BotL - Monthly fluff challenge

[simison]

Kel, what would you like to see from me?

[Kelborn]

At first, I had no real idea of what coul be covered.

 

Got a couple of rough ones after thinking about it:

 

- Primarch interactions between Andezo and one of his brothers (maybe one of the loyalists, as foreshadowing of his future "betrayal").

- Inter Legion relation between the disciplined, warrior-ish Terran and some "darker" Mardumian, to present both extreme

- A scene after a successful hunt, in which casualties were named sacrifices. This brings their relation to a more humble Legion at stake.

- Something covering their more individualistic, independent way of life

 

As far as I remember, we got two battle scenes and some cameos of Andezo. It's all up in the air. :)

[simison]

Plainsrunner Tribe

 

[Tribe number], the Plainsrunners were not simply a horde of barbarians racing across the terrain to clash with their enemies as the Goredrinkers and the Bloodhands often demonstrated. Instead, the Plainsrunners were a sophisticated force, carefully organized in a series of imbuthos, or regiments. Discipline was a hallmark of this tribe, and they served as a pillar of stability and honour among themselves and within the Predators. This would serve only to highlight the tragedy that would later befall them. 

 

As a mechanised infantry, the Plainsrunners relied heavily on transport vehicles, especially razorbacks and rhinos, to launch wide-scale envelopment attacks against their opponents. Dubbed the 'buffalo horns', the Plainsrunners favorite tactic involved an initial double flanking manuever, known as the 'horns'. Assaulted on the left and the right, the enemy was ideally pinned by this initial show of force. Once pinned, the main body of the Plainrunners would strike their disorganized enemy, the 'chest' of the buffalo trampling their foes. Finally, a reserve force was held behind the 'chest' of the formation, ready to deploy at a moment's notice where necessary. 

 

Beyond tactics, the Plainsrunner tribe was famous for its willingness to synthesize music with war. Several war songs were developed to celebrate victory, mourn the loss of their brothers, and to pay homage to worthy adversaries. Drums, in particular, featured prominently in post-battle rituals or pre-battle intimidation tactics. 

Edited May 11, 2018 by simison

[Beren]

Methods of the Hunt.

 

Two years. Kyani leant forwards as the bike burst through the air, his form hunched low over his mount. Instinct, from when he mounted raptors on Mardum. Two years since this hunt had begun. The wind whistled past it's helm, progress blunted by his pitch black plate. They had fled. From one system to the other. When caught in orbit their ship had burned, but not until after the 20th had boarded to confirm their hunt concluded. An entire ship and it's crew abandoned. The high ranking and most skilled of their foe cowering on the planet below. No doubt they had arranged for a contact to retrieve them after a time. The Predators would wait, and then the retrieval ship would be snared too.

 

Their craft hugged the floor, keeping low. The prey had chosen a good site. They'd known that if the Predators so much as conducted a passing scan of the planet they would be found, so they hadn't bothered hiding. The encampment was sat out in the open with clear fields of sight, anti-aircraft weaponry and hastily made entrenchments. Stealth was unlikely to be an option. So they would use speed instead. They would be seen of course, but in the time it took them to respond death would ride amongst them. He could hear it now, cries of alarm. Shouts as heavier weapons were hastily dragged forth. All of it was drowned out. Missiles and las-bolts broke away from the grav speeders and hostile emplacements correspondingly burst into flame. Heavy bolters scythed into exposed targets and tore through flak, flesh and bone. In return shots sparked of their armour, and a javelin to slow to dodge auto-cannon fire became a hurtling wreck that forced those following in its wake to veer away. All of this was noted in Kyani's mind from the corners of his vision. Just before he hit the line. Leaning to his left, arm out and chainsword in hand, he caused a commander burst into a crimson spray of blood. There was a muffled thump as a rider's tossed grenade detonated within a makeshift trench.

 

Within the camp space was tight. Their prey had scattered amongst their dwellings and trusted in smoke grenades that now littered the ground d to offer them some cover. Driving on through the smoke, screams of the maimed in the air. The legionary passed a shattered wall, a dented bike and brother scrambling to his feet nearby.

