Story Anthologies

[Beren]

To avoid cluttering up the Book 1-Insurrection thread anymore, I'm carrying over any of the work on the Story Anthologies over to here, including the edited versions of any story that needs adjustment.

 

To reiterate, the currently decided lineups so far are:

Introductory Anthology - The Dinner, Great Games, Prospero, Baal

 

 

Harbringers Anthology - The Colleges, Ghost Crusade, Caged Lightning, Fraught

Halycon Wardens Anthology - Ascension, Happiness is..., Beneath the Surface The Warmaster's Work

 

And the standing Dramatis Personae for the Introductory Anthology is as follows .

 

Dramatis Personae for the General Anthology (Excepting those who remain unchanged from Canon.)

 

Icarion Anasem, Primarch of the Ist Legion-the Lightning Bearers, Stormborn

-Raiden Athrawes, Sentinel of the 9th Company and Equerry to the Prinarch

 

Hectarion Mycenor, Primarch of the IIIrd Legion-the Crimson Lions

 

Yucahu Sumakutaa, Primarch of the IVth Legion-the Void Eagles

 

Alexandros Darsham VonSalim, Primarch of the Vth Legion-the Halcyon Wardens, Warmaster

-Pyrricles, Fortress to the Order of the Shield, Lord Protector, Equerry to the Primarch

-Irvin Ruel, Chapter Master

 

Dae'rrd Niimkiikaa, Primarch of the VIth Legion-the Iron Bears

-Lord Chief R.Damon Redd, Master Slayer, Master of the Fleet, The Iron King

-Aandegg Niimkiikaa, Master Shaman

-Solomon Grimm,Legion Champion

-Therox "Cass" Casstiel, 1st Lord Chief

-Achille Nibaasiniiwi "The Wolverine", 1st Praetor

-Ezibiknh "Ezekiel" Spinebreaker, 2nd Lord Chief, Master Warrior

-Lotarra Sarrin, Iron Queen, Fleet Mistress of the Iron Bears

-Minerva An'saalmo, Fleet Lietenant of the 2nd Grand Wartribe

-Ellen Temeter, Rememberancer of the Primarch Dae'rrd

 

 

Raktra Akarro, Primarch of the VIIth Legion-the Bezerkers of Uran

 

Koschei Kharkovic, Primarch of the VIIIth Legion-the Godslayers

 

Kozja Darzalas, Primarch of the IXth Legion-the Warbringers

-Vizenko, former Atrefos of the Asklepians, prosecuted at Baal

 

Niklaas, Primarch of the Xth Legion-the Fire Keepers

 

Gwalchavad, Primarch of the XIIth Legion, the Wardens of Light

-Arngrim Valten, 'The Legend', Blademaster of the Wardens of Light

 

Socraes Travier, Primarch of the XIIIth Legion, the Eagle Warriors

 

Azus Bahmut, Primarch of the XIVth Legion-the Dune Serpents

-Bayhut, Captain

 

K'awil Pakal, Primarch of the XVth Legion-the Grave Stalkers

 

Sorrowsworn Morro, Primarch of the XVIth Legion-the Drowned

 

The Jade General, Primarch of the XVIIth Legion-the Warriors of Peace

 

Nomus Sardauk, Primarch of the XVIIIth Legion-the Steel Legion

 

Pionus Santor, Primarch of the XIXth Legion-the Scions Hospitalier

-Antonidas, First Captain and Equerry to the Primarch

-Metis Odyssallas, Second Captain

-Inna Santor, Prima Medica, adoptive sister to Pionus Santor.

-Diokles, Sixth Captain

Andezo Sambedi, Primarch of the XXth Legion

Captain Nux Pyrruk, Captain of the Shepherds of Eden and formerly of the VIIth Legion

 

For the Harbingers

Dramatis Personae for the Harbringers Anthology

 

Icarion Anasem, Primarch of the Ist Legion-the Lightning Bearers, The Stormborn

-Raiden Athrawes, Sentinel of the Ninth Maniple

-Jiro, Captain in the Ninth Maniple

-Tetsuo, Lietenant and later Captain in the Ninth Maniple

-Daigo, Volta Terminator

-Hishto Sissietan, Techmarine

 

Dae'rrd, Primarch of the VIth Legion-the Iron Bears

-Therox 'Cass' Castiel, First Lord Chief

-Lotarra Sarrin, Fleet Mistress

-Ellan Temeter, Rememberancer to the Primarch of the Iron Bears

-Minerva An'Saalmo, Naval Lietenant of the First Grand Wartribe

 

Alexandros VonSalim, Primarch of the Vth Legion-the Halcyon Wardens, Warmaster

 

Socraes Travier, Primarch of the XIIIth Legion-the Eagle Warriors

 

Merrice Ginlas, Rogue Trader turned renegade despot.

 

For the Halcyon Wardens

 

 

Alexandros Darshan VonSalim, Primarch of Vth Legion-the Halcyon Wardens, Warmaster

-Irvin Ruel, Lord Commander Primus, Prefect

-Pyrrhicles, Fortress to the Order of the Shield, Lord Protector, Equerry to the Primarch

-Malis, Citadel to the Order of the Shield

-Tannhauser, Consul

-Vasilios, Brigadier

-Zaphar, Epistolary

-Ezekyle Abaddon, Ancient

-Pheidus, Master of Signal

 

Thom Zivich, Lord Steward of House Zivich

 

Eneractus, Archmagos of the Forgeworld Eskut

 

 

Icarion Anasem, Primarch of the Ist Legion-the Harbingers

 

 

Hectarion Mycenor, Primarch of the IIIrd Legion-the Crimson Lions

 

 

Yucahu Sumakutaa, Primarch of the IVth Legion-the Void Eagles

 

 

Koschei Kharkovic, Primarch of the VIIIth Legion-the Godslayers

 

 

Kozja Darzales, Primarch of the IXth Legion-the Warbringers

-Vizenko, former Atrefos of the Asklepians, defendant of the Prosecution of Baal

 

Gwalchvad, Primarch of the XIIth Legion-the Wardens of Light

 

 

Nomus Sardauk, Primarch of the XVIIIth Legion-the Steel Legion

Asima Ginaz, Captain of the Third Company

 

 

Pionus Santor, Primarch of the XIXth Legion-the Scions Hospitalier

 

 

Johren, High King of Maelynos

The High Marshal of Derneum

Miaisten Pewyn, Emissary of House Maelynos

 

 

 

 

Links to wave 1 stories not in this thread in full.

A Family Dinner-

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/320524-brotherhood-of-the-lost-the-stories/page-2?do=findComment&comment=4363178

 

Prospero-http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/320524-brotherhood-of-the-lost-the-stories/page-4?do=findComment&comment=4528396

 

Baal-

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/320524-ref-tale-the-stories/page-5?do=findComment&comment=5085541

 

Happiness is-http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/320524-ref-tale-the-stories/page-5?do=findComment&comment=4980903

 

The Colleges-

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/331712-botl-monthly-fluff-challenge/?view=findpost&p=5225846

 

Caged Lightning-

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/331712-botl-monthly-fluff-challenge/?view=findpost&p=5219502

 

Edited February 24, 2019 by Beren

[Beren]

All reference to Wilhym and the Jackals removed. A paragraph from Nomus' perspective added. A very minor extension on Gwal's thoughts about K'awil.

 

 

The Great Games (By Bluntblade)

 

More than any other, this contest isn't just between the individual Astartes, but also the Legions’ Techmarines and Mechanicus detachments. Every ounce of expertise they possess has been poured into optimising the jetbikes that whip around the arena circuit.

 

Azus knows full well that a simple race doesn't favour Captain Baybars, but takes some satisfaction in noting that the Serpent’s bike is by some way the quietest.

 

“This is a distraction,” mutters Yucahu beside him. “We waste time and resources on such frivolous things as pride and prestige.” Azus turns slightly to regard his brother, still keeping one eye on the race. Yucahu has only ever been taciturn in his experience, but this is remarkably close to anger from the Starborn.

 

“I don't recall you being this irritated before, Yucahu.”

 

“It was tolerable when I was on my ship. Now I find myself surrounded by people fixated on this carnival of grandstanding. Every unnecessary distraction- rivalries, the prattling of mortals, bundled into one vast mass.”

 

Azus is quietly amused. He speculates, for a moment, on whether Hectarion has finally succeeded in forcing some nerith down Yucahu's gullet. “I care little for these events myself-” the Serpents are largely relegated to also-rans here, the price of walking a path of shadows in a culture that elevates open warfare above all else “-but would you not concede that they fulfil a purpose of sorts? The common citizen and soldier need such spectacle to encourage them in the service of our father's vision.”

 

Yucahu glares at him, ignoring the race completely. “Such spectacle undermines us and only encourages the common man in his insipid bets and speculation.”

 

Azus is puzzled. A rather novel experience. “Bets?”

 

Yucahu's expression sours even more. “Across the Galaxy, they place bets on which of us would win in duels amongst ourselves. Can you imagine anything more trite?”

 

Azus shrugs, looking over to where Daer'dd and Hectarion cheer on their champions. Their Legions certainly are favoured by this contest, their bikes neck-and-neck as they shoot around the course. All the same, I fancy the Warrior of Peace's chances. Nor should the Predator be underestimated “And this bothers you? I doubt you and I feature at all in these bets, for good or ill.”

 

Yucahu fails to rise to that particular barb, entirely occupied with his present gripe. “I fail to see how it aids Unity to have our followers pitting us against one another. I don't care-” he raised a hand, forestalling Azus “-that the very idea of us fighting in such a way is absurd. The absurdity itself exacerbates the problem. Our subjects should respect us, not make mascots of their leaders. And it harms the authority of the Warmaster. The number of times my men have heard a whisper that one or another of us would 'kick Darshan’s arse'... just try and tell me that we should permit such things. The likes of Raktra and his ilk will encourage it.”

 

Azus tries to placate him. It doesn't suit him, but he forces a light chuckle. “Brother, I hardly fear that foolish wagers will be enough to undo our brother, especially once he hits his stride.” Alexandros had already conferred with him and Icarion about a joint expedition into the Koronus Expanse, and Azus feels buoyed by the ambition of the scheme.

 

“The whispers won't stop, and they'll get worse. People will begin to mutter that someone else is more worthy, and the Crusade will suffer for it. I shouldn't have to tell you of all people how much harm a whisper can do.”

 

Yucahu lapses back into silence. Azus regards him silently. Brother, in so many ways you make yourself the loneliest of us all.

 

-----

 

“I'm sorry brother,” Alexandros sighed. “But it would be taken as an insult to the Mechanicus, no matter the good will behind it.”

 

Daer'dd took another sip of the tea, frowning. He had finally secured a brief meeting with his brother in between events, and he had not hoped for this response. “The Auretians make this offer freely, brother. And frankly, they're much less hidebound than the Magos. Just think of the possibilities if we could push our technology forward at a greater pace.”

 

“There are already those within the Mechanicus who fear that we see them as only a junior partner in the Crusade. Favouring the Technocracy in this manner would only intensify those worries. And to be blunt, brother, we need to keep the Mechanicus happy far more than we do the Technocracy. Allowances can be made for Huron, given your influence, but they cannot be replicated elsewhere.”

 

“You have a compromise in mind?” Daer'dd prompted.

 

Alexandros eyed the dregs in his cup. “I will suggest that the Technocracy collaborate with certain, less doctrinaire elements within the Mechanicus. In the meantime, their formidable tech would be best put to use by their own troops, if they will join us on our campaigns.” He leans back in the chair. “I admit it's not perfect, brother, but no compromise ever is. We simply have to proceed with caution, lest we upset the workings of the Crusade, no matter the good will behind it.”

 

Daer'dd nodded in a subdued manner and reached for the pot. “Truly I do not envy you Alex, if you have to wrestle with these matters regularly. Give me a Compliance any day.”

 

Morro quietly moved away from the door, disgust broiling in his stomach. What kind of Warmaster was this that troubled himself with such trivia? Worse still, Darshan spoke of compromise and caution. Meekling. Morro could stomach some of his brother's views and actions if only he would act like a man worthy of his station, and rule. Instead all he saw was a politician, seeking to soothe and mollify. He doesn't understand what's necessary. To overcome the worst in our Galaxy requires cold hearts and adamantine resolve. The Imperium would either shed its squeamishness or grow fat and weak, disregarding the inadequacies of the human frame.

 

He was already certain that Darshan would fail to see the necessity of his gene-research, either from small-mindedness or fear that it would upset the small-minded. His face contorted in disdain. He was required to obey his brother and hail him as leader of the Great Crusade.

 

He didn't have to be pleased about it.

 

-----

 

Captain Pyrruk's words about celebrating unity came back to Ellan as she watched the combatants circle. Clad in ancient dogi robes, these were the masters of unarmed combat within their Legions. It was a cagey match, the Fire Keeper’s defensive stance set against the Grave Stalker’s cautious motions, but there was tension here that went beyond the contest itself.

 

Did other people perceive these divisions? To her it seemed they were laid out for all to see, whatever these games were meant to demonstrate. In the crowd, you could trace the cracks if you knew where to look. To Antonidas and Damon Redd, cheering for the Fire Keeper. To Raktra's terrible eyes locked on the Grave Stalker. To Alexandros, barely watching the bout as his eyes roved over the audience. She could only guess that he perceived the rifts as well, but far more acutely.

 

When the Grave Stalker made his move, it came as a flurry of blows that the Fire Keeper shook off easily. The combatants displayed little emotion beyond the urge to win. Then again, she thought, they were representing their Legions. The audience had much more freedom to make their feelings known. She recognised the Shepherds' leaders here and there, noting the studied looks of neutrality on their faces.

 

Shouts broke out as the Stalker ducked under his opponent’s guard, but then the Fire Keeper simply seized him in a bear hug, squeezing like a vice before twisting to throw his opponent down on the mat. The Stalker rolled over into a crouch, ready to spring, but immediately the larger warrior was on him, pinning him to the ground in a choke-hold. A judicator stepped forward as the Stalker tapped out his submission, and a mixture of cheers and groans spread around the amphitheatre.

 

Ellan returned to scanning the audience. It was, she thought, a rather strange way to celebrate unity. Tomorrow she would make her excuses and take Lotara, Lemuel and Inna to one of the galleries set up here and elsewhere, showcasing the work done by remembrancers in chronicling the Crusade. That would be rather more fitting, she decided.

 

-----

 

When Pionus debates, he does so with a rigid certainty that can be quite maddening for his brothers. Antonidas watches with the faint trepidation he always feels on seeing primarchs in disagreement. Such proud beings, unused to backing down. Kozja has been trying to pry his brother's attention away from the Terminator duels for the best part of an hour. Now a Predator faces a Void Eagle, a contest that holds little interest, and he has finally drawn Pionus into a conversation on gene-augmentation.

 

“To set the Astartes above the common man as rulers is to risk the crusade,” Pionus counters. “There are key aspects to the mortal experience to which we and our sons are not privy. For all our intelligence and experience, the people must be led at least partly by those they recognise as their own kind.”

 

“Nonetheless, you of all people cannot disregard the fruits that genetic augmentation offers. I never understood why you settled for such a slow pace in your endeavours on Iona. Improvements might not be available to all, but simply granting them to the brightest and best would open up such possibilities!”

 

Pionus cocks his head, pulling a frown that Antonidas recognises from many lab sessions; the face he makes when something fails to work as it should. “Kozja, augmentation for the few would risk doing more harm than none at all. Elevate a section- any section- of Mankind, and they become removed from the rest. They begin to think only of their superiority, and cease to think of those they rule over. Other people become tools, their dreams and potential subordinated to the roles that their betters allocate them. You would have us create a gene-aristocracy? Just think on the Qarith.”

 

“I see no reason why we should find the experience of foul xenos instructive.”

 

Pionus’ face hardens. “How about the fact that those xenos used to be human?”

 

An Iron Bear steps into the ring, facing a Warrior of Peace. Antonidas fancies he detects a hint of relief on Kozja’s face as Pionus’ attention wanders again, his point made.

 

-----

 

The Jade General would have liked to continue the debate, but recognises that there is no reasoning with Odyssalas. It is vexing almost to the point of aggravation; the one brother among seventeen who calls himself a scientist is as much a slave to sentimentality as the likes of Daer'dd. What should have been a cool, clinical mind instead insists not on dedicating its expertise to the needs of humanity, but to their happiness.

 

He casts a disinterested eye over the bout currently unfolding. A Steel Legionare and Lightning Bearer, dueling with phenomenal speed and dexterity and drawing appreciative cries from the watchers. Tedious. He taps a finger idly on his seat, and frowns at his failure to restrain the tic. That others might see it is beside the point. It is a flaw in his mental strength, which should be excised.

 

A few products of those experiments are visible from where he sat. Compromises all, their potential hampered by the Hospitaller’s timidity. Most obvious of all Inna Santor, conversing with a shaven-headed Lion and a woman in remembrancer’s robes. Pionus’ sister.

 

Were the Jade General inclined to such crass emotion, his lip would curl in disgust. As it is he reflects that such emotional attachments encapsulate his brother's failings. Indeed, the failings of all his brothers. Except, perhaps, Kozja, who seems to comprehend what they were meant to be, and how far they have strayed from that goal in their selfish individualism.

