[Hexfleet Virules] "The Dead Sands of Vigilus"

[Lagrath]

Time for a new short story / battle report! Tested out a new 2,000 point ITC Death Guard list for the Las Vegas Open – despite being tournament prep, it was an incredibly narrative game!
 

***The Dead Sands of Vigilus***

 

 

“Oi! Fasta ya gits! Dey ain’t movin’ so we gotta get to ‘em!”
 

The Evil Sunz Warboss was so loud, Virules could hear him bellowing out of the Battlewagon on the other side of the sand-buried ruins. Or maybe the Orkish ruckus was simply being carried on the powerful desert winds blowing across this forgotten corner of the planet.
 

Virules slowly closed his eyes and shifted his vision to a top-down view of the battlefield, aggregating the inputs of countless diseased flies he’d released into the air upon arrival. The Speedwaaagh had arrived with aggravating but not unpredicted haste; it would have been too much to expect that he’d be able to complete his work on Vigilus un-harassed. As a sorcerer he knew well that everything always came at a price. To enact the Grandfather’s work on the planet before the Warmaster arrived in the system, the price would be blood.
 

The Plaguelich blinked his view back to normal, or what counted for normal after centuries of transformation. His landing strike force was aligned in tight formation, a small force compared to his Hexfleet in orbit. All the better to escape detection by the psychic and technological surveillance scans of the other factions vying for the planet. Regrettably, Orks seemed to have an odd way of sniffing out a fight that surpassed the limits of conventional detection methods.
 

He stared impassively as the Orks barreled closer in ramshackle vehicles, on foot, and in the air. Most commanders would need to worry about the nerves of their troops in the face of such a violent wave. Virules had no such concerns. His lines were arrayed in a long wall of the walking dead, still as the grave. Behind them waited demonically-possessed Plagueburst Crawlers. Virules himself waited in the center of the line. The undead around them pulsed with the blessings of the Warp, soaking in the tolling of the Noxious Blightbringer’s bells, the sacrosanct chanting of the Tallyman, and the sorcerous aura radiating from Virules himself.

 

 

 

One large squad of Orks on foot came to a halt inside the crater-filled ruin at the center of the square, content to dare the Death Guard to come to them rather than facing the fury of the Plagueburst Crawlers and their plaguespitters. Unfortunately, the shelled cathedral was one of the three locations Virules needed to claim. To enact his ritual and bring more Neverborn to the surface, he needed to control a rough triangle of spots in this long-ruined desert town.
 

Unknown to the Orks, and perhaps even to the current Imperial defenders of Vigilus, these three buildings had once made up a triad of Adeptus Sororitas facilities for healing and blessing the sick and the dying. The potency of Grandfather-blessed sorcery depended, as it did so often, on the implications of the underlying Sacred Numerology - symbols, angels, numbers, and other arcane and mathematical items whose interlinked fates were clear to the followers of the Plague God.
 

The two large Battlewagons split off, one to each side of the skeletal remains of the central cathedral. Virules could sense that one wagon contained the Warboss, an Orkish Psyker, and a large retinue of bloodthirsty Nobs. The wagon on the other side of the building had already answered any questions as to its contents. Twenty Tankbustas suddenly stuck their heads and weapons out the windows and roof as their ride came closer. A massive rain of rockets flew out of the Battlewagon, burying the Plagueburst Crawler on the Death Guard’s left flank in such a deluge of firepower that it was instantly taken out of commission despite its unholy wards and unnatural resilience.
 

Lucky or not, the Tankbustas were clearly a dire threat to the Death Guard’s ability to counter superior numbers with anti-infantry armor. Virules had hoped to save his trump card for the Orkish foot infantry and the Warboss’ Nob retinue, but the disease must adapt to conquer the host. He silently sent a psychic signal up to his flagship in orbit.
 

On his opposite flank, Virules sensed the imminent surge of Orkish eldritch energies. Green lightning cracked the air and another huge horde of Orkish infantry burst into being, bellowing and barreling with violent force into a squad of Poxwalkers. The brutes hit hard, quickly reducing one of the shambling hordes to a single survivor. If that word was appropriate to describe a member of the undead.
 