Light filled his vision. Beams of red lancing out and scorching his plate. A loose formation set up in ambush. He didn't even draw his weapon. One too slow to dodge was caught across is prow and flung forth a broken ragdoll. Three more left shattered on the found by glancing impacts. A wall rose up before him. A slight hiss, an eruption of light, and he sailed through a hole lined with molten metal. The anti-air emplacements provided much more satisfying detonations. So much so in fact that the vox signal was no longer necessary. Those few defenders not fighting for their eyes looked up and knew their end had come. The Black Condas strike may have been the first blow, but it would be the Skyspears' aerial assault that would be the last.

 

. . .

 

Pyres flickered in the dawn light. Their glow panned across matte armours as energetic chants thronged the air. Within the flames Amarachi, the Conda whose ride was cut short by a sturdy wall threw himself against one of the senior veterans, Bitrus. The pairs blades clashed in a discordant and jarring symphony that raised the hackles of the various Mardumian fauna that prowled around the flames edge. Above this rose the chants and stamps of the Black Condas arrayed in a rough circle. Kyan watched as his squad mate hacked forwards in a series of savage blows, each immaculately parried or blocked. Where one was reckless the other had been seasoned by decades of combat. It played out much like the earlier battle, Bitrus using the same sort of calm and measured yet strikingly swift, while Amarachi seemed almost unaware of his surroundings in his frenzy. The duel compounded the mistakes made earlier and thus compounded the lesson. As Amarachi surged forwards again his left foot was swept out from underneath him and leveled him. Before the warrior could seek sure footing again he found himself dragged coarsely out from the fire by several of the hound-like creatures that had watched his fall. The display was over.

 

The celebrations had been going on for around an hour now, and thought of true battle had faded. And yet, below the music and chanting, something seemed wrong. Tuning it the festivities, Kyani swivelled to his right. A Gyrer, it's plates locked firm, let out a low pitched warning as it glared into the darkness. There amongst the charred and maimed cadavers Skyspear squads moved in ordered formations. Skeletons striding amongst their fallen foes. They had not partook in the celebrations. One squad in particular had emerged from the burnt out husk of a building and was making it's way towards a Storm Eagle gunship that squatted amongst the landing zone it had cleared. At their head was a Shaman, an object clutched in his arms, and this was where the hound directed it's wary visage. Kyani had already set out towards the party.

 

“Shaman, a moment.”

 

The group halted. Kyani found himself looking upon the psyker’s wizened face, questioning and impatient. Maroon eyes surveyed the Legionary with expertise.

 

“Impi” The word was heavily delivered, the difference between the two ranks made clear.

 

“Something was recovered.” Not a question, a statement. A tome by the looks of it. A cover that might once have been brown was now blackened but not truly burnt. Sigils he did not read were etched across the surface. Blood was painted across its surface.

 

“Records. Found upon their leader” The silence of an unbroken gaze. The celebrations seemed muted now.

 

“Is such a thing of any importance?”

 

“When it comes to prey, all information bears importance, every word of it”. The Impi hesitated before speaking his piece and gesturing to where he had came from.

 

“It seems that the Gyrer has taken a dislike to it.” For the first time since the conversations initiation the Shaman’s eyes flicked away from his counterpart to clamp upon the beast.

 

“You place too much significance upon their actions.” With that the Shaman turned away. Wordlessly his squad followed and resumed their passage towards the gunship.

 

As Kyani moved back into the light of the pyres hand the noise of his fellow Black Condas, the Asartes pondered the occurrence. He ought not to have questioned the methods of another tribe. Mardum had taught him that different predators hunted in different ways. Some through scent, some through sight or sound. Others- such as the Gyrer- through manners imperceptible altogether. Each predator hunted in its own fashion, and that's what his Legion were. Predators.

Edited May 10, 2018 by Beren

[bluntblade]

Sim wins for the FW category, Beren for story.

[simison]

Sim wins for the FW category, Beren for story.

 

I-what? I don't remember even finishing my submission.

[bluntblade]

 

 

Sim wins for the FW category, Beren for story.

I-what? I don't remember even finishing my submission.

I did wonder if it was complete or not, but you were the only entrant so I figured you won by default.

[Beren]

Thank you. I honestly didn't expect it.