 

He reflects for a time on how different his own failure is. There is plainly an advantage to emotion- having witnessed Daer'dd and Raktra in combat, he can hardly deny it is a potent, if volatile resource- but for all his intellect it lies beyond his grasp. He puts the matter to one side to ponder the hypothesis one of Kozja’s apothecaries presented him with the previous day.

 

-----

 

Nomus watched, though his eyes were closed. The Symbios implants allowed him to watch through the eyes of his sons watching the duels, even those Legionaires who participated themselves. He could see and analyse the movements of his opponents from a dozen different angles. It took restraint to keep himself from advising. He had taught his Legion to fight together after so long doomed to die as individuals. Nomus understood that these games served a purpose of display and unity, even if he could not quite grasp how.Yet still his mind returned to what his Legion had been before his coming. Individuals competing for glory, pursuing their objectives with no thought to the cost suffered by the whole. He feared his brothers were beginning to tread that same path. His eyes opened and saw the bare hall before him, resounding with the echoes of the celebration. If this was to be a display of unity, it would be best that he return to the festivities.

 

-----

 

In the mountain city of Orioc, great halls had been given over to a museum and gallery celebrating the victories of Mankind. A painting of Daer'dd and Odyssalas, side by side as they brought destruction to the Laer. An engraving of Niklaas, standing triumphant with his hammer raised. Image after image that would surely inspire awe in any human.

 

Yet Socraes felt only disgust as he stalked the hallways. The narcissistic Imperium raised monuments to itself, compounding the act by placing one of them in the same place where the last priests of Terra were dragged from their halls by the Lightning Bearers. He had to restrain himself so as not to scream at the fools around him and try to enlighten them as to where they should direct their worship.

 

But he knew he must be patient. The path had been revealed to him, and if he could endure just a few more decades of quiet work then he would see Mankind bow to the Dark Gods. And the day that work was completed, he swore, he would raise the grandest temple of all on this spot.

 

-----

 

Gwalchavad thinks that spectating must be a peculiar experience for Icarion. Does the Stormborn's gift mean that he perceives the one, inevitable outcome to each duel? Or does he, like Alexandros, see a myriad potential futures? His brother's face is as inscrutable as ever, eyes fixed on the ring where Arngrim Valten and the Godslayers’ champion are just stepping into the spotlight, waving to the audience. Arngrim grins as he spots his primarch, a gesture Gwalchavad returns behind the mask.

 

Icarion flashes a small smile, but gives nothing away. Clad in silk robes in the tradition of Madrigal, he looks every inch the sage rather than a warrior. It adds to the reassurance Gwalchavad feels whenever he stands beside Icarion or Alex. So many of his brothers shun him, either sneering at his beliefs or disgusted by his beliefs. A few have shown him genuine friendship, though he always has a sense of being held somewhat at arm's length, save for Koschei.

 

There is no fellowship among the odd brothers out; Ka’wil so lonely and resentful, despite Gwalchavad’s best efforts. The lord of the Grave Stalkers wields his nature as a shroud, casting a fearfull pall over those that approach him.The Jade General, aloof and clinical, who responded with utter blankness to his offer of friendship. Then there is Azus, one of the few brothers whose acquaintance he has not sought out. Knowing what he does of the Serpent, he feels unsure if he wants to know him.

 

But with Alexandros at their head and Icarion at his side, he is content. The Koloss Syntheticide has only served to confirm that those two are truly the best of them, and for all the ferocity and the awful cost, it was a magnificent thing to fight alongside them. Let alone to stand beside his father for the last time in… who knows how long? He has faith, however, that one day they will stand together again, father and sons ushering Mankind into the new dawn.

 

Then Arngrim raises his great axe, and Gwalchavad puts his thoughts aside as the dance begins.

-----

 

Wandering through the gardens, Andezo notes the new Warmaster, tending to a Madrigalian blossom. Peculiar in so many ways; does Alexandros seek to make amends for being set above his brother, or is this some bizarre display of dominance? The possibilities are manifold, and Andezo can no more discern whether this is a statement of his brother's desire to care for all his brothers or simply him indulging in his customary pastime. He grows bored with his speculation, and does not care enough to ask his brother.

 

Instead he moves through the garden, never able to entirely shake the discomfort he feels in a setting where nature is tamed, forced into shapes simply because they please the human eye. Irrational, even at odds with his own code; the forces of the Crusade hack and burn their way through the Galaxy, doing away with anything that threatens Mankind's dominance. That is even more the case with his Predators, cutting out the influence of the neverborn wherever they find it.

 

And yet he has spent much energy on preserving the wild heart of his Legion, resisting the introduction of technology that would gut the wild places and give his people a life of ease. A true warrior spirit must be tempered and bound in the balance of nature. Some of the others frown upon this - Pionus prominent among them. Yet even he has his Scions test themselves against the monsters of Iona, and leaves much of the world as it had been in the uncounted centuries before he arrived there. Pionus does not understand the true balance, coddling his subjects and weakening his Legion, in spirit if not in strength. Alexandros is more consistent in his denial, taming Delos completely and letting his people live in comparative luxury, as if training and indoctrination will suffice. Is it any surprise that his Legion are better known as diplomats than warriors? And now they are thrust into the first rank as the Warmaster's Legion.

 

Andezo is troubled by the contradictions of this turn of events, and is also wary of thinking such thoughts in the Warmaster's vicinity. Again he seeks a more comfortable train of thought, alighting on how species from every Primarch’s homeworld have their place here. The representation is hardly equal - how could it be, when verdant Delos sits beside arid Dhul’hasa - but they are all there, even half-hidden flora from Fenris and Prospero.

 

Icarion appears from an archway a corner, deep in conversation with their father. Andezo has to resist an urge to slink back, watch from behind cover of some sort. Absurd - a holdover from Mardum where, given his status as the apex predator, it was already farcical to think of concealing himself - but he always feels uncomfortable upon spotting Icarion with the Emperor. Low envy is a part of it, but then there is also the worry that he is somehow lacking, unworthy to stand as close as the Stormborn does.

 

The Emperor's aura encapsulates perfectly how such phenomena defy the medium of colour as an explanation. To say it is white, the intensity and sheer range of emotions rendering it impossible to gauge, is true, but the sheer vastness of his presence would be lost. To read it is like trying to walk in a hurricane, swim in magma. It makes it difficult even to look at him, and he wonders if his father knew He was fashioning a son who would struggle to be in His presence. There are also his pariah brothers, who must pain even a psyker as powerful as He. A strange family indeed.

 

Icarion's is comparatively easy, but still Andezo fancies that no one without a Primarch's mind could make sense of the warring emotions. On the surface Icarion basks in the attention of their father as he always has, tinged with some relief that Andezo guesses stems from their father keeping him close, even now. Anxiety, however, keeps threatening to break through the surface, carrying with it sadness and a faint but unmistakable current of anger. Icarion has not spoken of the new order except to say that Alexandros would enjoy his absolute fealty.

 

That unnamed part of him, the hunter's instinct, tells him he is being watched. And sure enough there are Alexandros’ eyes, peering calmly at him. No accusation or scorn, merely quiet curiosity. Andezo stares back, wondering if he should say something, knowing that his brother already knows of a dozen things he might say. Then a bell tolls and voxcasters announce an imminent contest, and he gladly makes his way from the gardens.

 

-----

 

Niklaas’ tactical mind falls into the routine he knows best as he walks part of the Palace walls. Despite the beauty, the raw majesty of the place, he cannot help but see factors to be weighed by his siege master's intellect. Weak points, ideal locations for particular weapons, places where retreating troops might rally and invaders could be stalled. The idea of Mankind's defenders being assailed here, let alone invaders breaching these walls, is patently absurd, but he can't resist the temptation. Indeed, the absurdity is part of the daydream’s appeal.

 

It is only disrupted as he claps eyes on the plinths that stand around a gate. Himself and seventeen of his brothers in marble, triumphant, even if the sculptors couldn't quite grasp the natures of his more elusive brothers. The sheer physicality of Hectarion and Koschei and the utter dignity of Icarion and Kozja translates to stone much more readily than the likes of Azus or Ka’wil.

 

But they do not hold the Castellan’s eyes. Instead his gaze fixes on two empty plinths, whose one-time occupants should have risen to be as revered and beloved as any of them. Instead they are ghosts, glimpsed in allusions so vague that none who did not meet them would ever guess.

 

For those few who do remember, the sight is a cruel blow. It would be better in some way if memorials stood to the flaws that undid them, to the twin curses that bound them to their awful fate. No Primarch was meant to be forgotten.

Edited January 20, 2019 by Beren

[simison]

It has my approval

[Nomus Sardauk]

Mine too. :)

[Beren]

I've isolated most of the Harbringer specific portions from the original story and tried to bridge over the gaps slightly, but in such away that the portions referring to the other two Legions aren't invalidated so they can be used for their respective anthologies. I'm not entirely sure it worked. I'd say that the most noticeable gap is where I resorted to ellipses between Raktra's arrival and when Icarion starts speaking.

 

Edit: Re-added the italics.

 

Fraught- The Lightning Bearers (by Bluntblade)

The fleet sat at anchor, waiting. It had arrived first, as was its nature, and now awaited the arrival of two more fleets. They were the first. The First Legion. The first to be raised, the first to have their Primarch discovered, the first in the eyes of the Emperor. So they had believed. Another fleet was drawing near, coming in to dock alongside the waiting Lightning Bearers. The Iron Bears and their mortal allies were arriving.

----

Ellan took another glance over at Lotara, particularly her uniform, and what she saw confirmed that Lotara was anticipating a lot of disagreement over tactics today. Her medals had been dredged from the mess of her wardrobe, as they usually were when Lotara was expecting arguments with another fleetmaster. The only other times Ellan had seen her wear all of her various decorations were the meetings that had punctuated the campaign with the Warbringers. Even the dragon-wing circlet was in place, black iron veined with copper.

“Are we working with any of the same fleetmasters you’ve served with before?”

Minerva pulled a console towards her, smiling at how fully Ellan had come to feel part of the Legion itself. “Only Tesio. I can't claim to know him personally, I was serving on a frigate back then. He's capable - Madrigal breeds good naval officers - but generally they all defer to whichever Lightning Bearer commands their ship. Foresight is handy in the void, it seems. The rest I know by reputation, but this will be Icarion's battle above all.”

----

“All bridge personnel, for the next five minutes you have full permission to make your way to the viewports and gawp. I’m not going to deny you a good view of the Kalium Gate.”

Ellan was already stood there, one hand pressed against the glass as several hundred people jostled behind her. For once, the old aphorism about sights that stole the breath was entirely true. Simply calling Kalium a Warp gate, in truth did it no justice at all.

Even if it had shared the space with planets or moons, the elliptical structure would have been vast. Here, in an empty stretch of the void, its near thousand-kilometre span dominated the region, leant scale by the vessels hanging around it. Some of the largest and most formidable ships ever fashioned by human hands, now made to resemble small fish around a cetacean.

Its sheer size and the strangeness of its construction signalled that it could only have been created before the Age of Strife, when Man’s daring and innovation had run free of any restraint. Even Lord Koschei, who had brought the first Legion fleet to Kalium, had remarked upon a feeling of oppressiveness whilst exploring the depths of the structure.

The Imperium had built fortifications over the constructions of its predecessors, much as it had on Terra, enveloping the original edifice. So here the Necklace, with chains linking hundreds of fearsome fortress-stations, with a hive-sized bulwark at the apex. It was toward this, the Keystone, that the Dragon rose. As it ascended, Ellan began to comprehend the full scale of the Gate when she recognised the Thunderchild, Icarion's flagship, hanging at anchor. The docking plates weren't just capable of accommodating the Gloriana-class ship and its escorts, they did so with acres to spare. The Dragon - Throne, a star fort would fit comfortably at each.

“Well, bugger me on a Land Raider,” Minerva whispered in her ear. She was grinning in a way that suggested she was on the verge of laughter, eyes sparkling. “This is the sort of thing that made me want to sail in a fleet. I mean…” she gestured vaguely with her hand while she thought, and Ellan leaned in to listen. “I’ve seen nebulae, worlds that have barely formed and just how bizarre a black hole truly is, but this is our inheritance. This is what we were once capable of building, and if we succeed in the Crusade, we could achieve things like this again.”

Ellan grinned. “You were a true loss to the Iterators.” Minerva laughed, shaking her head, and reluctantly returned to her station.

Icarion's orders had slowed the usual order here, and dozens of Army and Munitorum craft queued to dock or enter the Gate. The closest dispersed meekly as the Iron Bears fleet drew near, as was only proper. Only those Lightning Bearers ships which remained out in the void stood their ground, hailing the newcomers.

To Ellan, it looked like Icarion was making a point by stationing his own ships in such a way, when the standing garrison were clearly quite capable of performing those duties. As she came back to the throne, she saw that long-range auspex images also showed several I Legion companies and perhaps a full regiment of mortal troops assembling on the docking plate to which the Dragon was being directed.

Lotara's mouth twitched slightly when that communication came in, unusually direct and insistent. She wasn't fond of being instructed by other mortals these days, and informal inter-Legion etiquette stipulated that such messages took the form of a request rather than an order. She replied with a curt acknowledgement rune.

Minerva shared her irritation. “Every other time we’ve served with a Legion since Terra, they’ve strutted and puffed themselves up. They'll be comparing bolter sizes if this carries on much longer.”

“They're over the shock of Alexandros becoming Warmaster,” Ellan hazarded, watching the pictographers flitting from place to place, looking for a perspective that might capture the full size of the structure above them. “No one ever really believed the Legions were equal. Now they jostle for position beneath him.”

“And don’t they just love to remind everyone that they were the First?”

Minerva lapsed into silence, and as the fleet slowly rose the pictographers switched to magnocular lenses, zeroing in on the Ist Legion ships. Before long, they were close enough to view them with the naked eye, and again Ellan was struck by their graceful appearance. A large portion - perhaps even the majority - of Icarion's fleet were the products not of Mars or Jupiter, but Akira, Madrigal’s moon. Using knowledge wrested from the catacombs of Madrigal, Icarion had turned Akira into a shipyard to rival even the moons of Jupiter and a number of subordinate forges had been established throughout the Madrigal sector.

Ellan wondered how the power of those ships compared to Daer'dd's fleet. Not the Dragon, of course - it seemed absurd to imagine any vessel rivalling it - but while the Bears’ ships had their martial aspect slightly tempered by elegant decoration and that curious Huron style of metalwork that left their spires looking like monstrous iron trees, Icarion's fleet was simply beautiful, almost to the point of fragility. A false impression, to be sure, but they were ethereal in a way that rivaled the zephyr-slight ships of the Eldar. A few started to shift position, pwering up engines to change their formation. Unexpected perhaps, but at least it gave her a chance to observe that their grace extended to their movements, their resemblance to the Eldar fleets more than just appearance.

Then, quite suddenly, there was no time for contemplation. An alert - not quite an alarm, but enough to send a ripple of unease through the remembrancers and crew - rang out midway through the Captain's query towards the Lightning Bearers change in stance. Ahouandate turned in his seat to face Lotara. “Mass Warp-wakes detected, captain.” Minerva pulled a screen closer, and Ellan could see the ghost images solidifying rapidly. Runes pulsed across another, Iron Bears and Imperial Army alike caught by surprise.

Not the Ist though. They were wary, but not surprised. These events had been witnessed before they truly occured. It was the third fleet. The Bezerkers of Uran.

----

Rogue Trader Merrice Ginlas had shown a certain tendency towards power-building during her long career. This had been remarked upon by a few Fleet and Legion officers who had served with her, but she was hardly unique in that regard. In any case, when she announced her intention to become governor of a small collection of systems on the Imperium's southeastern borders, none saw any real reason to gainsay it.

With the vastness of the Crusade, no one had scrutinised exactly which planets she laid claim to, and observed that she had set her sights on several agri-worlds. Certainly, none entertained the idea that she would appropriate those to extort wealth from her neighbours, starving them into submission. Using those resources she would then negotiate, leveraging billions of lives and all the productivity of those planets she possessed and those served by the agri-worlds.

The audacity of her scheme was impressive, as was the speed with which she had built up her army. The scheme had clearly been long in the planning, and might well have succeeded. The Imperium’s resources were not limitless, and permitting Ginlas was in some ways more palatable than the costs of waging a war to retake those planets. That is,if not for the fact that two of those agri-worlds had not been earmarked for an Expeditionary Fleet tithe. This in itself would not have sufficed had those fleets not been included Lightning Bearer elements. So when dozens of I Legion seers began to have visions of rations running short and stymying campaigns, Icarion himself, it was believed, had turned his foresight to the mystery. Perhaps it had been aided by his connection with Ginlas; she had served as outrider to his fleet for four decades before the Koloss Syntheticide.

Regardless, even as Ginlas escalated her plans, the Stormborn had a subjugation force converging on the Kalium Gate.

----


Urgency was apparently why the meeting began on the docking plates, and not within some vast hall within the Keystone. The finer details would be hammered out during the Warp transit.