The Plaguelich quietly raised an arm in the direction of the conflict, sending quick mental commands and drawing hexagrammic symbols into the air with one finger. As the sole Poxwalker fell back, two nearby Plagueburst Crawlers moved up and torched almost two-dozen screaming Orks in boiling green flames. As soon as their bodies fell, the green flesh began whitening and falling off like burning paper. Within moments, sorcerous impulses infused a new horde of rotting skeletons, restoring the right flank to full strength as the fallen Orks turned on their remaining kin.
 

A second thunderclap impacted on the left side of the battlefield between the Tankbustas Battlewagon and the furthest away of the three objectives. Ten Blightlord Terminators announced their arrival in a burst of bloated flies and ancient teleporter technology. Moments later a Nurgle-blessed Terminator Sorcerer from an unnamed Legion teleported in behind the safety of the Blightlords. A Death Guard Chaos Lord with horrific green wings landed next to him, swooping down like a concealed bat from his hidden alcove on a nearby roof.

 

 

The result was a foregone conclusion as the Hexfleet forces coordinated with experienced synergy. The left flank Poxwalkers rushed up, pushed forward with unearthly speed by the doling bells of the Noxious Blightbringer. The Foul Blightspawn rushed in behind them, just within maximum range of his horrific arsenal. With the flip of a switch he activated the hose on his side, dousing the Battlewagon with a huge layer of sizzling green chemicals.

 

 

The poorly-constructed transport dissolved almost instantly, a few of the Tankbustas melting to death before they could bail out. As the rest of the mob gathered their bearings, the nearby Blightlords calmly leveled their combi-weapons and shattered all of the surviving greenskins in a shower of plasma and bolter rounds. A few of the Blightlords charged a short distance into the ruins on the far side of the battlefield, easily stomping and kicking the ten hiding Gretchin to death.
 

His left flank and the furthest objective secured, Virules knew that the rest of the battle would hang on his ability to overcome the rest of the Orks without the help of his elite terminators. With another burst of psychic signals and short-distance vox commands, the Plaguelich and his forces surged forward out of their deployment arena. He infused the central squad of Poxwalkers with a wave of hexes and Warp energies, sending them to charge through the middle cathedral at the large squad of Orks hiding in the craters. They quickly overwhelmed the greenskins, eating and clawing most of the Boyz to death and securing the objective with superior numbers.

 

 

Virules looked to the side of the cathedral and saw a huge greenskin with a unique-looking claw jump off the Battlewagon, the Orkish commander shaking the ground and blowing sand everywhere with his landing. The Ork looked around with evil red eyes, brutish cunning appraising the Death Guard momentum carrying the Heretic Astartes to dominance across all key locations in the town.
 

Throwing back his head, the Warboss released a huge roar that shook loose chunks of sand on ruins all around the square. From all angles, hidden Orkish reinforcements burst into the town. Four Deffkoptas roared down from the angry skies, landing next to the cathedral and unleashing a hail of missiles into a Plagueburst Crawler, which luckily fared better than its earlier brother.
 

On the right flank, the Orks who survived the plaguespitters were joined by an unstoppable green tide of new Boyz flooding in from the town’s edge. On the left flank, 10 Stormboyz dropped from the skies and prepared to assault the Renegade Astra Militarum regiments holding the Death Guard rear deployment. Worst of all, an Orkish shaman and numerous massive Nobz with large machetes poured out of the Battlewagon behind the Warboss. One of them carried a huge banner with crude symbols of their false gods.
 

The second wave of greenskin assaults threatened to break Death Guard lines bereft of the Blightlords slowly shambling over from the other end of the battlefield. The Nobz charged the Poxwalkers in the cathedral, which were reduced, like their early brethren on the right flank, to a sole dead warrior. Despite having been restored to full strength earlier, the rotting soldiers on the right were completely wiped out by the crashing reinforcements of thirty Boyz.
 