[bluntblade]

The Task of a Shaman

 

+++++

The chamber echoed to the chittering of Legba’s armoury servitors as they began drilling segments of his armour in place. He gazed out of the window, fidgeting only occasionally as the servitors manhandled him. The Predators’ fortress-monastery hung in orbit around the remains of Abassi, Mardum’s sister world. Right now, Legba could gaze across the shattered surface beyond the Ngehlaben's great rows of cannon toward the Legion’s homeworld.

 

There were two distinct layers to a shaman’s panoply of war. Three, if one counted the bodyglove that went under the armour. Then there was the armour itself, heavily artificered and rune-graven Mk II, with the mono-eyed helm common to the XX Legion and a crystal hood. The Last Legion lived up to their moniker where supplies were concerned, retaining suits which others might consign largely to their reserves.

 

Over that went the more esoteric raiment. Reptilian hides, loops of claws and fangs taken from Mardumian beasts and xenos. Metal talons and teeth clinked among them. These the trophies of a dozen battlefields, shards of weapons and armour he had claimed and carefully worked into the desired shapes. As the servitors withdrew, Legion serfs in ritual dress emerged to festoon Legba’s armour with these tokens. He felt their resonance, the echoes of dozens of kills which he drew upon in battle through his psyker’s art.

 

A hooded cloak of snakeskin was extraneous in a warzone, but Legba was not armouring himself for that today and it suited his purposes. He stood and let the cloak settle over his armour’s power pack while his armour's Machine Spirit roused itself. Sure enough, the telltale noise came and his vision was overlayed with a patchwork of targeting arrays and runes.

 

Then he made his way through corridors lit not by torches, but Mardumian fungi which cast a strange, greenish light. This section of the fortress was kept for Shamans about to undertake a duty on the surface, and in preparation for that duty comfort was largely absent. A space marine could see well enough, but to all but the most hardened serfs it was a frightening prospect. Mardumian relics, alien weapons and the skulls of monsters lurked and then loomed from the shadows. The Ogounda, the Legion’s serf militia, did not patrol here.

 

From Legba’s chamber it was a short enough walk to the hangar, where a Stormbird waited, engines already idling. Other shamans joined him along the way, all drawn from the Ebonspear Tribe. Squads from the Tribe were waiting with the Loa J’lamu, the senior Shama. One squad was assigned to accompany each of them to the surface. It did not do to wander alone, for Mardum had a way of punishing complacency. These men were drawn mainly from the Tribe’s seeker squads, all men with the proven ability to move unseen. Their armour, less ornate, was also covered with furs and hides. A shaman was superlatively powerful, true, but it did not do to tempt Mardum.

 

Legba was carrying out one of the Legion’s most vital rituals, the only one which nowadays saw contact between the sons of Andezo and the people of Mardum. Ten shamans, as many as could be reasonably detached from the Tribe’s campaigns, would tread the surface for a month, seeking out worthy youths to be inducted into the Legion.

 

For him and two others, it would mark their confirmation as Shamans, once they had ended their travels and gathered their tithes. A Shaman might be drawn from one of several tributary worlds and in due time he might recruit on any of those, but Mardum loomed large in the psyche of the Twentieth. To stalk its deserts, jungles and caverns was to steep oneself in the world’s soul, and therefore the essence of the Legion.

 

To tread the surface of Mardum with this purpose cemented one’s induction as a Shaman, regardless of where one had been born. Delving through its unforgiving climes, living there for months on end, left one with an unerring appreciation for the world’s soul and how it had shaped the Predators. They might be born of Terra, a frigid Feral World or even a ship in the void, but Mardum’s essence flowed in them.

 

-----

 

Almost invisible on Mardum's night side, Legba saw three of its continents. Muatris, arid Kusak and, hugging the planet’s southern extreme and mantled by clouds, Vyrek. The latter was his destination.

 

The gunship entered the atmosphere via a broiling mess of storm clouds. Legion command favoured approaches that enhanced the mystique around their intrusions. Those of their cousins who bothered to find out tended to disapprove, but the Predators cared not. Let the Mardumians believe what they would about the sons of Andezo.

 

By the time the Stormbird broke through the clouds, the ruined hive below filled the vista, stretching beyond the horizon. Legba could tell that despite the lashing rain. It was ancient even in its ruined form, entirely colonised by the jungle around it. Creepers had delved upwards over the millennia, dying to create soil further and further up in the structure. This then gave a toehold to all sorts of other plant life, and fauna inevitably followed foliage.