Still, Ellan noted, no matter how urgent the situation, time could always be set aside for ceremony. So here they were on the docking plates, the meagre atmosphere gusting from the arrival of the capital ships and landing craft. She tried to match the Daughters’ rapid strides as Daer'dd's party disembarked.

The Bears hadn't bothered to match the pomp with which the Lightning Bearers greeted them. Daer'dd's Totem Guard, Cass and the senior captains’ command squads, a file of the Gishada and Captain Sarrin. A little deference couldn't hurt, especially when the Berserkers had already put on their obnoxious display.

The Lightning Bearers were, naturally, immaculate, arrayed behind their master. The pale silver of their warplate glinted softly in the gloom of the void and the shadows cast by harsh spotlights. Ellan noted an unusual number of volkites; a reminder that the I Legion had sallied forth even before Unification, and taken to the stars in the days when it was possible to equip every Legionary with that lethal technology. They were held loosely, but not casually, the Lightning Bearers’ poise suggesting just the right degree of vigilance.

But for all their poise, each warrior of the First was a pale shadow beside their Primarch. Ellan felt her pulse quicken to a thump in her chest. This was the warlord she had learned to idolise above all others as a child, as had five previous generations of Temeters. On Qarith Prime and Terra she had seen him from across halls and arenas and thought herself lucky for that. But here, in the role he was born to, his presence was more potent than she had dared to imagine.

His armour was a seamless meld of Martian tech-genius with the ethereal designs of Madrigal, a testament to the bounty Icarion had reaped for his people in the underground vaults of his homeworld. Its elegance never once undermined its martial nature. Daer'dd, she thought, might move with a grace that seemed impossible for his size, but Icarion’s poise went beyond even that. This, she guessed, was a product of his clairvoyance, a perfect economy and elegance of movement that strained at the bounds of what mortals could understand. At the same time, there was a severity to it, quite different to what she had seen of the Warmaster. Alexandros wore his elevated status lightly; Icarion inhabited his.

The difference between the two brothers here was heightened further by Icarion’s almost androgynous appearance. When compared against Daer'dd, Ellan wondered if he even needed to pick up a razor. Despite his size and obvious strength, he was sinuous, with the kind of beauty that so many ladies of Terra would kill for.

He retinue shared that grace for the most part, and almost all who went without helmets had the unusually youthful appearance that Icarion’s gene-seed gave them. There were few chainswords, but plenty of vibro-katana - weapons typically wielded by Legionaries from Madrigal in place of inelegant chainblades. Power weapons, without exception, conformed to the curving designs of Bushidan heritage.

His bodyguards’ faces went hidden behind eyeless faceplates which Ellan struggled to look at. She knew the Volta underwent a rite of blinding, and the idea of discarding a space marine’s astonishing eyesight was difficult to process. Their movements were utterly untroubled by their blindness, but somehow that made them more unsettling. Ellan had a sensation of being perceived with senses she couldn’t detect in return.

It was with some relief, then, that screaming engines announced the arrival of the Seventh Legion....

... “It would be appreciated if you would look upon me and not the remembrancers, brother.” Icarion’s voice was somehow harder than Ellan had imagined it, even though it carried the suggestion of something quite ethereal. “History has to be made before they can record it, after all.” His tone was perfectly judged - just the right degree of reproach, sufficient authority to ensure that no one took his pause as a cue to speak. Almost imperceptibly, the Bears and their mortal servants stood taller. What Ellan felt was mostly relief that the master of the VIIth's cruel gaze was wrested from her to fall upon his brother.

Beyond his voice, Icarion was hard to read, just as she had heard others say about the Emperor. That made sense, she supposed; people still spoke about him as the closest to the Master of Mankind and his psychic powers were well-known. The aura of power about him was refined where Raktra’s was raw, echoed by the elegance of his movements. He was now at the centre of the group, and had moved so smoothly that she had trouble remember him placing himself there.

Now he started to outline his scheme and what was waiting for them at the end of their journey, but Ellan was watching the faces around her as much as she was listening to the words. Something about the expressions she saw was odd, and it took her a few minutes to guess what it was. Raktra and his Berserkers showed no sign of having been chastened, neither shame nor wounded, belligerent pride. Different individuals seemed to respond to Icarion’s words in subtly - or at times, not so subtly - different ways. She was at a loss to explain it until something Cass had said drifted into her mind.

He had been describing how it felt to stand in the Emperor’s presence, and an oddly disconcerting feeling that came afterwards. “I have always found myself questioning whether He truly spoke. Did His lips part and air stir, so that I could hear His words? Or -” he raised a hand to his temple “- did His words only sound here, and my brain not quite register the difference?”

Perhaps Icarion spoke the same way. Perhaps the words one person heard were not quite the same as those another heard, the sum of what Icarion expressed being too much for the mortal or even transhuman mind to fully interpret. Perhaps it was even intentional on the Stormlord’s part, tailoring his words to what each member of the audience needed or wished to hear from him. If that was so, then Icarion’s brilliance went beyond anything she could imagine. Which would be both wondrous and unsettling in the way Cass seemed to have experienced.

In her reverie, she missed much of what was being said, and the end of the meeting came unexpectedly to her, while no one else showed any surprise. The commanders of the three Legions set off for their transports and the Warp passage to come.

----

The voyage took some four days, during which Ellan spent most of her time on the bridge, watching Lotara, Daer’dd and the flickering holos of captains, fleetmasters and the other Primarchs flesh out the strategy Icarion had devised. Half of it was simply to see and hear the image of Icarion, who continually made revisions as - she guessed - his scrying and that of his Legion’s seers revealed new targets. On the second day it became apparent that Ginlas had garrisoned her planet’s twin moons, and so it became necessary to allocate ships and companies to overrun them. Raktra opted to lead these attacks personally, and Icarion forsaw no reason to gainsay that.

---

In battle, the difference between the Astartes fleets was visible enough one knew how to interpret the blizzard of runes and tactical feedouts that consituted a battle map. The ships of the Iron Bears were like an axe, hewing straight through anything that opposed them and leaving wrecks broken in half. The Bezerkers were like a serrated knife, tearing with a controlled savagery into the weakest parts of their opponent. Their prey was left gutted, dead in the void. The Lightning bearers were a stiletto that plunged through the storms of firepower and straight into the heart of the enemy formation. The tip of that blade was the Madrigalan flagship. Crafted to the specifications of a Primarch, it turned aside every shot hurled at its hull until within reach of its true target.


----


Lotara had returned to her usual posture, feet hanging lackadaisically over one arm of the throne. With all her finery, it was even more incongruous than usual.

“Copper Fang, rise,” she instructed. “Starboard lances, target the Blood-Stepp’d - two impacts should do it. Eighth Squadron, you're clear to launch, Okelion Wing stand by to escort. Huron's Resolve, hit the cruiser ahead of us. Cyrn’ss, commence countdown, ninety seconds.”

The fangs of the Imperial fleet were carving through the enemy formation, not stopping to engage in protracted fights but racing onward, overwhelming shields and landing boarders. Swarms of fighters and interceptors guarded the boarding vessels, covered by the escorts at the rear of each fang as they rejoined the formation.

After the first attack, the effects of the boarders were beginning to tell; cohesion was weakening, ships drifting and already sigils were switching colour to indicate a few successful seizures. Now the second wave attacked, fragmenting the enemy's defences further.

A plasma cannon bombardment was followed by a tremor with a different pitch, as Cyrn’ss and his company were sent hurtling across space to board the enemy frigate. With all its planned torpedo deployments complete, the Dragon turned all its energies to disabling or destroying vessels instead, moving further away to allow other ships to slip in and loose their own projectiles.

The bridge never felt more full than during battle, as sensorium operatives worked to ensure the formation held, gunnery officers matched weapons to targets and remembrancers tried to get the best view of proceedings without getting in the way. Under standing orders from Lotara the Strendu dealt, gently but firmly, with anyone who obstructed the running of the bridge.

A few metres away from Ellan, Johann was jotting down motifs that would later be worked into another of his symphonies. He liked to compose a short one for every void battle he saw, and tried to give each a distinctive character. Judging by her earlier glimpse of his notebook and what she understood of his shorthand, this one would be all darting strings and frenetic percussion.

Runes flickered on the screens, and holos showed ships rising clear of the enemy formation, the boarders fully in control. Another rune glimmered, confirming what the viewscreens and main strategic holo showed - the Thunderchild had engaged the enemy flagship. It also signified what they could not convey - Lord Anasem had teleported over at the head of the boarding party.

----


Katana were of limited use in the confines of a ship. Raiden used his wakizashi to cut through what resistance his volkite didn't end before the enemy came within reach.

This was a battle without any semblance of grace. Just a dull jog through empty passages, followed by a momentary pause as his gift told him of the deaths that awaited round the corner. Here, they were mostly death by melta fire. He reached for a krak grenade and saw the angle and force that would deliver it at the feet of his adversaries. Behind him, Tetsuo already had a grenade in hand, and it too was in the air before Raiden's had even exploded.

The frag blast tore its victims open a second before Raiden's volkite killed the first survivor. Another man clad in power armour - clearly an officer - came at him with a chainsword. Raiden leaned to one side, seeing the uncomprehending anger that so many of his foes felt when they saw the Grace of Madrigal. Without really looking he flicked out with his sword and the man folded across the wound. Then the uniquely foul smell of burning faeces reached him, pungent even through his helmet’s filters.

In his laziness, he’d opened the man's bowels. He swore, motioning Tetsuo and the others past him while he flicked the sword, trying to remove the remaining filth. Too late; it charred on the blade in the heat of his disruptor field.

As the trudge continued it became just another odour. Ginlas clearly cared little for her serfs, and the residue of tens of thousands of lives served as noxious proof. It mingled with the scents of war, and the noises reached them of what mortals did when the Legiones Astartes broke into their dwellings. Moaning and whimpering from those who supplicated in the muck, and here and there the sounds of those who chose to spend what might be their final moments desperately copulating. He wondered how that must feel for them, to be so insignificant that an act of total futility was what one resorted to at a time like this.

Raiden ignored all those who didn't resist, at least when his gift confirmed a lack of deception. Those who attempted subterfuge lived long enough to be sure they had been foiled. A few of his men were less sanguine, and he had to chastise them for venting their anger in unsuitable ways. A slave had no choice in how his distant mistress acted. If he didn't actively fight for her, what purpose was there in splitting his head? It was another unnecessary loss of resources, when they would already expend plenty in putting down this subterfuge.

As they ascended and found more dangerous foes, they began to make full use of the Oni. Raiden himself had taken one of the teleportation packs, although he was keenly aware of the risks inherent in using one here, in the confines of a ship. They required keen foresight even by the standards of Lightning Bearers - without it, a warrior ran the danger of embedding himself in the ship’s structure. They also necessitated total concentration, so there was scant possibility of simply flitting through a melee, manifesting wherever they wished.

Just as Raiden had seen the Emperor do on Stengah, that finest of battles, marred only by what had come after. They had known something vast was coming, and only imagined great things for themselves. Certainly they had never considered that their primacy would be lost. His irritation distracted him, and he was forced to block a Kroot mercenary’s knife. Reacting, a sign that he needed to clear his thoughts and focus on the fight. He wove around another swing - the Kroot hadn't even begun it when Raiden started moving - and opened its chest with a diagonal slash. The alien fell, and he hammered a boot down on its skull for good measure as he moved to engage the next foe.

But all the while in his head, there was an undercurrent of speculation. Would they be waging this war - would Ginlas have rebelled - had the accolade of Warmaster gone to the man she owed her fief to? A small part of him wondered whether his master was turning the question over in his mind as well.

As if on cue, his vox crackled into life. “Sentinel Athrawes.”

“Lord. We estimate our arrival at the engine blocks to be four minutes.” I Legion estimates were more reliable than those of their fellows; foresight tended to help in that regard.

“Secure them upon arrival, but interfering with them will not be necessary.” The rest did not need to be said, especially not with Raiden’s gift to tell him. Icarion had the bridge - the engines were of concern only if the rebels tried to sabotage them in a doomed act of spite. It was also unnecessary to ask if Ginlas had led the fleet. From the regal anger in Icarion’s tone, buried deep but still discernible to his equerry, she was plainly elsewhere. Ensconced in her palace below, no doubt. Raiden knew what that meant - the people of Madrigal had learned it hard during the storm of madness ushered in by the Thunder King. The foe retreated to their lair, so you tore open their den and scoured it.

-----

“The sky is weeping for our lords.” How often had he heard the whisper of that seditious doggerel? Perhaps every other planet where a human civilisation had required dragging into Compliance. A constant to those operations was the downpours that followed, maybe a week later, maybe a month, brought into being by the thousands of craft that breached the atmosphere to bring the Imperial Truth to unwilling ears. Gunships, supply vessels, bulk landers carrying Titans and Mastodons. If the childish souls who spoke of weeping skies had any sense, they'd say the sky lamented to behold the Emperor's - his fury. The Stormborn's fury.

Land Raiders, set down by specialised gunships, trundled westward, the sound of their guns lost to the larger, slower craft that brought the rest of the force down to the surface.

Icarion saw all of this without eyes, his astral body gliding just ahead of the gunship that carried his physical form down to dispense justice. It was the only way to perceive the cityscape with any true clarity; debris from the bombardment had made a joke of visibility even before planetfall had begun. Sonar suffered in the murk - only The Drowned and Scions Hospitalier used it with real efficacy in such conditions - and thermal imaging was perhaps the most idiotic notion of all when so many engines burned promethium in one place.

But the inner eye pierced the clouds. Looking past the dust, Icarion saw the cratered ruins swarming with soul-lights and auras. Even machine spirits were revealed to him, embers kindling anew as the tanks ground their way across the rubble. The second wave was far larger than the first, rolling out from the massive Tetrarch transports.

Normally these would only be deployed at the outset of what was expected to be a drawn-out battle, and in these sorts of actions they would only be used to convey mortal troops and war machines to the battlefield. Today, however, they served to underline the message Icarion was so keen to send; no one reneged on their oaths to the Emperor of Mankind and found any fate but destruction. The population would see His post-human armies sally forth from their gargantuan ships and trample any resistance that greeted them.

It was also why Icarion, just this once, had chosen to descend in this manner himself, rather than by Stormbird. He would emerge flanked by ten companies and an entire brigade of mortal Rakurai. There was something vulgar about the display, even he would admit - to himself. The Kusana landers were not as graceless as their lumpen Martian counterparts, but even the shipwrights of Akira couldn't disguise the brutal aspect inherent to such massive vessels.

He withdrew to his body of flesh in time to see the radial wave of dust thrown up by the landers, obliterating the view of anything more than a kilometre away within seconds. Beside him, Raiden twitched as he called his body of light back, a fraction behind his Primarch.

“Quite a host, lord.”

Icarion nodded, though his frown did not ease. “Our prestige is not entirely diminished, it seems.”

Raiden shifted his weight slightly, uncomfortable with Icarion’s words even though he broadly agreed with them. For the I Legion this had become habitual, judging the respect they had been given before - both as the First, and then the first to be led by their Primarch - with what they got now.

There was some cause for encouragement here. The Berserkers had done what was required of them, and Icarion could not help but consider that Alexandros would have been hard-pressed to achieve such a result. The Iron Bears had likewise carried out their orders, with no obvious rancour.

“Have you determined what is to be done with the captive soldiers?” Raiden asked.

“Conscription into the most convenient penal regiments for those able. Those being, in this case, those serving under Raktra.” He didn’t have to see the questioning look from his equerry. “Summary executions have ended enough rebellions. This way they get a chance at redemption, however frail. And as with their fleet, I will not sacrifice the utility of so many men and weapons to mere vengeance. We have higher concerns.”

The Volta holding his spear held it out even as Icarion reached for it, with the strange poise of one who lacked sight but still perceived everything. So keen was the foresight of his guards that every order was anticipated. Thus they did not fall into step with their master - Primarch and Volta moved with such synchronicity that the finest picter would not have found any delay between their movements.

The Harbingers marched down the embarkation ramps, and passed through the occupied zone at a rapid march. Here, the first wave regrouped, took stock and ran inventories of their wargear. Tech-priests and remembrancers flitted from place to place, the latter tending to any damage or malfunctions they could remedy in haste, the latter trying to find something profound or profitable in the dull in-between spaces that came with war.

Those efforts came to an abrupt halt when the tanks rolled forth, Land Raiders actually dwarfed by the Mastodons they flanked while Icarion ascended to a ridge of broken rockcrete. His legionaries took up positions around him. The Rakurai spread out in their own formations to the side, less striking but still an eye-catching prospect, armed and armoured so as to rival the vaunted Solar Auxilia regiments and the Daughters of Daer'dd, who stood to the north. South of them was a rather less admirable sight; the penal regiments that served under the Berserkers. There had never been much sense in handing good man to Raktra's command, and he appeared content with the dregs of the Imperial Army. Few cared if a couple thousand criminals were pulverised by overzealous artillery or riddled with cancer after too many fights alongside the Blood Boilers.

All this Icarion had seen.

" We are the First. We have been slighted by this treachery."

He could see the enemy falling, their armies burning. At the center of it stood a single individual.

"We will not let it stand."


----


Icarion was already splattered with gore, which in turn soaked the dust coating his armour. The enemy had fought well, but it was futile. They were up against the First Legion, the mightiest, led by the Emperor’s - most favoured? - most accomplished son. That, at least, had not been taken away.

