jewel. He didn't expect to destroy everything else.

 

The Eye of Ghiroa was a ninety-thousand year old artifact of Xenos origin that contained the crystallized souls of an entire city, captured in the moment of their mass execution at the hands of another, more brutal species. Neither the Magos nor the Inquisitor knew anything about this, but someone else did.

 

From atop his Silver Tower in the skies of Sortiarius, Ahnsoth of the Thousand Sons felt a certain expected ripple in the warp and knew that the plan had borne fruit. The Imperial pawn, who had done so much good work in cultivating cults for the Thousand Sons, had achieved his final purpose. Above a world called Symnos Prime, a rift had been opened through which a host of demons would soon pour. Ahnsoth would be there with his own forces to gather up the remnants of the world's broken cult and to loot the orbital vault of its treasures.

 

It was going to be a good day.

Edited October 5, 2017 by Shinespider

[Kierdale]

There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease

Hidden Content

The cult had a voice.

It preached that when the Emperor came to Mars he enslaved the priesthood of the red planet with his lies. It preached that he was not the true Omnissiah of the Machine God but an impostor. A false god. The ministers of this upstart religion claimed to be loyal sons and daughters of Mars, and that they held the true Way. That a messiah of the Machine God would come, but that it would come not from without - certainly not from ‘Holy’ Terra- and that like the product of their artifice it would come from within, forged by and of the believers. And thus they fought those they deemed the pawns of the false Omnissiah, drones of a Mars long deceived.

When -and indeed wherever, for their faith spread from system to system- they were found, the members of this cult were made an example of. The Mechanicus made no secret of the fact that technological heresy was punished in the extreme. The boon of the Mechanicus was stripped from them, starting with the least vital systems and proceeding by degrees to the most invasive prosthetics and enhancements. Until all that remained was meat, duly ground down and processed for nutrients.

 

* * * * * * * *

 

From within. They preached that their saviour, the magos of magi, would come from within, and so those most gifted of the cult listened to the counsel of that voice from beyond the veil, spending immeasurable lengths of time in their ships, letting themselves drift upon the sea of souls, learning all they could of its denizens and the fleshcraft they plied. They learned that flesh was no different to metal, the souls of the neverborn no different from those of the living (for indeed they once had danced upon the mortal coil, if their words were to be believed, and they would once again...). They learned that as bodies could be merged, so could intelligences and indeed souls bonded. The dead brought into oneness with the living as the daemon inhabited Man and Man was bound within a body of metal. As preached, the chosen suffered no hunger nor illness, nor even death for it was but a release back to the sea of souls in a cycle which fed the growing Omnissiah.

Omnissiah, a word -twisted like their technology- from an ancient term meaning “to apply oil to, to anoint” which meshed only too well with the teachings of the Mechanicus. They would bring about the anointed one as each of their hell-blasted constructs improved upon the last.

Striving for divinity.

[Kierdale]

And one not for judgement but an idea which struck me now on the train. I don’t have time to flesh it out fully but present here the idea:

 

Successor

An arch-magos who achieved his position via the aid of non-Mechanicus supporters (Adeptus Administratum, planetary governor lord, etc), having essentially been groomed by them since his youth. Over the years steadily became less man and more machine as he excised his meat body. But he grows more independent as he grows less human.

More and more finds his orders and schemes are opposed by those who elevated him. Confronts them. They present to him the one who they will install as his successor: a robed youth seemingly asleep upon a catafalque.

Demands to know why and who the youth is, while finding the youth’s appearance hauntingly familiar, like a half-remembered dream or a face seen at a distance in a mirror’s reflection. Decries their intention to replace him with someone so natural, so ‘Man’.

They comment that he was no different, and question why he does not recognise the boy...the face he wore so many years before.

Moves closer. Sees the microfine sutures upon the body. As if constructed from parts. Reconstructed.

“You will live again, magos. You will live again to excise your flesh as is your way. It is not the first time and will not be the last.”