 

Men, however, rarely ventured here. Other old hives were usually inhabited in several places, whole tribes regularly fighting over patches of territory rather like gangers in a hive that remained whole. Not this one. It was named Ch’kurtza by the locals, a realm of the dead in their myths. Here a warrior or hunter would find the sternest tests they knew, and his reward would be strength, death or simple disappearance. It was said that the sky-treading sons of the great Sambedi walked here sometimes, safeguarding the passageway to the afterlife from those same Ifriti they had driven out years before.

 

Legba had heard the story of that battle, of ancient ferrocrete running molten and metal boiling to vapour as the Shamans had bent the planet's soul to their purpose, casting out the corrupting entities. He could pick out a few zones, each a hundred or so metres across, which remained oddly bare even now.

 

The pilot selected one of these for his landing site, sweeping down to one of Ch’kurtza’s higher towers. Legba registered the life signs of avian creatures nearby, but they kept a wary distance. Even Mardum did not breed beasts that could bring down a Stormbird. Having seen Squighawks in battle, Legba was inclined to be grateful for that.

 

He and his retinue stood as the embarkation ramp descended. A Hounga like him should, by tradition, be the first Shaman to set foot on Mardum, denied the easy reassurance of seeing a senior go before him. He had a vox link to a star fort in orbit, but for any immediate threat he had only the ten warriors at his back and his own weapons and powers.

 

His boots rang with dull clangs on the ramp, and he felt the rain hammering against his armour like mortal bullets. Looking up, he saw the four highest spires towering above even this peak. The two highest almost vanished into the rain-smeared darkness. His retinue of seekers prowled after him, cloaks snapping in the wind and rain running down the barrels of their guns. They moved with a hunter’s assurance, no undue vigilance and no hint of arrogance. Legba's helm display showed him no life signs in the vicinity except for those aboard the Stormbird, already taking to the sky again.

 

The sergeant, Jukaba, approached. A son of Kusak’s deserts, he was nonetheless utterly at home here. Legba was quite aware that unlike him, the veteran had made a number of these treks into Mardum’s varied and deadly wilds. “The hunt begins, then?”

 

“Only the search, for now.” He must not let himself look callow now. “I have only to decide where we begin.”

 

-----

 

Legba did not cast his consciousness beyond his body as Librarians of other Legions might. The aether was still unquiet around Mardum even now, and to step into its currents was to invite danger beyond anything the world’s surface could offer.

 

He searched for what might be best described as a scent, a trace of violence. They resonated with the artefacts he wore, the faint breath of wind on his psychic senses. It carried the unmistakable feeling of death, a primal victory.

 

If he were to let himself pass into the currents, he might glean more. What nature of beasts had fought and died, the manner of the kill, perhaps even a glimpse of the act - but no. No, recklessness of that manner was unbecoming of a Shaman. A man might find prey more easily if he charged through the forest with a torch held high, but he would also announce himself to other hungry or hostile eyes. Neither the vigilant souls of the ancients, nor those Ifriti which might remain to prowl the limits, were complications that Legba wished to introduce to his work.

 

His escorts noted the subtle change in his posture. Not a word said, but their hands tightened a fraction, the gun muzzles rose a hair’s breadth or so. Voyume, one of Jukaba’s men, stepped forward, scanning the way ahead of Legba. Synchronised armour systems allowed the group’s members to gauge where their fellows were looking, but Voyume went further, easing the barriers he had built around his mind to allow Legba to exert a mild telepathic pressure, instilling a sense of the trail they followed.

 

Less than an hour later, Voyume had a literal scent to follow. None of them had engaged the filtration systems of their armour, inviting in the myriad scents of the high jungle. On most other worlds this altitude would render a habitat quite barren, but virulence seemed to be part of Mardum’s very essence.

 

Thorny branches, gnarled and thicker than his chest, crisscrossed the archways they passed under, often stretching between them and plunging the concourses into such profound darkness that even the Astartes’ were defeated. They switched to thermal imaging, but nonetheless it was scent that told them their trail was true. Blood, reptilian, and soon visible on the mossy floor.