The Volta swept the halls, every shot ending a rebel. Anyone who thought them diminished should see what was done here and know the truth. See the punishment visited on those who saw fit to break faith with the First Legion and spit on the honours they had bestowed.

He would find her first, his foresight made sure of that. Their gory path ended at some ornate doors, black iron and bronze. Ogryn and geno-elites in power armour barred the path for a while, but First Company would only be denied for so long. When it was done, Icarion knew that he needed no company beyond those doors.

No need to even defend himself. Ginlas recognised when she was beaten, and threw down her sword and pistol. “Anasem. I knew it would -”

“Silence, treacherous whore.”

“Whore?” Her expression became a smirk, deepened to a sneer. “Of all the insults, I never expected that from a Primarch. But it fits - the bitter words of a godly eunuch.”

“Eunuch?” The blade of his spear slid under her chin, the tip resting against her throat. “Then I share your surprise.” His voice was cold; he had little desire to prolong her demise, else he would have given her to Raktra. But he wanted to hear her next words, in the same way one probes a wound.

“But it fits, doesn't it? After all, you're the Emperor's disfavoured lackey.” She saw the snarl that he barely repressed, and laughed. “What? Where the truth otherwise, surely I'd address you as -”

In his mind's eye, she said “Warmaster.” He unmade that future.

His spear jutted ten centimetres from the back of her neck, and her last words were lost to the gush and gurgle of blood. It failed to banish the scorn from her eyes, and fury mastered him. With a flick of the wrist he dislodged her from the blade, sending her corpse flying to land in an undignified heap.

For a time he held still, his anger stoked by his own loss of control. Then he became aware of footsteps which would soon ring out from the hallway, and crossed to the doorway. Flinging the doors open, he found Daer'dd and his lieutenants, who immediately saw the blood on his spear and looked past him.

Daer'dd's face was grave, and for the first time he spoke to Icarion with reproach in his voice. “That was ill done, brother.”

“I did not think you one for lamenting the death of a traitor.”

Cass stepped forward before Daer'dd could respond. “What my lord means is that it would have sat better with us to see the renegade brought to trial and then executed under the authority -”

“Under the authority of the Warmaster?” The venom in his voice shocked Icarion himself, and he saw the Bears exchange glances.

“The authority of the Emperor, brother,” replied Daer'dd quietly. He hid it quickly, but Icarion recognised consternation on his face.

“I’ll send a detail to see to the body,” he said stiffly, and strode from the room. His anger dissipating, he was left with an unfamiliar anxiety. He had always managed to control his resentment before, and in truth he was shocked to realise how deep it ran.

-----


Icarion occupied a high-backed chair in the Thunderchild’s strategium, poring over dozens of profiles and biographies, candidates for planetary and sector governors to oversee Ginlas’ old domains. Once he would have delegated them from his attached Army units, men whose quality he knew, but the Adeptus Terra seemed determined to annex this side of the Crusade, and so he had their options foisted on him. Raiden sat close by, scrutinising them in turn, noting how the recommendations were from academies in Segmentum Solar instead of regiments. He wondered how far this was the doing of the Emperor or the Warmaster. Part of him suspected a power-grab by ambitious bureaucrats. That sort of thing was met with disgust on Madrigal.

“I see now that, despite the prestige of the Warmaster, the swordless have the whip hand over much of the Imperium,” he murmured. “Alexandros asks that I turn my attentions here and there and diverts resources to assist me, but the true rulers of the Imperium are this army of scriveners.”

Raiden paused before replying, more for etiquette than any real need. “Perhaps, Lord, this is the time in which we find ourselves. The Great Crusade nears the edge of the Galaxy; within two decades we will have little to conquer but the Halo Stars. The Imperium is readying itself for peace.”

“Might we not call that premature?” Icarion responded. “Madrigal has nestled in the Imperial fold for nearly two centuries, but we have not forsaken the lessons of Old Night. When our world pieced itself back together we understood the value of leaders who can protect, and we expect them to bear swords and be ready to wield them to this very day. Now a Primarch must submit to judgement and oversight, while weaker men are given rein over the Empire we carved out form them. It smacks of hubris.”

He sensed Raiden’s next question, and held up a hand to forestall him. “No, not on my Father’s part. His genius lies behind all that is significant in the Imperium; it simply encompasses too much for this to be an error of His. He would have seen the peril of imposing tithes wholesale long before the policy was implemented, and Alexandros would have been spared months of wrangling with eaxactors and forcing them to see reason. No, these things are permitted by the Emperor’s absence, not His approval.”

The old frustration was there, as it always was, smouldering away. Not once, on Qarith Prime or Terra itself, had they learned the Emperor’s purpose, even if the I Legion were better placed than others to speculate. And all the while this fed another frustration - if they had been trusted with the duties and secret lore of the Shadow Crusade, why had they been shunted to the side? The changing Imperium hardly took away from those anxieties. The new age was only a dozen years old, and so much had changed already. The respect that the Stormborn once commanded above all his brothers was ebbing away, mortal bureaucrats saw fit to question the writ of the ones who gave their lives to martial service. A tipping point was looming; Raiden would have known that even without his second sight.

A knock came at the door. “My lord?” An Astropath, Madrigal-born, entered. “We have a request for your attendance, at the nearest possible convenience. It purports to be of the direst import, for the eyes of the First Legion high command only.”

“That’s quite singular boldness.” Icarion steepled his fingers. “Who makes this request?”

“It comes from Lord Travier, sir.”

Edited January 23, 2019 by Beren

[Beren]

Replaced references to Company with Maniple. Switched out Jiro's blackened irises with the tama mentioned in Scourging of the Eternal Dirge.

 

I also added the Harbingers Dramatis Personae to the first post.

 

Ghost Crusade(By Bluntblade)

 

This world had no name, nothing to distinguish it from any other habitable world in the Galaxy. This was the lie that would be fed to the people of the Imperium. Only a few would ever know the truth- those warriors who waged the Ghost Crusade.

 

Stark, yellow-grey sunlight illuminated the clouds through which the Stormbirds descended. Raiden Athrawes gazed out through a viewing port as the craft dropped out of the clouds, and the landscape was revealed beneath them. A once-great city, its architecture gnarled and twisted. Great towers, shaped to resemble vast bones, rose from the ground. Now he could see the drop-pods of the first wave, and the lights of the battle on the ground. The flashes of volkites and power weapons, turned against beings from the Warp.

 

The ruined capital swarmed with the creatures, a seething tide that broke against the Lightning Bearers’ formations. The first wave under Sentinel Daivyn had engaged the creatures. Now Raiden's maniple, along with three others, were to secure the rest of the city, herding them into designated kill-zones. Thus the Gyges Cleansing would begin, far from the eyes of all other men.

 

He always felt the weight of such occasions, more than any other kind of offensive, but more so today. He had only two Terran months ago been elected to the rank of Sentinel, after the loss of the Maniple's previous leader Kurosion. It had been a tightly contested thing, with many backing Captain Jiro for the role instead. They had been friends since Raiden joined the maniple as a sergeant, but the rivalry that began as half a joke had seriously strained that bond. Now Raiden had to prove himself worthy to his entire maniple, not least to Jiro, who sat watching him from across the chamber. He worried that Jiro might feel that bond was fractured now by his elevation; the two had been made captains within a month of one another, during a costly war against the reptilian Keylekid.

 

Focus. Find the current, and it will carry you. Sensing that they had thirty seconds left in the air, he stood. “Ninth Company, ready yourselves. For Terra and Madrigal!”

 

-----

 

The Astartes surged from the transports, volkites spitting death at any foes they sighted. Many did not even look at their enemies, simply knowing where to aim. With the immediate area secure, they moved out into the city, scattered bones crunching underfoot. Skeletons littered the city; Gyges had been home to billions.

 

Eleventh Maniple, led by Manticus, were first to split off as they ran down one of the city's highways. They were mostly Terrans, and their chainblades contrasted oddly against the vibro-katana favoured by the sons of Madrigal. Still, many of them possessed a measure of the “grace”, the quality that made the Lightning Bearers such elegant and deadly fighters, and all were products of the arduous training and campaigns that honed the Ist Legion.

 

None, however, were sons of Cthonia. Even before Madrigal and the reunion, it had been felt that the savage ways of that world were antithetical to what the Ist Legion symbolised, and what made them so lethal. They were warrior sages, not hungry killers.

 

Kionen's Fifth peeled off, taking a course that ran roughly parallel to the Ninth. Finally Saiga led his company into an industrial zone, leaving the Ninth to their task.

 

-----

 

“Croniz. The name that you will heed. Croniz is no one and all those around you. Croniz will drain the blood and dance among your ashes. Look upon what you abhor, and know it as your future.”

 

The voice had been reported as soon as the drop-pods had breached the atmosphere. Daivyn had deemed it some looping piece of propaganda from the war that had brought Nagasus to its present state. A few subterranean power stations apparently remained functional, fuelling lights that still sputtered in the darkness. Still, the way it got into every vox channel on the surface made the Lightning Bearers uncomfortable, despite their experience. It was troubling to hear the screeds of a religion which might have driven the inhabitants into their all-consuming conflict.

 

Perhaps that violence was what had worn the veil so thin on this world, Raiden wondered. He could feel an overbearing sense of hopelessness and anguish, although he did not allow it to affect him. It was a common theory among the Legion that the feeling of a world and the nature of an infestation was tied directly to its downfall, and the records they found often seemed to support the hypothesis. Worlds which had simply been overrun by unbound psykers were typically jumbles of bizarre fauna, filled with creatures that varied wildly in form. Worlds that died in war were marked either by violent phenomena such as storms or tectonic activity, or the grey mien of nihilism that Gyges was steeped in.

 

The extent of the breach was such that the Warp creatures did not even need to wear the bodies of the inhabitants as was so often the case. Instead, the Lightning Bearers gazed upon empty eye sockets and emaciated limbs that ended in bone claws and whip-like appendages. Dispayres, they called them.

 

A couple of kilometres away, Katarius’ assault squads were swarming over the rooftops, ensuring that Daivyn and his elite Volta units would not be impeded as they ploughed into the mournful horrors. Raiden could hear the noise of the volkite culverins wielded by the Terminators as they reduced the dispayres to ash. Occasionally the ground shook beneath them - Fourth Company, at work in the sewers. They would be abetted by the Oni, using their precognition and teleportation units to manoeuvre in the confines of the tunnels.

 

-----

 

For the best part of seven hours they combed the district, battalions and then squads peeling off to scour individual buildings as they flushed the creatures out and channelled them into the waiting guns of the Volta. Twice they came into contact with another company, trapping the enemy between them.

 

Occasionally foresight wasn't enough. Every now and again a brother fell to the serrated claws or lashing whips. They were bitter losses; the Warp-taint meant that the gene-seed of a brother who fell on such a world could not be retrieved for implantation. These warriors would have a shadow of a legacy, the battles that ended them kept secret.

 

A dispayre would appear over a ridge to his left in three seconds. Raiden pulled the trigger before it had even fully stuck its head up, before moving to engage a pack of the creatures which spilled from an alley. His vibro-katana made short work of those within reach, and Mizuchi tactical squad dealt with the rest. Sergeant Tatsuya landed a particularly fine blow with his power axe, splitting a dispayre open almost to the hip. Instead of blood, dust and fragments of bone spilled from the wound.

 

Still, no shouts of triumph came from the warriors. The reserved attitude of the Legion was one factor - they struggled to muster the jovial spirits that came so easily to the Crimson Lions and Iron Bears - but so was the pall of misery that hung over the planet. Croniz wasn't helping either. At least, he reasoned, the aura of misery would lift as the infestation was driven out. Unlike a normal compliance, the opening phase of a Ghost Crusade battle was invariably the worst.

 

Through a gap in the buildings, he saw the Volta mowing down great swathes of dispayres and paused to take in the spectacle. Then huge figures moved into sight, dwarfing even the Terminators. The mighty Black Dragons, the subject of awe and not a little dread from the Lightning Bearers. With such a taboo within the Legion against the use of dreadnoughts, the practice had arisen in which a Volta brother would volunteer to be encased within one of these great war machines. While it did not match the horror of a dreadnought’s existence, it was still an immense act of sacrifice.

 

He called his squads together as they followed the avenue into a courtyard and found themselves gazing at what must have been places of governance. It took a couple of minutes for them all to respond - “Croniz” fouled the vox again and blotted out other transmissions. By now it was becoming merely irksome, to the point that the Astartes were destroying power cables wherever they found them intact in hopes of silencing it.

 

The bones were piled deeper here, in what must have been the final refuge for the population. Whether it had been shelter from the dispayres or other humans, there was no clue. Again they split up, first into battalions and then into squads. Jiro reported a series of catacombs that began beneath one palace. Raiden was tempted to go himself, but decided to allow Jiro to lead the exploration with his battalion. It was vital to emphasise the trust he placed in Jiro. To go himself would be to risk Jiro’s respect.

 

There were still dispayres here, with winged forms that swept down from gloomy alcoves to attack. The Lightning Bearers dispatched them in a matter-of-fact way; they felt no need or desire for finesse in this battle.

 

Raiden’s vox receiver crackled. “Jiro? What is it?”

 

“Raiden, you have to see this. Track my beacon. I've found… I see…”

 

“Jiro?”

 

“Raiden… it's Croniz, Raiden. It means the doom and what must come.”

 

Raiden frowned. Leaving his battalion under the command of lieutenant Tetsuo, he set off with Mizuchi behind him. Most of Jiro's squads had moved deeper into the catacombs, but Jiro's beacon showed him above ground, in a small, domed building whose contours bore uncomfortable resemblance to a human cranium. He was at the very edge of the district now, scree slopes trailing away behind the last few structures. He could see Byakko squad down there, performing a reconnaissance whilst their brothers finished their sweep of the area.

 

-----

 

Stepping into the dome, he found a circular chasm, with a platform at the centre, five metres across and joined to the outside by eight bridges. Jiro stood alone at the centre, gusts of wind from below snatching at his cloak. There was no sign of his squad. He turned as they entered, elation easy to read in his posture as they stepped onto the nearest walkways.

 

“Raiden, do you hear it?”

 

“Hear what?” There was something strange about Jiro's tone.

 

“The words, Raiden, and music. It's Croniz, Raiden. It's all around. Don't you hear it?”

 

“Jiro, where are Akitu squad?”

 

Jiro just stared back. “They didn't hear it either.”

 

Raiden and Tatsuya reached the platform. Jiro stepped forward, the light gleaming on his chestplate, and Raiden's breath caught in his throat.

 

A few exemplary Lightning Bearers were gifted with relics from the Unification Wars. Tama they were called, crystals that darkened in the presence of warp taint. Raiden could hardly believe what he was seeing, knew that it had been almost entirely clear just hours before, but his senses did not lie.

 

Jiro's was pure black.

 

He saw what was going to happen next, and he guessed Tatsuya had some inkling of it. “Brother,” Tatsuya said softly, taking Jiro's arm “easy-”

 

The serpenta blew a hole in his chest. Tatsuya clutched at the wound’s glowing edge and stared uncomprehendingly at his killer as he sank to his knees. “Croniz.” Jiro didn't even look at him, punching his blade up under another warrior's chin and into his skull even as his volkite killed two more, blasting their chests open. “The name you will heed.” Jiro's voice was a gurgling chuckle. Raiden had seen it coming, but he still knew that he couldn't kill another Astartes. So he barrelled into Jiro instead, the rest of the squad following his lead.

 

The force of the impact was like running into rockcrete. Jiro didn't budge, his madness seeming to lend him incredible strength. “-no one and all those around you.” Two of the men he swatted away with massive blows with his fist and gun. One, Hunza, landed with a shattered arm, the other with a broken neck. The third he knocked clean off the walkway. “-drain the blood-” Raiden recovered from the impact and swung a fist Jiro's face, but was thrown back by a kick before it could connect. The last thing he saw before he travelled through the temple wall was the final warrior reaching Jiro.

 

He landed gracelessly, and stumbled before regaining his feet. He opened the vox and bellowed to anyone who might hear. Then, not heeding the puzzled replies, he raced back into the temple. Only Hunza remained alive, dragging himself back up. No time to help him. He set off for the broken gate on the other side, glancing down to see the last man to intercept the madman. The warrior's head was barely still attached.

 

Raiden forced himself to speed up, as he realised that Jiro was heading straight for Byakko squad's position. “Kozuta, hostile approach north-northeast. Wearing Ist Legion colours, I repeat, hostile in our colours!” There was no reply.

 

No no no no thudded his hearts, matching his frantic pace as he sped down the slope. Something limp and bulky appeared over the incline - Brother Chiba, flung into the air like a twig. He crashed down a few metres away, one shoulder dislocated and his faceplate cracked and buckled. Raiden sprang up onto the ridge. What he saw brought him to a halt. Byakko squad lay in the dirt, blood still running from torn throats and punctured eye slits. One was unrecognisable, his helmet - and presumably face - stove in by blows of horrific force.