Virules looked around, the battle now so close that there was little need to rely on his eyes in the sky. The Stormboyz on the left flank fortunately landed too deeply in the sand to charge the traitor mortals. The sorcerer turned away from the struggling xenos – the lasguns and Foul Blightspawn on that flank would be more than enough to eliminate ten trapped Orks.
 

He sent the sole full-strength Poxwalker squad from the left flank into the Nobz in the center building, simultaneously casting more spells to Nurgle so that the other, nearly-gone squad already in the craters would be reinforced by any dead Nobz. Pushing past two Poxwalkers shambling at his side, Virules began a slow cataphractii-armored gait towards the Warboss, holding his scythe straight out in challenge. He had to eliminate the alpha beast if there was any hope of holding the center cathedral and the right flank. So often, Nurgle asks his children to take their fate into their own hands.
 

The Orkish leader duly complied, bellowing in a guttural language and smashing aside zombies to reach the Death Guard warlord. Taking only minor injuries from the host of vicious winged insects Virules sent at the Ork on the charge, the Warboss raised a huge relic claw and landed a half dozen colossal hits. Fortunately, the ancient terminator armor and Virules’ own potent hex-based wards deflected almost all of the hits without damage.

 

 

The Warboss gaped at his claw in stupid confusion; clearly the weapon’s results were typically different. As the Ork reared back to strike again, Virules interrupted and surged forward with Warp-infused speed. The Plaguelich landed a brutal cross, cutting a huge X across the Ork’s chest with a massive scythe said to have been blessed by the Grandfather himself. As the Warboss stood stunned, Virules whirled in a dervish of green feathers and black robes. The sacred third blow ran across the Warboss’ shoulders, cleanly decapitating the massive Ork in one cut.
 

Virules was moving again before the dead Warboss even hit the ground. He cleared the right side of the ruined cathedral and immediately impaled the Nob with the massive banner, holding him high in the air on the scythe for the rest to see before throwing the body into a nearby crater. The four Deffkoptas flew over him, hitting Virules with several crude bombs.

 

 

The primitive contraptions proved more effective than the Warboss, taking large chunks out of the sorcerer’s armor and protective wards. Shrugging off the damage, Virules did a half-turn and thrust an open palm towards the Orkish shaman desperately attempting to siphon power from the rapidly-declining greenskin numbers. Thick clouds of diseased flies again flew out from underneath the Plaguelich’s robes, this time consuming the far inferior Orkish psyker in a thick black swarm of stinging and biting insects.

Distracted, Virules was blindsided as a huge presence crashed into his right side and lifted him into the air despite his bulk and terminator armor. The remaining Battlewagon chose to stop the sorcerer’s rampage by charging with brute force, the massive Deff Rolla carrying the already-wounded warlord straight through one of the cathedral’s remaining walls and trapping him against a pillar with crushing force. As the Battlewagon continued to press into his chest, Virules knew that even his superhuman constitution and thick armor were too damaged to survive being pinned for much longer. He again sent a telepathic missive to his fleet in orbit, quickly fading from the planet as the flagship’s teleporters locked on to the beacon inside his armor.

 

 

 

Despite the Orkish vehicular mayhem, the Hexfleet’s victory had been secured. The Boyz on the right flank were being wiped out by the two remaining Plagueburst Crawlers, Poxwalkers had cleared the Nobz down to a few desperate survivors, the Stormboyz were annihilated where they had landed, and the Blightlord Terminators had almost reached the central cathedral and were pouring combi-fire into the Battlewagon. Nurgle’s chosen clearly held all three objectives, and soon the ritual could commence. Despite the ferocity of the Evil Sunz, at least for now, the sands of Vigilus belonged to the diseased, the damned, and the dead.

[Llagos_Tyrant]

Really interesting read! Really cool to see that it's following the course of a battle report and has the usual twists in a game. The Warboss looking at his claw expecting different results felt particularly familiar to some of my experiences.

[Lagrath]

Haha yeah you never know what happens with invulnerable saves and feel no pain!