 

It belonged to a Pustaka, a heavy-set saurian beast with massive forelimbs and brutally unsubtle tusks that it used to cripple prey in ambush attacks. It likely fed upon the big herbivores which inhabited lower levels, which also meant that it had been pursued here. Legba smelled burned wood and pitch, and his escorts found broken arrows and spears scattered around.

 

Only a few, ruined beyond all hope of repair, still jutted from the beast’s hide, far fewer than the wounds it bore - and that was before Legba allowed that the beast had been hastily butchered. Thrifty hunters, just as Mardum required men to be.

 

Legba pulled back his hood and twisted off his helmet, feeling the cold rain on his scalp but acknowledging no discomfort. He tore a hunk of flesh from the beast’s open flank - it was poor form to disregard a bounty like this. The seekers took it in turns to follow, always ensuring that half their number were helmed and fully alert, while Legba turned his attention to the Pustaka’s head. There was a more important reason he had sought it than food.

 

Perhaps it was appropriate that the Predators considered the importance of the Omophagea more than most of or perhaps all their cousins. It resonated with their formative existence on Mardum, every resource exploited for survival, for the seeking of prey, the insight to kill before they could be killed. The Omophagea gave them a resource which other Legions were loath to make use of, except under duress. The Predators used it as a matter of course, another resource that experience had taught them not to shun.

 

He took his knife and prised open the beast’s skull. Then he portioned the brain and ate, before considering.

 

Images flickered behind his eyes, largely mundane and dulled by an animal mind. Then sharp, blood-red memories laced with pain. Flint and metal, flaming arrows. Men’s staccato cries and grunts. Deeper pain and closing darkness.

 

Legba had what he wanted.

 

The Predators were particular about their recruiting in several ways that their cousins often were not. Legba knew well that the Halcyon Wardens and Iron Bears merely encouraged the youth of their worlds to be tested and offer themselves to the Legions, just as it was on the Throneworld. The Predators took no Terran stock, partly out of old shames but also because Andezo decreed it to be at odds with what he meant for his Legion. Unless they were taken in times of dire need - in which case they would face the very sternest of tests in their own way - inductees were to be brought into the fold with the most intimate understanding of the Galaxy's pitiless nature.

 

This was accomplished in one of two ways. The first was practiced by several other Legions, though with less rigid criteria. A Shaman might observe a battle or a hunt, and single out worthy youths who fell grievously wounded. By the psyker’s art and the miracles of Legion technology, they could be held on the edge of death until they were brought to the Ngehlaben.

 

For the man who simply triumphed, it was a more complicated tale. For XXth Legion lore told that it was easy enough for a man who had known no defeat to rise, and rise high. But such a man was like to be reckless in the climb, and when he fell, the fall would be terminal, dragging others to their doom. When a Loa spoke thus, the man would always be referred to as if he were a metaphor, a theoretical construct, but that was a lie. The man’s name went unspoken but it hung behind the words which were said, and the name was Kallast.

 

Kallast’s example taught the Predators that an inductee must know defeat, even the chill of death’s breath, to stave off hubris. This was ensured by the Shamans, and it was why the Predators were known as such to their people as well as the Galaxy at large.

 

Legba raised his eyes to the forested hive again, finding the trail, reading the currents of death. “Now,” he growled. “Now we hunt.”

Edited May 15, 2018 by bluntblade

[Doctor Perils]

Second Battle of Hagan Tertiary
 
"We came out of the Warp above Hagan Tertiary at 0500 hours standard. Intelligence had suggested that the Drowned may be in the sector, and so we immediately had void shields raised in preparation for an ambush - however, all our detectors picked up was wreckage of the XVI's fleet. A void-buoy floated amongst the ship ruins, transmiting call signs of the Predators Legion, along with Vox recordings of screaming mortals - obviously a deviant tradition of their savage planet, marking their territory like some primitive beast.

"Obviously, we understood this to be a trap, and so we manoeuvered the fleet in a wide arc to approach close orbit from a polar trajectory, limiting the risks of mines hidden amidst the debris in its geostationary orbit - this would make refuelling more complex, but the fleet had been given orders to follow the safest courses of action.