 

But worst of all was the figure sprawled across one of the fallen warriors. The culprit of this unimaginable deed. Thick black fluid spilled through Jiro's helmet grille, and to his horror Raiden saw the metal distending as if corroded by it. The shape of the mask twisted into something bestial, and the grille reforming into spiked mandibles like some monstrous beetle. The shoulder guards peeled back and flexed, flowing into glassy wings that sprouted from Jiro's back.

 

Two appendages sprouted from his side's, ceramite flowing as tissue and bone formed a second pair of arms. Almost casually, Jiro punched the claws of his new hand through the face of a still-living warrior as he pushed himself upright, and leered at Raiden through multi-faceted eyes. “Look upon what you abhor, and know it as your future!” he roared, slavering through the mandibles.

 

Raiden struggled to breathe. Corruption had wormed its way under the skin of an Astartes. Brother had killed brother. It was incomprehensible.

 

It was also a crime that he could not allow to go unpunished. He took a breath, and did what he had always done. He threw himself into the currents, seeking the one that would deliver him victory and justice. He charged, even as the thing that had been Jiro did the same. With a screech, the monster leapt, claws reaching for his throat. Raiden leant back and pivoted to the side, slashing with his katana. Ceramite parted and yellow ichor spilled instead of blood. Jiro moved shockingly fast, as if the wound was nothing, and though Raiden twisted to avoid a clawed hand from ripping into his chest, the talons buried themselves in his shoulder guard.

 

He had to get his enemy on the back foot and keep him that way. He saw that clearly even without his gift, and rammed the hilt of his sword into the creature's face before swinging down with the blade. One clustered eye burst and a wail of pain left the inhuman jaws. But whatever Warp entity controlled Jiro had a savage intelligence, and with two of its free hands it grasped the katana. The black talons gripped the metal and squeezed, twisting the blade out of shape. The fourth hand grabbed the back of his head, pushing his face towards the dreadful mouth. “Croniz…” rasped the creature, foul breath forcing its way through his helmet's filters.

 

He didn't hear Hunza until he was on them. Suddenly the warrior was there, hacking into Jiro's lower left shoulder with his wakizashi before seizing the limb and heaving with his one good arm. Ichor sprayed and Raiden fell back, one shoulder guard torn away as Hunza ripped the arm free of the joint. With an anguished howl, the Jiro-thing seized Hunza. Its jaws closed on his helmet and Hunza screamed, until there came a horrible crunch and he went limp. Raiden didn't have time to save his brother. Instead he grabbed a dead man's chainsword without even looking at it and charged. Foresight carried him through the manoeuvre. The blade roared into life and he hacked through a wing and the creature's upper left elbow. His momentum carried him into the beast and they crashed down in the rubble and blood.

 

Jiro had more weight, and forced Raiden onto his back. Again, he looked to the future, and found his salvation in a fallen brother's weapon.

 

“Croniz!” Spittle coated his visor. “The name that you will heed!”

Raiden replied with a snarl and a headbutt, hearing a satisfying crack of teeth. With the few seconds it bought him, he seized the volkite and tried to find the trigger. His foresight told him it had three shots left. Enough. He shoved the barrel against a hip joint.

 

“Croniz will drain the blood-”

 

“Shut up!” His words were lost in the blast. Jiro's leg was blown off in an explosion of gore, and Raiden threw the creature off him. He didn't even look for another weapon. No time. Instead he leapt on it, gripping the volkite’s barrel and bringing the butt down on the monster's face, letting out a ragged scream with every blow.

 

He kept going until the gun was twisted out of shape. Then he wondered, in a detached way, how long it had been since the thing had stopped twitching. He wanted to stand, to look away from the ruined skull, to tear off his helmet and throw up, but his limbs wouldn't obey him.

 

Footsteps and voices surrounded him, sounding distorted as though he was underwater. Then one cut through; a voice brimming with sorrow and concern. “Raiden, can you stand?”

 

He looked up, into the face of his lord. His lungs hurt; it took a few ragged breaths before he could speak. “I do not know, my lord.” Icarion smiled, and gripped his arm. With his lord's help, Raiden found his feet. “Lightning Bearers, attend to your squads,” Icarion instructed. “Sentinel Athrawes, let us leave this place.”

 

-----

 

Icarion set down two wine glasses on the wooden table in his stateroom. The space was filled with ornaments from Madrigal, as well as artefacts collected throughout the Crusade. They had both changed out of their armour; Raiden into a set of plain duty robes, Icarion into the flowing garb of a Madrigal sage. Raiden hesitantly took a sip from his glass, waiting for his Primarch to speak.

 

“Do you know what it was?”

 

“An entity of the Warp.” He sat hunched, clasping both hands around his glass. “But that - what happened to Jiro - it doesn't occur. I've seen it happen to psykers, or ordinary men where the veil is thinnest. Madness can take them and twist them, I know that. But this was an Astartes, and so much more...”

 

“It happens, Raiden.” Icarion's face was etched with grief. “Very rarely, and it's one of the reasons we adhere to the Silence Protocol. But occasionally the corruption finds an opening. Jiro resented that you were elevated instead of him, and it made him vulnerable. But for all that, and for all that I grieve for the warriors he murdered, I am utterly convinced that you were the right choice for the post of Sentinel.”

 

Raiden blinked in confusion. “How, my lord?”

 

“You slew the creature.” Icarion leaned forward, taking him by the shoulders. “When the other captains heard the cries over the vox, they were paralysed by shock and disbelief. You witnessed it, an Astartes being twisted into a daemon and turning on his own, and fought against it with no regard for anything but the safety of your brothers. Poor Hunza did the same, and for that he shall be honoured within our Legion.”

 

With a sad smile, he stood to find the jar and refill their glasses. “Raiden Athrawes,” he said quite solemnly as he turned. “I see great things in your future.” Finally, that full, glorious smile lit his features. “And because I am the one saying it, you know I'm not being facetious.”

Edited January 20, 2019 by Beren

[Beren]

Added the Emperor's edict after the synthecide, changed the pre-discussed 'NO!" sentence.

 

 

Ascension (by Simison)

 

Alexandros suspected, that after millennia of guiding Humanity from the shadows, the Emperor relished these moments were he could indulge in grandiose splendor. Today, the Emperor had gone all out. Fifteen legions, Tens of thousands Imperial Army Regiments, and a hundred Titan Maniples had been summoned to this new Trophy World to bask in the Imperium's glory. He, along with eight of his brothers, stood behind the Emperor as he regaled their audience with one of his finest speeches.

 

 

 

As was custom, and as it should be, Icarion stood at the head of his brothers. The first to be reunited, Icarion had earned more battlefield glories than the rest of them and had known their Father the longest, serving alone by the Emperor's side for thirty years until Alexandros' discovery. While certain brothers complained that Icarion's glory was due to chance, none could deny that the Emperor consulted more with Icarion than with anyone else. Alexandros and a few of his brothers were aware of a simple truth: only Icarion enjoyed the Emperor's complete trust.

 

 

 

While this grated on a few, Alexandros was at peace with it. His own liberal interpretation of the Emperor's commands and the mandate of the Great Crusade had its own costs, but he was a loyal son who loved his Father and knew he was loved in turn. Besides, Alexandros was more comfortable with someone else serving in the spotlight, while he worked from behind the seat of power.

 

 

 

Normally the two of them could both recite their Father's speech off by heart with the use of their forsight, but after their completion of the Koloss Synthecide He had forbidden both of them from peering into the future. More specifically, the future pertaining to this announcement. As of yet, nothing that He had spoken of so far warranted such a command. As time passed Alexandros could only feel his curioisty grow. Icarion too, if perhaps in a more controlled manner, would be waiting.

 

 

 

Alexandros blinked when he sensed a change in the Emperor's tone as he came towards to an end. No longer speaking of past glory, the Emperor was speaking of a bright future. One without him in it. Discipline kept the confusion off his face as he listened.

 

 

 

The Emperor was leaving the Great Crusade.

 

 

 

Through his ability to see auras, Alexandros could see a wave of shock pass through the entire assembly as a tidal wave of orange. Yet, as shocking as the news was, Alexandros did not understand why the Emperor had forbidden him from looking forward. Was it for his brothers' benefit? He could feel Icarion's confusion as well. What other surprise was the Emperor hiding?

 

 

 

Before Alexandros could digest that one, the Emperor turned around to face his sons. "Alexandros Darshan VonSalim, step forward."

 

 

 

His body obeyed the command as his mind reeled.

 

 

 

"You will lead the Great Crusade and minister to the Imperium in my stead," The Emperor continued as he removed the golden laurels on his head. "My authority will be your authority. For this singular honor and responsibility, I dub thee 'Warmaster'."

 

 

 

To his core the Primarch of the Halcyon Wardens felt that it wad not his place. Not his right. That it should be Icarion presented upon the podium. That he shoild speak and tell Him this before others did it in his stead. Duty spoke for him as the Emperor placed the laurels on his head. For who could deny the Emperor? "I accept this title, my Emperor, and will do all I can to honor its office."

 

 

 

The Emperor stepped back as he gestured to take a step toward the assembly. Then, the Emperor saluted him. "My Imperium! I give you your Warmaster! Hail Warmaster Alexandros!"

 

 

 

A deafening cacophony engulfed the world as the armies of Man saluted.

 

 

 

But Alexandros knew the truth.

 

 

 

Only half of them put their hearts into it.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Beren

[Beren]

Swalped Mymridons with Athenoi. Swapped Sarum Magi with Eskut magi, Kheredur with Eneractus. Replaced Ironstrider with Dunestrider.

 

The consversation around Eneractus was changed to apply more to the Mechanicum in general. I kept him as Alexandros' link with Mars as well as Eskut, citing the lesser Forgeworlds orthodoxy compliance. That passage would still benefit the most from a second look though.

 

Edit: Added in Simison's edits, and went through and re-added all the italics that got removed by the paste.

 

Edit 2: Added some Eskut specidic traits.

 

The Warmaster's Work (by Bluntblade)

 

Alexandros liked to think he could hear eagerness in the growl of Aasha's engines and the roar of her canons, feel it in the thrum under his boots. Mere superstition, some would think, ripe for mockery and unbecoming of the Imperial Warmaster. But then, he could sense things that few others could. He could perceive the Stormbird’s machine spirit, feel its fervour like scalding heat and see the fiery shades of its aura. It was all laid bear with brutal simplicity, unlike any truly developed mind. The magos of Abyssii had given the Maahres pattern souls more savage than any other craft that bore the designation “Stormbird”.

 

Truth be told, Alexandros was not over-fond of travelling in this way. It was so thunderingly bombastic, when he wanted to get away from all that pomp. At the same time, there would be far more ridicule if he were to get blown up because he brought a Thunderhawk into a warzone like this. And there was a guilty satisfaction in descending upon the foe with such force.

 

Beside and behind him, power packs thrummed and armour-joints growled and crunched as his men made final checks to their weapons or merely fidgeted. Alexandros had brought half the Athenoi with him on this gunship alone, and two squads of Brigadier Vasilios’ heavy weapons specialists, all loaded into Mastodons. The other Stormbirds carried a plethora of tanks, mostly Land Raiders but also Whirlwinds and super-heavies. Subtlety was not the order of the day here - these were playground bully tactics and Alexandros knew it, but they had their place.

 

Their descent slowed and finally they made planetfall, Alexandros striding down the ramp even as the gunship touched down on Derneum, 35-207-NCH as it was recorded in the ledgers. Cheers rang out at his appearance from the warriors nearby, taken up by the Shepherds of Eden. The bulk of the demi-Legion had committed to the campaign, having already served under the Warmaster in the preceding theatre. Elsewhere, Koschei and Nomus were readying to join in, should this battle fail to end the conflict.

 

Hopefully they wouldn’t be necessary, but with this enemy, it was hard to tell. The Maelynos Empire was ruled by a Knight dynasty, and that was something unprecedented on this scale. Going by instinct and what he knew about Knights, Alexandros suspected it meant a long war. Pride and aggression were bound into the core of any scion, incubated by the link to their sacred armours. Alexandros didn’t like to think how the arrogance of conquest and ruling half a hundred worlds would add to that and curdle, but he could guess. Oh, he could guess.

 

His Master of Signal was waiting, and snapped off a quick salute as Alexandros and Pyrrhicles approached. “Warmaster. Lord Protector.”

 

“Consul Pheidius. Please report.”

 

“Orbital auspex puts the number of enemy Knights on the field at thirty. Estimates backed up by reconnaissance elements. The strength we have already allocated here should be quite sufficient, but we’ll be grateful for Tempestus. The enemy have some sort of Titan-analogues, fifteen of varying sizes.”

 

Alexandros nodded, eyes on the horizon where the enemy was massing. Vasilios’ vanguard had beaten back their initial response, but now came the rhythmic tremors that announced many large war machines drawing closer. “Does this alter Brigadier Vasilios’ recommendations, or yours?”

 

Pheidius stood a fraction taller at that. Too many commanders managed to forget a Master of Signal’s ability and treat him as a glorified messenger. Any Consul was an experienced officer, even if his role rarely allowed him to draw steel or pull a trigger. If you knew your job as a Legion commander, you used this role to teach him to appreciate the value of truly coordinated forces before putting him in a more active role.

 

Pheidius was nearing that point now, and looking forward to it. “The Brigadier thinks we should refrain from any further deployment of infantry until battle is joined. Spartans and Land Raiders are his recommendation. However, the Knights and Titan-analogues pose a danger to anything on the ground, so he also recommends gunships also deliver troops. I concur, and add that we should favour Thunderhawks and Storm Eagles with plenty of Fire Raptor wings to support them.”

 

“Tell fleet we want all of those.” Alexandros said. “I also want bomber and fighter squadrons ahead of them. See if we can’t pitch the enemy into confusion before it comes to blows.” The enemy weren’t yet visible to the naked eye, even a Primarch’s, but Aasha’s pict-feeds, filling his helm-display, told him plenty even at this distance. “So, we have tanks, infantry and… ah. That really is quite striking.”

 

The enemy had power-armoured cavalry, mounted on what looked like Dunestrider machines, and massive quadrupedal war machines which, true to Pheidius’ word, rivalled Titans in height. “I assume you’re heard the tales of Gardinaal?” Alexandros asked.

 

“It would be a challenge not to, Warmaster. It looks like we may get to write a similar tale.”

 

Pyrrhicles now spoke. “Those cavalry are a new factor, though. A potential complication if we simply charge or let them come to us.”

 

Pheidius glanced at him. “Apologies, sir, but I don’t follow.”

 

“Think about the dirty tricks we’ve played on tanks with our Skyhunter squadrons,” Alexandros replied. “That might be a stretch for a knightly army, but regardless, I’m not hellishly keen on letting a force that manoeuvrable get amongst or behind us. Let’s form up the troops we have deployed so far.”

 

“You mean to give the cavalry something to charge at, Warmaster?”

 

“I did mention dirty tricks, Consul. Get our tactical and assault squads back to the gunships and tanks before the enemy sees them. Deploy all Terminators low on that incline, shield-bearers in front, and get Vasilios and five hundred Devastators at the top and on the flanks. More, if you can get them.”

 

“The Shepherds have two Dreadnought Talons deployed, sir. Permission to add them to the lines?”

 

“Do.” The Consul saluted again and strode off.

 

“He’ll make a good Legate, sir,” Pyrrhicles remarked.

 

“Let’s wait until the battle’s fought before speaking of such things, Pyrr. Tempting fate and all that.”

 

-----

 

It was the work of five minutes to assemble their formations, during which the Titans of Legio Tempestus had made planetfall, striding clear of their massive landers. Alexandros kept a steady flow of information from his subordinates. Arjun, the most persistent of his Skyhunter captains, was making a final report.

 

“I’m seeing deserters at the rear, sire, but they have overseers shooting any man who flees and trying to encourage the others.” Alexandros was quite able to make the logical deduction himself. He was impressed - when the Halcyon Wardens landed in such an unsubtle manner, mortal soldiers tended to throw down their arms immediately - but also irritated. All this defiance would achieve was to waste the lives of young men before their masters saw sense or died. But there were cracks that the enemy was trying to paper over. These could be exploited.

 

“I’ll have our mind-readers find us a solution, Captain. Your efforts are valued, as ever. Pull back for now. Brigadier, have your men ready to board the Stormbirds when I say; we will let the enemy break upon us and hit back immediately.”

 

“Aye, sir.”

 

As lesser Terminator squads formed up around the Athenoi, Alexandros reached out to the leader of his telepaths. Zayphar, what have your men found?

 

Zayphar’s answer consisted more of images than words, these having been passed on to Zayphar by other Librarians. Alexandros glimpsed faces, teeth bared in anger or fear, guns, swords and discipline-batons raised. They have tried to bolster the ranks of cravens with noted warriors, as anticipated. They are proud, lord - we would not be the first invaders to make planetfall on an outlying world and then be cast back. Though that rather raises the question of how they’ll respond if this battle doesn’t play out like that.

 

Good man. Your men know their duty. Allocate our targets as you judge best. The telepaths would identify the men who would hold a formation together - men whose deaths would breed panic among their fellows.

 

“So, Pyrr,” Alexandros said aloud, eyes on the enemy ranks. “Your thoughts?”