"From there, I ordered three attack squadrons into the void - two for close protection of the fleet and the resupply boats, and one for scouting duties. These were all to keep well away from the belt of wreckage, as I did not want potential proximity beacons to be triggered, alerting our rivals of our presence in the planet's orbit, in the eventuality a larger fleet was hidden elsewhere in the system.

"When two of the pilots of the scouting squadron reported nosebleeds, I thought nothing of it - the mortal hotheads had obviously increased their craft's acceleration beyond the recommended Gs, and would be repprimanded once they returned to the hangars. Three more however meant my curiosity was piqued: perhaps they had started an impromptu race?

"Then the ship's Astropaths signaled that they were detecting considerable psychic activity. Immediately I called for battlestations: we may not yet have seen the enemy, but they were definitely there.

"The entire Wing was already aloft by the time Auspex sensors finally picked up on what was really happening: rather then an incoming fleet, they found that the debris ring was... falling. The psychic activity that had been detected had not been directed as an attack, but had in fact been slowing the broken Drowned ships in their dance around the planet, enough for the pieces to start plumetting down to earth... down at us!

"I commanded the convoy fleet to scatter - there was no way that the void shields could withstand the kinetic energy of the sheer mass of metal accelerated by free fall over tens of thousands of kilometers. Simultaneously, my Auspex scanners detected forms detaching from the falling wreckage - attack craft, ready to pluck the fruit that were now ripe for the taking.

"Already knowing we had failed in our duty, I sent the Lightnings, Thunderbolts and Fire Raptors in pursuit of those small specks. As the metallic ring travelled to meet us on our course, many of our craft piloted by mortals peeled away from their respective squadrons, their nerve failing to lead them through the deadly cloud - they still died in droves, perhaps in greater numbers even then those who kept their course, leading into the steel showers with the armoured prows of their birds. On the whole, only the Legionary pilots did relatively well out of the ordeal, their super-human reflexes helping them to take the least damaging trajectories. I was concentrated on piloting my own Primaris Lightning, and only once I emerged from the other side of the tempest did I take the tally of losses: of the 200 craft that had left the hangars of the convoy ships, 12 Fire Raptors, 53 Lightnings and a full 68 Thunderbolts had been destroyed.

"Then I heard a thunderous crash through the Vox. One of the runes on my dashboard winked red, indicating another loss. Then a second. A third. Over the crackly Vox, one of the mortal pilots yelled that they had been boarded, and then his rune turned red too. I flipped my bird upside down, hoping to investigate: I flew around the wreckage of one of the victims and saw all I needed to in a blink - a tear in the hull, as if... a chainsword had hacked right through it.

"CLANG!

"That time, I didn't hear it through the vox - I saw the culprit through my own windscreen, less than a metre in front of my eyes: a Contemptor Dreadnought! These madmen were attacking void craft with Dreadnoughts!

"Not one to be phased so easily, I grabbed the plasma pistol I always kept in my cockpit in case of rainy days. When I saw the Contemptor raise its chainfist to strike into the Lightning's power generators, I ejected the canopy and shot the offender through the sarcophagus at point blank range.

"Bracing myself against the cockpit's edges to avoid floating off, I once more turned my craft around (noticing the difference in manoeuvrability due to the iron corpse still mag-clamped to my hull) - enemy attack craft were swarming the convoy flagship, the Heart of Jayern. Their numbers were far greater than those of my own depleted wing. Regretfully, I ordered all squadrons back to their closest convoy ship, then asked the remaining fleet commanders to leave the planet's orbit and make a warp jump here as fast as possible."


++ So you abandoned the Heart of Jayern? ++


"Yes, sir, I had no choice."


++ Wing Commander Dzielny. Do you know what the Heart of Jayern was carrying? ++


"No, Lord Syndic - my orders specified that all cargo would remain secret."


++ It was an Ordinatus Majoris. ++


"Ah..."

- Testimony of Wing Commander Venclasz "Flash" Dzielny, during the debrief of the failed defence of convoy n°7591.

Edited May 15, 2018 by Lord Thørn

[Beren]

That moment when you realize that you screwed up far worse than you had thought .

[bluntblade]

However, I would say this: if you're going to insist on a scene entirely made up unattributed dialogue, please use more spacing.