 

His equerry turned fractionally towards him, reluctant to leave the slightest gap in the shield wall. “They expect something underhand from us, something to validate their view that no honourable foe could defeat them. We want to make them fear us honestly.”

 

Alexandros nodded. “We let them attack, break their swords on our shields. Kill their elite in full view of the rest. Then we take our Stormbirds and join the attack, trusting Mechanicum engineering to carry us into the belly of the beast. The trouble, of course, is ensuring their big walkers don’t simply crush our shields underfoot before we can do any of that.”

 

“And so you intend to goad them into an ill-disciplined attack?”

 

Alexandros gave him a mock-stern glance. “I’m going to negotiate.” He looked away, then looked back. “The attempt may conclude with the enemy making an ill-disciplined frontal attack.” Many considered Pyrrhicles humourless. The truth was that he was just a master when it came to stifling a chuckle.

 

Alexandros cast his mind beyond his body, seeking a single individual, chasing the lines of fealty and respect to a man whose pride made him a veritable beacon to the second sight. Unsurprisingly, he occupied the largest Knight, which had started life as a Questoris Magaera before becoming rather larger, gaining a colossal maul for its right arm. As the commander of this army, I request a vox-dialogue. The outrage in the man’s mind was palpable, but the vox-link kindled nonetheless.

 

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing the High Marshal of Derneum?”

 

“That honour is mine, witch. I find none in this parlay.” The venom was plain as could be. “Tell me, does your commander cower next to you, behind your gene-brutes and Ogryn?”

 

Alexandros let his amusement show. “I appreciate that your emissaries only saw mortal Army officers before the king, in his wisdom, set himself against us. But come, do these look like mere brutes to you?

 

“You can clad them in as much finery as you like, but you can’t conceal the lumpen aspect.”

 

“Interesting, High Marshal, and rather saddening if you’ll permit me to say. I expected better than your misapprehensions.”

 

“I will not be insulted by a craven who hides behind walls of dullard meat-shields!”

 

“Then I will show, not tell, High Marshal. I ask that you favour me by paying particular attention to the big one with the silver helm.”

 

“If that truly is your commander, I would prefer that he address me. Not some jester of a witch. Nevertheless, whichever dog commands you will pay attention to this!” War horns blared as the Knights stepped up, brandishing their weapons as the behemoths loomed behind them. They were all richly decorated, many of their their cockpits given the shape of bulls’ heads, horns and all. None went without a melee weapon, be those swords, axes or hammers.

 

A dialogue request flickered on Alexandros’ helm display. He blinked, and Thom Zivich, head of his House, appeared in a corner of his vision. The man’s helmet hid his expression, but amusement carried through in his posture and tone.

 

“Positively garish, Warmaster. I think they’ve had too much - oh, for crying out loud.” The High Marshal’s altered Magaera had belched steam from sculpted nostrils as it sounded its warhorn. “It will be a pleasure to rescue sacred armours from such vainglorious fools,” Thom growled as the chorus of lesser knights died away.

 

Alexandros knew the Steward’s disgust was fuelled by more than excessive decorations and pompous displays. A Knight House traditionally had a duty to govern the world it was founded on. Rivalry with other Houses was one thing, but to attack them solely to take their suits and exploit their people went against the peculiar codes of chivalry that united such worlds. Pride had also been offended by insults directed at the Emperor, beloved by all, and the Warmaster whom Zivich had served diligently for so long.

 

His vox chimed again. The High Marshal. “No more insults then, cur?”

 

“No insults. Just a promise. Incidentally,” he added, “I suggest you amend ‘cur’ to ‘Warmaster of the Imperium’. Regardless, I promise you that I am going to shatter your army and take your sacred armours as war spoil, to be used in the final attack on the core world if your masters prove impervious to reason.”

 

The vox-link was abruptly terminated, and the entire court of Maelynos knights sounded battle-horns as they lurched forward, close-combat weapons revving or fizzing into life. A cry went up from the cavalry, breaking into a canter which became a full charge.

 

“Vasilios,” Alexandros voxed. “Your assessment?”

 

“Their formation’s loose, my lord, even if they haven’t left their infantry behind as you hoped. Our heavy support will have trouble crippling the Knights with that many troops in the way, and we’d have no hope against those other monsters anyway. But then, that’s why you withdrew most of our troops to the transports.”

 

“Indeed. We’ll have them support us as per the contingency plans. Thom? Hold back from the Knights until we engage the cavalry, then move out.”

 

“Aye, Warmaster.” Thom’s Castigator reared up to emit a challenge of its own, echoed by the rest of Zivich and House Teivon’s Knights, and the Titans looming behind them.

 

The cavalry were approaching fast, firing as they went. Alexandros could feel the fury boiling off them - he wondered if the riders were bound to their mounts by a similar means to the Knights. If there wasn’t such a bond to stoke their aggression, then the Maelynos must have genuine fanatics at their command.

 

Two of the enemy Knights came with them, outpacing their fellows. Typical rookie Lancers, ruled by the fiery souls of their machines. Alexandros grimaced, knowing how this would end even before his foresight registered it. Not one of his Knights even took a step to engage them. It was the work of two heartbeats for Tempestus to strip away their shields with turbolasers, and three more to send them crashing to earth with legs torn away. The walkers refrained from firing into the mass of cavalry; Alexandros wanted them free to engage the enemy engines as soon as those came within range.

 

The enemy hardly seemed to care, except that their rage increased even further. Five hundred metres now, las-fire fizzing as the shields deflected it. “Brigadier Vasilios, open fire at your discretion.” True to form, Vasilios gave that order a mere second after the cavalry entered range. Gaps immediately appeared in the enemy formation, widening. Still, the cavalry kept coming, and rounds began to strike armour as well as force fields.

 

That’s close enough.“Illuminate them!” he shouted.

 

The Terminators raised their guns, and immediately Alexandros saw unease, even fear, seeping into the auras of the soldiers. He didn’t need his powers to know what they were thinking. Ogryn didn’t move this fast, nor with this kind of poise, and they couldn’t make pinpoint shots on moving targets, in their dozens. This lesson was rammed home for the second and third ranks, but it was too late for the first. Alexandros fired Ultimatum and seared a blinding gap three men deep in the oncoming mass, while the Terminators either side of him fired on full auto.

 

Men and steeds came apart messily, the rank behind them disintegrating as it collided with what was now a heap of broken machines and bodies. The wave broke, striking the V Legion lines with a scant fraction of its previous strength. Shoulder to shoulder, the forcefields of their shields bolstering those of the warriors beside them, the Athenoi were unfazed. The front rank rode the impact, shields overlapping and supported by their comrades behind, and pushed back. Metal steeds were shoved backwards, some toppling, riders tumbling from saddles. The Dreadnoughts in the line simply bowled the machines over, Ezekyle seizing one in his claw and lobbing it back into the tangle.

 

To either side of the line, Zivich and Tempestus was marching, moving steadily to counter the Maelynos’ undisciplined charge. The enemy were fragmented, with most seeing the danger and trying to pull their formation back together, but several knights and tank crews had succumbed to their fury, and now came the wings of bombers and gunships, harrying the Maelynos and disgorging companies of Halcyon Wardens onto their flanks.

 

Alexandros gave the order to fall back, and the Terminators obeyed with well-rehearsed precision. At the top of the incline he found Vasilios and a few squads of Devastators, the rest already aboard Stormbirds. “Quite a ploy, sir,” the Brigadier laughed, the sound almost lost in the roar of turbines preparing for flight.“Their king will be smarting about this until we knock his throne over.”

 

“Must I remind you again about hubris, Vasilios? Good. Let’s get ourselves back to the fight.” As the Stormbird’s ramp rose, Alexandros’ last glimpse of the battle was a Tempestus Reaver, clutching a Knight in its vast power fist. Such monsters you have placed at my command, Father.

 

-----

 

But such power meant wrestling with other, more abstract monsters. The sheer volume of news, for example. Three weeks after the battle found Alexandros in his tent, conferring with his generals and attending to the politics. This meant a half dozen of his brothers requesting reinforcements or counsel, and several times that number of Army officers, as well as intelligence reports, notice of disputes between regiments, individuals, Mechanicum sects.

 

His field officers were numerous enough; three Legates, Malis, two senior Librarians and the holo of the Elpis' shipmaster only represented the Legion itself. Then there were Magi from both Eskut and Mars, the senior Princeps of the Legio Tempestus, Marshal Zivich and three Army generals, the senior Shepherds of Eden and Godslayers, the latter headed by Koschei. Old soldiers all, lives stretched out by a multitude of measures; the strange martial aristocracy of the Great Crusade.

 

They had finished the matters of this theatre for the moment, and were into the concerns of the wider Crusade. Alexandros leaned back in his chair, reeling off responses to his aides. “Pionus has leave to gather whatever combination of the 56th, 2301st, 1338th and 743rd he deems optimal. Hectarion will have to wait and busy himself elsewhere if he wants my aid in as large an undertaking as he proposes. Lord Commander Lijika has only himself to blame for Ryza’s antipathy; I’d like it emphasised to him that while I want to avoid estrangement from the Army, I will not nursemaid a commander who offends the Mechanicum so thoughtlessly and then wails to me about it. A list of alternative Forge Worlds should sweeten the reproach and keep the Dust Badgers functional. And now can someone please furnish me with a goblet before we get into the Prosecution verdict? Ah, Pyrr, I fear the day we’re parted. Thank you.”

 

Malis flicked through the tablet as Alexandros sipped. “Seems the testimony of Lord Santor was the crux. Whether he swayed people against Darzales’ project or not, Darzales was incensed, and out of his own mouth condemned himself. He said far too much - he wanted to see the identities of the Eighteen Legions subsumed into one.”

 

Even Alexandros was speechless for a moment. Khârn was the first to break the silence with a half-snort, half-snarl of anger. “The presumption. And the arrogance, to speak it out loud and not expect censure.” A clamour of angry voices filled the tent.

 

“Peace,” Alexandros said, adding a faint telepathic echo to the word. The noise died away.

 

“Censured, Lord Darzales certainly was,” Malis continued. “The Emperor’s reaction was most adverse; all genetic experimentation within the Legiones Astartes is to be monitored, pending elaboration but I suspect we will see the Chaplain Order expanded and given greater power, and all work towards ends not solely curative prohibited under threat of the direst consequences.” At that, everyone in the room exchanged glances. “In other words, Kozja and Vizenko have lost the battle entirely. The Emperor went on to order a large section of the Ninth Legion’s Apothecarion disbanded and those members to either down tools and return to regular service, or to be dispersed among the fleets of other Legions.”

 

“Issue a proclamation to the Legion and a missive to the Council of Terra,” Alexandros said. “We recognise and obey the command of the Emperor, beloved by all.”

 

“Beloved by all,” echoed the others.

 

“Furthermore we shall take in whatever number of Ninth Legion Apothecaries decide to serve their time of penance with us. They will have no scorn or condemnation from us; I want the cracks sealed, that we may proceed smoothly with our mission.”

 

Father, you have handed me a powder keg to juggle.

 

-----

 

V Legion command had debated how best to treat the royal emissary. Ruel, unsurprisingly, had suggested making a show of the Elpis' weaponry and the Legion’s arsenal, with the caveat that the emissary be blindfolded in between the sights that were to be impressed upon him. Pyrrhicles posited that such precautions were unnecessary, that their victories on the field would be sufficient to frighten the enemy. Even so, he had qualified his advice with a worry that such a tour would be risking hubris.

 

Malis had turned the idea on its head. “They know we can fight, and regardless of whether they believe we can take their core planets, they know it’ll hurt them to resist. Let him see what we are besides conquerors.” Both Koschei and Alexandros had liked the idea immensely, and as a consequence the remembrancers and their works took centre-stage. Alexandros made sure that his warriors would not be hidden, but their presence would be almost casual. Better to simply let the man be awed by them.

 

In a barren system the two fleets met, so that a gilded barque could touch down in the hangar before Alexandros and a modest retinue. The captive scions had been quite taken aback when the Halcyon Wardens had begun asking what size of reception would be acceptable for the king’s representative. Alexandros sought the middle ground which would avoid overwhelming the Maelynos with spectacle. Everything sent a message, so everything had to be considered.

 

“I dislike this dynasty the more I see of their finery,” Koschei growled. The ramp lowered. “And I dislike him already.”

 

The sage had the kind of physique which fairly demanded a warrior feel disgust. Pewyn’s clothes were rich and thickly layered, but not enough to deceive a Primarch’s eyes. He was plump, but his chest was almost concave, no muscle under the fat. Alexandros felt even less sympathy for the regime he was deposing, that a man could be tolerated to indulge himself so shamelessly at the expense of others.

 

Pewyn offered a shallow bow, surprisingly resistant to the awestruck reaction a Primarch usually inspired. Standing beside the officers, Zayphar remarked on that telepathically.

 

What cause do you suspect? Alexandros sent.

 

Brushing the emmisary’s mind won’t tell me that, Warmaster. I couldn't delve further without alerting him. However, I’d say his bearing suggests some sort of hypno-indoctrination or geno-conditioning, designed to stunt such responses.

 

“Warmaster Alexandros,” said Pewyn, and Alexandros could hear generations of palace-dwellers in his voice. The tone, pitch and cadence had been honed to perfection years before this man had drawn breath. He wondered if Pewyn had any other way of speaking.

 

“Miaisten Pewyn,” he replied. To Zayphar he sent, Hectarion once remarked to me that he found a world whose rulers favoured similar practices. Interesting.

 

You have an idea of the purpose, if that is the cause? Pewyn and Alexandros exchanged the usual empty preliminaries.

 

Political purpose, if you’ll permit me to guess. The ruling classes favour dry, clinical advice, and the overwhelming majority of their subjects are conditioned to show - more than that, to feel abject submission in the presence of their betters.

 

Understanding leant a soft glow to Zayphar’s aura. So they breed a bloodline tailor-made to advise them, that won’t have their faculties overloaded by simple awe. Must be potent if it covers you as well. Sadness crept in subtly as Zayphar took in all the implications. What a stunted life they must lead.

 

Alexandros gave the telepathic equivalent to a grave nod. Quite, Epistolary, but put it from your mind for now.

 

Pewyn’s unimpressed air went unpunctured through the halls and galleries of paintings, statues and relics of conquest. It was not until they reached the bridge before he spoke anything beyond rote courtesies or questions about the ship’s history, and the words were not what Alexandros had hoped for.

 

“These are the works of a culture proclaiming virtue in its deeds, yet the declaration rings hollow. You dress up your rapacious urges in the facade of righteous liberation.”

 

“I unified a world without taking a single life on it,” Alexandros remarked. “We spare your cities wherever possible and will seek your surrender over destruction on every world we conquer."

 

“Does your king not claim such righteousness for himself?” asked Koschei. “He is Protector of the Realm, but that is a realm his forefathers conquered, and he has expanded it by force.”

 

“His majesty is anointed and bound to sacred purpose by the Manifold. His kin led the struggle against the Mechanic daemons -”

 

Knight worlds defeating Mechanicum Explorators? Zayphar sent from where he stood in Ezekyle’s vast shadow. That could explain a great deal about their industrial base.

 

“- and emerged from the Strife of Houses having slain all those who sought to usurp and rule in his place. Every other threat they have felled. Greenskins, Wyvruth, Slaught and Hreken, some may have subjugated one world or another at times, but all have been thrown back and suffered dire retribution.” The man held up a hand in a show of exasperated forbearance. “You have shown yourselves to be of some capacity. My king respects that, and he has no wish to squander the strength of a potential vassal. However, trespass has been committed, and your frantic pace of advance points to its fragility. We have seen it in the greenskins, though you conceal it better. A failure to yield and withdraw will meet with your absolute destruction.”

 

“The king does not recognise us as an existential threat to his rule?” Alexandros asked, keeping the amusement out of his voice.

 

Pewyn smiled mirthlessly. Condescension from a mortal. Zayphar’s thoughts fairly reverberated with the word hubris. “Our prophecies tell us all of what must transpire. The Lords of Lightning must overcome foes alien and human, stamping out false faith. Such enemies shall be mere winnowings. The kings of men will face warlords of great power who speak as friends but bring ruin, and though they may be forced to fight on the worlds where first their thrones were set, such a foe as sets foot there shall find holy annihilation waiting for them.”

 

Alexandros gazed at the plump messenger with his talk of ruin and war. Unbidden, it occurred to him the man could almost have been talking about Terra, the words were so vague. “Vivid words. If we were to try and avoid such annihilation, would the king have terms for us?”

 

“In his wisdom, he has already devised them. You will send hostages, no less than ten, two of them kin to yourself, to guarantee your observance of the other terms. You will withdraw your forces beyond our borders, before returning in person aboard a single vessel to deliver the hostages and swear fealty as a vassal of the king. Furthermore the Knight Houses in your service will give recompense equalling one and a half times the value of the sacred armours they looted from the High Marshall of Derneum. For our other garrisons, suitable tribute will be decided in time, but for now we merely demand contrition for the insult offered to our High Marshal and the soiling of our sacred armours.”

 

The sound of a gun cocking had become cliche almost as soon as humans had combined moving images and recorded sound. Still, there was an undeniable power to the heavy clunk-crack when Ezekyle cycled his cannon. Awe might have been bred out of Pewyn’s kind, but there was still room for fear, it seemed. The fat man almost fell over, staggering backwards.

 

Alexandros wondered if the emissary recognised the engine-growl for the curse Ezekyle had spoken. At least he was certain that the man couldn’t decipher the Cthonian slur. Such language, Ezekyle. It was also a mercy that mortal ears would not hear the click of a picter under the Dreadnought’s rumble.

 

An ironform lacked the capacity that a living body had to express emotion with muscle-twitches, but he felt the ghost of a smirk in the warrior’s aura. Outwardly, Ezekyle was stolid, his attention solely on the man whose head came up to his hip-servos. “Don’t pretend that your lord’s kind are exempt from or even above the custom of spoila optima. Your High Marshal is an arrogant fool who cost you thirty Knights, five Titans, a planetary garrison and, for that matter, the planet. Perhaps your king should spend some time out of his palace and walker. His perspective seems rather skewed, even from up here.” Even Koschei smiled at that.

 

From that point, Alexandros’ mind was largely on the next stage of the war, as the emissary and his retinue made their disgruntled way back to the barque. If these were the terms, the Maelynos were likely mustering an army to strike back at the Imperials, using the negotiations to stall for time. Low cunning and duplicity. He’d have considered it deplorable, had he not taken similar steps.

 

“So we take the fight to them once more, before they can arrest our momentum,” said Koschei. “There will be no ease in this.”

 

“As Icarion is so fond of saying, ease was never meant to have a place in our lives. You are content with the Shepherds and the Auretians at your back?”

 

“Just as I was before.”

 

“Good.” Alexandros turned to his Master of Astropaths. “Inform Nomus that he is free to commence operations. Target Galba, Ayekol and Styrhaun. Find the enemy’s armies, blind them, and we will break them.”

 

-----

 

“Enelysia down. Repeat, Enelysia down.”

 

Alexandros cursed. Galba, 35-212-NCH, was provoking a lot of curses from the Imperial commanders. They were winning, the enemy air force torn out of the skies and the main army sent into retreat, but damn if the enemy wasn’t making them bleed for it. The Maelynos Retribution Muster, even with their orbital systems disabled and their fleet scattered, was a powerful force indeed. Now he saw the power that had laid low a Forge World.

 

He’d felt the Titan fall before it happened, but too late to warn its Princeps. Casting out with his mind’s eye, he saw as the gunship saw. The Warlord had been felled by one of the quadruped behemoths, one of its escorting Warhounds dismembered and the other two forced into retreat. Tempestus’ Secutarii showed no such caution, hurling tanks forward to engage the brute and the forces swarming around it while they worked to retrieve any surviving personnel.

 

He looked ahead, weighed the risks, judged his chances, decided, kindled a vox-channel to the fighter escort. “Wing Teralos, this is the Warmaster. Engage the enemy Titan, strafing run. Captain,” he said to his own pilot. “Attack under cover of the fighters’ run. The entire gunship wing. Hit hard and then drop us by the downed Tempestus. Understood?”

 

“Understood,” came the reply, tinged with worry, though the pilot suppressed it.

 

“Remember the power at your fingertips, Captain. You know what to do.”

 

Through Aasha's auto-senses he saw the war machine looming ahead, the escorting Knights and tanks advancing on the wreck of Enelysia. It was quite unlike the upright monsters of the Gardinaal. Its legs gave it a broad, hunched aspect, like an archosaur of primordial Terra, completed by the brutal, gun-tusked head. Its turbolasers flickered, and for a few seconds Alexandros saw nothing but rippling, searing light as the Stormbird’s shields took the full brunt. He felt the first pricklings of pain from the Machine Spirit as they strained.

 

Then fire bloomed somewhere beyond the mess of light, and the onslaught ceased as a wing of Wrath fighters struck at the walker’s head. The attack was fleeting, but it gave the Stormbirds their opening. Lascannons finished off its shields, heavy bolters cratered its armour and Aasha's accelerator cannon tore straight through its head, leaving ragged strips of metal where it had once been.

 

“Target destroyed,” said the pilot, panting slightly. “We’re setting you down, lord, thirty seconds.” The Athenoi formed up, three across, and even as the ramp began to lower, the three at the front picked their targets and fired.

 

Alexandros and his warriors raced out into the battle, covered by the Stormbirds’ relentless gunfire. He took in the situation as he ran - Titans clustered around their fallen leader, wounded Halcyon Wardens being dragged out from the wreckage and carried to the gunships. Ahead, enemy Knights falling back and leaving one of their number broken, as bannermen carried the pilot down from the cockpit with the intention of handing him over to a squad of cavalry. Their discipline was good; the scraps of armour and detritus testified to the Secutarii’s dogged resistance. Under the onslaught of the gunships, however, self-preservation won out, and all but a few broke and fled.

 

“Let them run!” Alexandros barked. “Secure the crew.” Assault squads took off to carry out his orders, and Alexandros turned back to the mess. Three battalions, reduced to roughly two hundred and twenty warriors able to fight. One tribune dead, his prime centurion having already assumed command. The grim business of war, one of the many aspects that the Remembrancers rarely thought to record, and one it that always hurt him to see.

 

“My sons!” he cried. “We bleed, but we endure, and we will see the Imperial flag fly over this world. For the rest of this battle, you fight with me.” His grin at the cheer went unseen behind his visor as he voxed Pheidius. “Consul, divert a tank company to our position. Make it one with Titan-killers.”

 

“Yes, Warmaster. Shall I send Skyhunter units as well?”

 

“Most considerate, Consul. Please do.”

 

Taking most of the Secutarii and the intact Titans, they pressed the attack, bending the Maelynos line out of shape. Phalanxes were of little use at close quarters with these machines, to say nothing of the piles of wreckage that littered the battlefields. They marked the Imperials’ grinding advance; artillery emplacements, Knights, Titans and hundreds of destroyed tanks on both sides. The Halcyon Wardens moved in loose squads, trusting their gene-gifts, armour and firepower to lend them the edge. Here, a Space Marine’s uncanny memory and reactions counted as much as his strength and prowess. Mortals, no matter how well-trained, were prone to disorientation with so much happening around and above them. The Halcyon Wardens simply processed it, always moving with purpose.

 

Sparing a glance to his left, Alexandros saw the Steel Legion moving to capitalise on the foe’s disarray. As individuals, they moved with all the fluidity one would expect from a Space Marine. To see what made them strange, you had to look at the broader picture. The Steel Legion moved with a coordination which defied belief, no squad ever impeding another, fighting within a hand’s breadth of tanks and never needing to step aside. They made little use of Knights or Titans, unable to link them to the Symbios, the neural link that united the minds of the Legion.

 

To compensate, Nomus deployed large numbers of tanks and automata, manoeuvring them with unerring precision. Regardless, faced with such a fearsome opponent, Alexandros had assigned Nomus a war maniple of the Legio Presaegus. Armed for long-range duels against similarly massive machines, they posed little threat of disruption to the Steel Legion. Ahead of them, Nomus and his sons advanced, trapping a wedge of Maelynos against Alexandros’ companies.

 

As the Maelynos wavered, further waves of fighters and bombers screamed down from orbit to fragment their army entirely. Fast on their tails came drop-pods in Steel Legion colours. This was an operation that any other Legion would have struggled to carry off, enabled only by the Symbios. They converged on weak points, sending infantry fleeing and wreaking havoc among the war machines with krak grenades and melta charges. Frontline units were abruptly cut off from support elements, easy prey for the Imperials.

 

Not that all of the drop-pods carried Legionaries. Alexandros had disliked the Deathstorm pods from the day Yucahu had instigated their manufacture, but every weapon had its battlefield. The pod doors fell away, and krak rockets shot out, redoubling the mayhem. Tanks and knights were crippled, ‘striders sent flying.

 

Alexandros, armed with the intelligence furnished by Nomus and his Legion, had been only too aware of the threat posed by the Maelynos’ response. The trouble was that, to guarantee their complete defeat, the enemy couldn’t afford to realise he was holding troops in reserve. They had a rough idea of how many he had committed on other worlds. Nomus’ Legion, newly arrived and only glimpsed in small numbers, were the wild card. So Alexandros had to deploy his sons and Army units in bulk, marching into the teeth of the enemy.

 

Now the Maelynos were confronted with piles of debris clogging the field, and the Astartes began to corner squads and issue demands for surrender. Guns were thrown down, in dozens, hundreds. But it was hardly a complete surrender. Vox-roars demanded that the rank and file keep fighting, blaring defiance at the Imperials. The war machines fell back in good order, pulling their formations back together.

 

“Fanaticism,” sighed Nomus, slotting a fresh power pack into his pistol. “I wonder just how many lives it’s cost in this war, us and the other side.”

 

“It tells me we’re doing the right thing, overthrowing these pompous fools,” Alexandros replied. “Give it a few years, and these people will thank us. This is the sort of thing Iterators make hay out of. Remembrancers too. You’d be amazed just how many cities the Maelynos burned in their noble quest to depose their unworthy rivals.”

 

Nomus didn’t chuckle, as Pionus would, or roar with laughter like Hectarion. On the other hand there wasn’t the troubled look Alexandros could expect from Koschei or Gwalchavad whenever he brought humour into a situation like this. Nomus was pensieve, turning over the words in his mind. After a few moments, he rolled his shoulders, drawing his power maul. “I will circle around and gather the new arrivals. Fight well, brother.”

 

-----

 

The Elpis' forge sprawled upwards as well as across outwards, gantries and lifters crowding the vertical spaces. From where he stood, Alexandros could see the undersides of gunships on the level above, bombers and interceptors still further up. The entire chamber resounded to the constant tick-tock of the Eskut temporal registers, echoing in perfect unison to one another.

 

This space, however, was set aside for a war maniple of Legio Tempestus Titans. Warhounds and Reavers lined the walls in varying states of repair. At the centre, Enelysia was held upright as the tech-priests and their servants worked, excising damaged fragments and prepping for their replacement. It was sad to see just how diminished she was now, lacking an arm, a leg and both her shoulder emplacements.

 

“And you say Eneractus is in there somewhere?” said Nomus as they drew closer. Techmarines, magi and menials parted before them, bowing and snapping off salutes.

 

“He’s the hands-on sort,” Alexandros said. “Not quite what I expected from the lord of an entire Forge Fane. He’s actually quite personable, even if Ruel has not taken a shine to him.”

 

“Eskut assigned him to us solely because they felt he could exploit our association best.” Ruel replied. “As I’ve said before.”

 

Alexandros smiled tolerantly. “Prefect, I believe I’m keeping you from your inspections. Shall I let you go?”

 

Ruel gave a quiet laugh and a quick bow. “You have my gratitude, lord.” With that, he set off for a staircase, which would take him to his beloved super-heavy squadrons.

 

“Would it be impertinent,” one of Nomus’ companions asked, “to query what this reason is that troubles the Prefect so much?”

 

Alexandros turned to regard the warrior. Asima Ginaz, Captain of the Steel Legion’s Third Company, had an unusually narrow face, exaggerated by the shaven sides of his scalp. Many of the Legion wore their hair in this manner; whether in imitation of their Primarch or to avoid discomfort with their implanted filigree of circuits, Alexandros could never decide. On his armour, a series of intricate geometric shapes testified to his high rank and deeds. Close up, these shapes were revealed as hundreds of binaric characters.

 

“How much do you of the ways of the Mechanicum?”

 

Ginaz looked around, clearly regarding the robes that many priests of Eskut wore. “Enough. They understand the value of data and its intergration well enough, but they do not employ this as they should. They are not unified, and each sect seeks its own goals.”

 

“A viewpoint befitting of your Legion, captain. Even those groupings within the Priesthood that align with us the most they seek some benefit for themselves. Eneractus' duty is as much to secure the prestige of Eskut as it is to support our efforts. Officially, Kelbor Hal chooses to align his empire with us for mutual benefit.”

 

“But only officially, Warmaster?”

 

Alexandros glanced at Ginaz. “A touch brazen, captain.”

 

“Apologies, Warmaster. What is Eneractus' role then, officially?”

 

“Ambassador, essentially, although we welcome his technical expertise. However, he does also serve as our link with Mars itself. Eskut is considered one of their more doctrinally compliant worlds, their obsession with the passage of time notwithstanding, and Eneractus is thus trusted well enough to bear their words. Ah, here he comes now.”

 

Enedactus had emerged onto the gantry at Enelysia’s hip, steadily descending the ladder. Having reached the bottom, he stiffly stode in their direction. “Warmaster, Lord Nomus, consul -” Pheidius inclined his head “- and captains. Welcome.” The priest wore the cobalt and bronze of the Eskut forges, a slight step away from Tempestus’ own blue and silver.

 

“Archmagos,” Alexandros greeted him. “How does Enelysia fare?”

 

“The machine spirit is uncompromised, and we expect to have integrated replacement limbs well in advance of the next battle. Regretfully the Hellstorm cannon will not be repaired by that stage, but we will substitute a Quake cannon.” Eneractus gestured to a massive gun lying on a stand, waiting to be hoisted and fitted into place. “I project that it will be quite adequate given the foe’s reliance on Knights and Titan-analogues. As for carapace-mounted weapons, we have the choice of missile launchers, Turbo-Laser Destructors and Gatling Blasters, and I await the Princeps’ recommendation.” His eye-lenses rotated, managing to look quizzical even though his precise pace of speech betrayed no signs of such sentiments. Alexandros nodded, and he carried on. “More broadly, we predict that sixteen of War Maniple Ibere’s twenty god-machines will be fit to serve in the next battle.”

 

“I am glad to hear it, Archmagos, and I thank you and your personnel for your hard work. Have you had any word from Mars?”

 

“There is little news save that the Omnissiah’s work continues to be done, Warmaster. Mass-production of the Thunderhawk transport proceeds apace, and the Legio Mortis has a newly commissioned war maniple under construction, tentatively assigned to the Fourth Legion. The Fabricator General is as busy as ever, and has no messages for me as of last contact. ”

 

“Not even regarding the STC variants we have recovered?” prompted Nomus.

 

There was no one way in which a Mechanicum Adept contrived to look apologetic, but Alexandros always recognised the sentiment when he saw it. “I suspect that the fallout from the Vizenko Prosecution has placed severe demands on the Fabricator-General’s time, Lord Nomus. The issue has exposed divisions within the Mechanicum much as it has among the Legions, and we have many disparate elements to reconcile already. Even if much progress has been made,” he added, glancing at a nearby Eskut priest. “A great deal remains to be done.”

 

“As ever,” Alexandros added wryly before turning back to the Eskut Ambassador "And of your homeworld?"

 

"The Archmagos Intendant sends his gratitudes as always, as well as confirmation that there is no forseeable delay in shipments. The Grand Register continues at standard pace."

 

“My thanks, Archmagos. We will leave you to your work.”

 

“Your gratitude is appreciated, Warmaster, but unnecessary. My subroutines and duty to the Omnissiah dictate that I devote myself to His avatar-constructs. With your leave, I will return to my work.”

 

“Granted.”

 

“Oddly personable indeed,” Nomus remarked, as Enedactus’ augmented limbs carried him back to the Titan. “I do wonder just how much Baal has divided the Priesthood. I rather assumed they would be overwhelmingly opposed to it. ‘No certainty in flesh but decay’, isn’t that their creed?”

 

“It is,” said Pheidius. “But it also represents an avenue of experimentation being closed off, temporary as that may be. There are catacombs on Mars forbidden to all by order of the Emperor, and some likely resent that. More than a few Heretek cults have had to be put down over the centuries.”

 

“Regardless,” Alexandros said, “we should concentrate on putting our own house in order. The Priesthood can attend to theirs. Shall we?”

 

There was a pause in the conversation as they made for one of the wrought-iron staircases. “Koschei is troubled by all this,” Nomus said. “Kozja is disgraced, and others of our brotherhood have had their standing reduced. The prestige of the Legions will suffer, and the Council of Terra will grow bolder as a result.”

 

“We have to work with the Council,” Alexandros said. “Even if that offends our instincts to lead and demand obedience. As for prestige, consider the alternatives. Suppose Kozja suffered no censure? He has betrayed the trust of his brothers, the trust that has allowed us to cooperate and carve out the Imperium together. If he wanted to avoid shame, he should not have set his sights on lore which he has no right to.”

 

They emerged onto a more crowded deck, where Caestus Assault Rams and gunships of all sizes filled the space. A tech-priest hung to the underside of one like an insect, held in place by mag-locks as he or she attended to its heavy bolters and ammunition-feeds. “I suspect,” he continued, “that the Council will be not so much emboldened as desperate to prove they are equal to the task, after Kozja denounced the governance of lesser men so passionately. We’ve been dealt a bad hand, Nomus, but we don’t have the option to fold.”

 

-----

 

He parted from the group shortly after that. Nomus and his lieutenants went back to their flagship. Pheidius made for one of the training halls, where Pyrrhicles was trialling candidates for the Athenoi. Warriors from every echelon of the Legion had fallen in this war, and the gaps needed filling. Alexandros would join them shortly, but first he wanted to speak to more of his artificiers and Adepts.