[Doctor Perils]

However, I would say this: if you're going to insist on a scene entirely made up unattributed dialogue, please use more spacing.

Oh, yeah, didn't notice the copy/paste had gotten rid of the formatting

[simison]

[My first entry is complete.]

 

Plainsrunner Tribe

 

The Seventh Tribe of the Twentieth Legion, the Plainsrunners were not simply a horde of barbarians racing across the terrain to clash with their enemies as the Goredrinkers and the Bloodhands often demonstrated. Instead, the Plainsrunners were a sophisticated force, carefully organized in a series of imbuthos, or regiments. Discipline was a hallmark of this tribe, and they served as a pillar of stability and honour among themselves and within the Predators. This would serve only to highlight the tragedy that would later befall them. 

 

As a mechanised infantry, the Plainsrunners relied heavily on transport vehicles, especially razorbacks and rhinos, to launch wide-scale envelopment attacks against their opponents. Dubbed the 'buffalo horns', the Plainsrunners favorite tactic involved an initial double flanking manuever, known as the 'horns'. Assaulted on the left and the right, the enemy was ideally pinned by this initial show of force. Once pinned, the main body of the Plainrunners would strike their disorganized enemy, the 'chest' of the buffalo trampling their foes. Finally, a reserve force was held behind the 'chest' of the formation, ready to deploy at a moment's notice where necessary. 

 

Beyond tactics, the Plainsrunner tribe was famous for its willingness to synthesize music with war. Several war songs were developed to celebrate victory, mourn the loss of their brothers, and to pay homage to worthy adversaries. Drums, in particular, featured prominently in post-battle rituals or pre-battle intimidation tactics. 

[simison]

It's that time again. Judges will be selected tomorrow, ideally.

 

Previous entries:

 

May - Predators

April - Scions Hospitalier

March - Elite mortal regiments

February - Halcyon Wardens

December/January - The Drowned

November - Imperial Army

October - Warbringers

September - Eagle Warriors

August - Fire Keepers

July - Warriors of Peace

June - Grave Stalkers

May - Void Eagles

April - Dune Serpents

March - Steel Legion

 

Remaining Legions:

 

I - Harbingers
III - Crimson Lions
IV - Void Eagles
V - Halcyon Wardens

VI - Iron Bears
VII - Berserkers of Uran
VIII - Godslayers
IX - Warbringers
X - Fire Keepers
XII - Wardens of Light
XIII - Eagle Warriors
XIV - Dune Serpents
XV - Grave Stalkers
XVI - The Drowned
XVII - Warriors of Peace
XVIII - Steel Legion
XIX - Scions Hospitalier
XX - Predators

[simison]

To What End?

 

Andezo 'stared' at the being before him. Although physical sight had long been denied to him, it was a loss that Andezo only keenly felt when life was truly absent. Otherwise, he could perceive far more interesting truths that the average mortal could merely guess at. One such truth stood before him. His brother, Daer'dd, had often been described as an overwhelming physical force forced into the form of a man. The tallest of the Primarchs certainly appeared as such to Andezo's vision, but what Andezo saw in his brother Daer'dd was dim compared to the brother who met with him now. 

 

While Alexandros may be the smallest of their brotherhood, Andezo could see a brilliance equal to a star contained within his flesh. A hint at the raw psychic might that his older brother could call upon, if he had any inkling to. Yet, the star was strange to Andezo. If he did not know better, it seemed...fractured in a way that was beyond Andezo's ability to discern or explain. 

 

"It's rude to stare," Alexandros quipped.

[bluntblade]

So,which faction's next?

[simison]

So,which faction's next?

 

Vote on it.

[bluntblade]

Rhetorical question. I vote... Harbingers! Edited May 28, 2018 by bluntblade

[MikhalLeNoir]

Isn't it time for a non legion faction again?

 

If so I say Knights to celebrate the next weeks release^^

 

If not I support.the Harbingers

[bluntblade]

I would also be on board with Knights

[Kelborn]

I join my brothers in voting for Knights!

[Beren]

If it is a non-Legion week, ditto.

[Doctor Perils]

Knights would indeed be cool :)

[simison]

Next non-Legion month is October guys. That will also be the time when we re-visit the fluff schedule.