 

He was on one of the tank decks when the adjutant reached him. He was a slight man, dresed in Legion livery and carrying a data-slate. Alexandros recognised him as Karl Jurig, one of the men assigned to messenger duty for the Astropaths.

 

“My lord,” he began, “word from Terra.” There was some relative trivia from other fleets and pronouncements from the Council, but Alexandros only wanted details on one thing right now.

 

“So, the Chaplain Edict. Kindly summarise, if you please.” Alexandros was quick to leave the forge, knowing Jurig would wilt in the heat. It took effort to rein in his stride as they moved into the loading bays, but the poor man already had to contend with the din here even without trying to keep up with a Primarch. Binaric invocations were muttered by Mechanicus adepts, coaxing tank engines into noisy life so their crews could drive them out to the lifts which would in turn take them to the hangars. On the fleet’s carrier vessels it would be even worse as thousands more vehicles had their machine spirits roused, ready to trundle aboard bulk landers.

 

The Maelynos had been shaken out of their complacency, that much was clear. The Imperials had taken steep losses to their armoury, and many more vehicles were undergoing repairs, so it had proved necessary to delve into the Legions’ reserves. Salvaging and seizing them from the enemy only went so far, and the reinforcements Alexandros had requested upon starting the campaign would not be delivered by the Mechanicus for another month.

 

The adjutant was briefly hampered by a crew racing over to their Malcador battle tank, and then by an Adept and his retinue. Alexandros waited until the concourse cleared. “So, the Edict?”

 

The man cleared his throat as they began walking again. “The Emperor, beloved by all -”

 

“Beloved by all,” Alexandros affirmed.

 

“- has mandated the existence of a Chaplain order in every Legion. In those Legions which have not previously possessed them, Chaplains are to be dispatched from other Legions to oversee them; the Berserkers of Uran and the Warriors of Peace are mentioned here. In their cases, as with the Warbringers and the Drowned, Chaplain candidates will receive part of their training away from their parent Legion.”

 

Internally, Alexandros processed this information and found himself wondering just how wise the decision was. Elevation by the Emperor had not erased his old scepticism. To institute such a measure now, with the Crusade’s end mere decades away, seemed heavy-handed. On the other hand, this could work to his advantage. None could say Alexandros was ruling in the Emperor’s stead, or that the Council of Terra now held sway over the entire Imperium.

 

And yet. This would not help with the whispers of how distant the Emperor had become. Now He stirred, only to impose judgement on one of His sons. However important His mysterious work was, Alexandros worried that his Father did not see the political dangers. A short break from frontline service was required, he thought. He could ill afford to be a stranger to Terra. And if the chance should arise to learn just what the Emperor was doing...

 

-----

 

Running in his armour, he reduced rockcrete to dust with every step. His warriors too; the column left a gouge in the road, five hundred superhuman feet crunching down. Veteran tactical squads moved ahead, catching a company of Maelynos infantry who had hitherto been withdrawing in good order from the main column. Disciplined defiance became confusion and then, if you saw with a Primarch’s eyes, you could pinpoint the very second when it became a rout. From a side road across the highway appeared Koschei and his Goliaths at the head of their own column, crunching headlong into a tank squadron. With power fists, breaching charges and meltas, they silenced the rearguard’s armour.

 

Lyos, 35-221-NCH, was falling to the Imperials. Nothing could prevent that now. The price had been paid in blood and treasure, the garisson was broken. Sejanus and Ruel had taken the coastal garrisons and silenced the surface-to-void batteries, Nomus had followed up his seizure of the orbital defences with a drop-assault into the other capital, reporting success there an hour ago. With this conquest, they could blockade the foundry world of Galba indefinitely and open Maelyneum itself to attack.

 

Up ahead, a Maelynos Crusader was swaying, the damage it had sustained in the retreat beginning to tell. Alexandros felt a momentary pang as he watched it reel under a torrent of plasma fire from above, armour falling in molten ribbons from its remaining arm. The pilot had realised the trap outside the city and shown enough sense to withdraw carefully, bringing what troops he could. Courage and intelligence. Still, he had no use for those in an enemy; the pilot had used his wits to kill a scion of House Zivich and destroy the best part of three tank squads. An Assault Squad came down around the Knight’s legs as it turned to scour its attackers from the roof. Five turned melta guns on the machine’s legs - Alexandros had been quick to arm his assault marines for this purpose - and with a groan of tearing metal, the giant fell.

 

Alexandros pressed on, glancing up as he passed the fallen Knight. The assault squad’s sergeant had cut a hole in the cockpit, reaching into the space in a gesture of mercy. “Surrender and you will be spared!” The pilot’s answer pinged off the sergeant’s helm, scoring away the paint where it had hit. The Astartes didn’t even recoil. “Your choice.” His bolt pistol barked once, the answering bang muffled by the cockpit.

 

Another half hour and he was pulling men back as the Tempestus Warlord Iudicium Tonitrua closed with the last of the behemoth walkers, somewhere in the dust and smoke. Once it fell, there would be no fighting left beyond a few packs of fanatics. Your common Maelynos soldier had a refreshing pragmatism in the face of certain defeat. The trouble generally came from the bannermen, inured to servitude over many generations. These were the soldiers stationed among the conscripts on most battlefields, both to set an example and cut down deserters.

 

They made up most of the troops continuing to fight, easily visible in power armour that was closer to the old Thunder plate than anything the Imperium used today. Their weapons were effective enough, but against the Legions’ best they were hopelessly outmatched.

 

There was little enough to see of the fight from down here. Idly, he wondered if any of the remembrancers who had braved the battle would see anything of the fighting itself. The dust was bad enough for a Primarch, let alone an ordinary man with goggles and gloves that hampered him in clearing his sight. A booming war-siren and a crash brought cheers as the dust dispersed, exposing the Titan-analogue, headless and teetering. Alexandros watched as it keeled over, slumping with a singular lack of dignity against a tower, before voxing the Princeps of the Iuidicium Tonitrua to convey his congratulations. He knew what a kill like that meant to a Titan pilot.

 

The Halcyon Wardens formed up around him, reorganising into groups of two or three squads each to comb the city for what little resistance might remain. Alexandros only sent two hundred, knowing that the Army regiments in the city would be doing the same. He ordered Koschei back to the landing sites to ready his men to pull out and allocate warriors and ships for the blockade of Galba.

 

The Warlord and the two Warhounds accompanying it bowed their massive heads as they passed. Alexandros returned the salute with his spear.

 

“You carry yourself differently these days,” Koschei told him.

 

“How do I carry myself, then?”

 

“Like the Warmaster.” Koschei read Alexandros’ body language easily, for he then preempted the next question. “Surrounded by such monsters as these, and now you act as if nothing could be more natural than they obey you.”

 

“Natural?” Alexandros rested his spear on his shoulder, gazing up at the headless machine. Assault marines were up there now, taking a lascutter to the roof. “I can scarcely think of anything less natural than us, and all this. I just am what I can strive to be, whilst being what our Father requires of me.” The question still sat uneasily with him, so he changed the subject. “A fine vanguard you led out there today, brother. There’ll be statues raised to that right across this sector, before the decade’s out.” He hoped it sounded less hollow to Koschei.

 

-----

 

A few nights later he dined aboard House Zivich’s ship, the Obsidian Keep,Him, Pyrrhicles, the knights, their Sacristan and the leaders of the Black Towers, those Halcyon Wardens appointed to serve directly beside Zivich. Once this would have been a chance for Alexandros to relax, and to a point it was. But there were still matters of war and politics to discuss, along with scandal, which had Thom wincing every time he said the word.

 

The Steward's second daughter, Lyra, had spent much of the previous campaign fighting alongside a young scion of House Teivon. This had been taken as a stirling example of cooperation between Houses. Until, that is, she was found astride said young scion in his tent. Worse still, from a political perspective, their mutual attraction was apparently more than a passing fling, and now Thom was faced with the prospect of his daughter marrying into a quite junior House, rather than the match with House Devine he had hoped for.

 

A colourful ditty about the maiden and the mighty lance of House Teivon had already become popular throughout the fleet. Alexandros had therefore made it clear that anyone caught singing it would suffer the Warmaster’s ominously vague displeasure. That seemed to work quite nicely, and now he was free to deal with the political fallout.

 

“You’re a kinder man than your grandfather,” Alexandros mused, after they retired to the solar. “Had it been him sitting across from me, I’d have had to order him not to frogmarch his daughter to House Devine. Still, an apology of some sort will be necessary. How many sacred armours have your engineers restored to working order?”

 

Thom looked up in surprise. “You would have us pay them off with war-spoil?”

 

“I am suggesting you soften their disappointment by foregoing a prize you took yourself. We can make it look very gracious indeed with the right words. If I might go further, a couple would probably suffice for Devine, and three would make a handsome dowry to Teivon.” He caught the Steward’s puzzled look. “I see opportunity in this match, old friend. Marriages between established houses are one thing, but there’s potential in Teivon. You yourself see it in Reynik, otherwise you’d never consider him for a son-in-law. Teivon will have the means to grow strong and achieve great things in the service of the Emperor, and your daughter will not want for protection in battle.”

 

Thom nodded, and smiled grimly at Alexandros. “True love and political marriages, my liege. Give me a Morkanaut or Eldar Wraith to wrestle with any day.”

 

-----

 

Five months later, Alexandros had personally led eleven major offensives, with dozens more led by his subcommanders across the small empire, punctuated by many more skirmishes. It was enjoyable, after a fashion; an enemy that merited the full range of weapons at his disposal. Everything from Titans to jetbikes had seen use on one battlefield or another. The Maelynos’ arrogance remained useful, but Alexandros knew better than to rely solely on it.

 

On Ayekol, he had bled an army of ‘strider cavalry with repeated Skyhunter charges by the Shepherds before launching a pincer attack with his armour columns. On Varilia, the Godslayers had dug themselves into the foothills by the capital and drawn a relieving fleet into a trap, mauling the forces that landed with strafing attacks from the air. On two occasions Alexandros used the assumptions made after Derneum, seeming to repeat that strategy before unleashing shock-attack forces by teleportation and drop-pod, or withdrawing and luring the enemy into the jaws of the Legio Tempestus or orbital bombardment. With every battle, their haul of technology grew, despite the losses they took to achieve it.

 

Now, Alexandros breathed the air of the final battlefield - unfiltered, as he carried his helmet rather than wear it now - watching the aftermath. Apothecaries carried out their duties on the wounded and the dead, techmarines and magos attended to damaged Imperial machines or turned their attentions to the enemy’s, cataloguing and assessing. A debate had been running for some time about the quadrupedal Titans, and whether it was worth manufacturing them.

 

The newly clad Chaplains also took their place in the aftermath, examining those Wardens who had been subjected to the most stressful parts of the battle. Opinion was split on their trappings - the black trim, the skulled helmets which seemed to hark back to more savage times. Ruel considered them an irksome distraction, having disliked them from the day they had first appeared among the Legions. Pyrrhicles deemed them more formal than necessary; the old Chaplains had been enough for the Wardens.

 

Despite this, both conceded that the Legion must put up with the changes. The Warmaster’s Legion, above all, had to be seen to obey the Emperor’s edict. They were not exempt from His writ, and Alexandros would not have them behave in a way that might incite disobedience in the Warbringers and those who had supported them. The Chaplains understood that well enough, and besides the aesthetic change, little about them was different. Few complaints had been heard from the rank and file, even in the lodges. Most of those came from the Chaplains themselves, regarding the new regalia.

 

Alexandros passed one, exhorting the 44th Company to greater vigilance, that their fine service in this battle might be only the keystone in their legend. He raised his hand in salute; now the Chaplain’s address would resound forever in the minds of his audience.

 

Salutes punctuated his progress as often as picter-flashes. He did his best to ignore remembrancers crouching or lying on the ground, trying to line up that fortune-making shot. He especially avoided glancing at the slaved servo-skull that hovered a way ahead of him. Nothing would kill a shot like the Warmaster of the Imperium looking to camera and winking.

 

It would also rather ruin this moment. The Knight - a strange pattern, a Porphyrion model augmented far beyond the usual might of its class, lumbered towards him. Alexandros’ helm relayed him the constant assessments by his Techamarines and bound Magos that its arsenal was indeed empty. He was aware of that from the way that the pilot’s - rather, the king’s aura radiated shame and submission, but it would not do to disregard the input of his retainers. Someday, he might need them to see something he had overlooked.

 

Other pilots had disembarked from their own Knights to walk beside their leader. They moved with a reluctance that was understandable, but still irritating to Alexandros. For most soldiers, the end of a campaign was a time to celebrate and relax. For the Imperial Warmaster, this was a time to pour over the lists of candidates to govern recently taken worlds, determine how many Iterators must remain, stall the eaxactors again, and begin plotting the next round of campaigns.

 

He passed the companies who had been hastily picked for a backdrop, those who weren’t already busy keeping an eye on the beaten enemy. There was little sign of elation among them. All of them had lost brothers, some had endured more personal trials - Vasilios was fidgeting, shifting on his new augmetic leg. They snapped to attention as he neared them. Nomus and Koschei stood further back, perhaps even more eager to be away when this was done.

 

A small crowd of courtiers trailed behind the king, carrying a ladder between them. “Personally, I think he should climb down by himself,” Tannhauser voxed from where he stood atop his tank. A discreet earpiece allowed Alexandros to hear, if not respond. “He’s probably got a lustrous cloak in there. Let him tie that on to something, make himself a rope.”

 

“Your thoughts on the eternal dignity of kings are always appreciated,” Pyrrhicles replied at Alexandros’ left hand.

 

“It would be quicker,” said Ruel, at his right.

 

Despite his mood, Alexandros had to suppress a smile, knowing that to everyone else, the officers would appear to be proceeding in dignified silence, helmed as they were.

 

A pair of Zivich Knights bowed their heads and raised swords in salute. Alexandros kept walking for another half minute before halting. The royal walker stopped, fifty metres distant, and sank to one knee. Tannhauser mused on whether the ungainly work of connecting Knight and ladder would be recorded in the annals of proud House Maelynos.

 

High King Johren was around fifty at a guess, but had not succumbed to indulgence. Alexandros had expected as much; the Maelynos cared little for anything but strength and prestige, and so their only real indulgences were aesthetic. The crown that bounced and rolled to his feet was encrusted with rubies and diamonds. The king’s armour was enameled and ornamented to an extent Alexandros had never seen among scions. He wondered how many agri-world harvests it was worth, and how much it would take to buy the sword at Johren’s hip.

 

The king unbuckled it and held it out, kneeling much as his walker did. “Warmaster. House Maelynos surrenders, and begs your mercy.”

 

Alexandros waited for a moment, allowing time for the picters, and for the scene to fix itself in the minds of all present. “Keep the sword. The Emperor would have you wield it in His service.” He reached down and picked up the crown, smiling at the king’s confused expression. “This will suffice, I think.”

 

-----

 

History books would record that as the final act of the war, to be followed by the aftermath and its consequences for the little empire and the armies that had fought to conquer it. Of course, what they failed to consider was that the aftermath was still part of the campaign. The Maelynos’ hosts had to be assessed for residual unwillingness to cooperate, and those deemed reliable needed assigning to the right fleets. Hopefully, they would relearn their proper purpose in time, and honourable service would replace ambition and vainglory. There was no sense in discarding such a fine military heritage.

 

Iterators moved into the cities along with medics, architects and all the other personnel the Halcyon Wardens used to soften their arrival. Soldiers and Astartes were assigned to the labour divisions. Not content to simply undo any damage to the infrastructure, Alexandros wanted it improved. The sooner Imperial rule was associated with prosperity, the more enduring compliance would be. Already he had sent requisition orders for agri-machines to the nearest Forge Worlds, and had the Empire’s factories furnished with STCs for the same.

 

Fleets went their separate ways, Nomus heading swiftly for the next warfront, and Koschei lingering briefly before a request for reinforcements arrived from an Eagle Warriors fleet. Alexandros was among the last to leave, taking a small flotilla and charting a course for Terra roughly two months after initial compliance. An interlude, a diversion before the next war. Not a respite though, not really. The Warmaster’s work was never done.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Beren

[simison]

Replace "He cursed himself for not giving himself a small warning through his foresight. Then, he felt another shock as he realized that Icarion was also surprised." with "Yet, as shocking as the news was, Alexandros did not understand why the Emperor had forbidden him from looking forward. Was it for his brothers' benefit? He could feel Icarion's confusion as well. What other surprise was the Emperor hiding?"

 

Then, Ascension will have my satisfaction.

[simison]

For the Warmaster's Work, the issue is one of rank. This story came before I had revamped the ranking system.

 

"...squads of [brigadier] Vasilios’ heavy weapons..."

 

"...Pyrrhicles approached. “Warmaster. [Lord Protector].”

 

"... deflected it. “[brigadier] Vasilios, open fire..."

 

"... them, the [Athenoi] were unfazed."

 

"...beside the [officers], Zayphar remarked..."

 

"Three [battalions], reduced to roughly..."

 

"One [tribune] dead, his [prime centurion] having already..."

 

"...as our [link] with Mars..."

 

"...man than your [grandfather],” Alexandros mused..." 

 

"... the old [Chaplains] had been..."

 

"...always appreciated,” [Pyrrhicles] replied at..." [While I'm always happy to show off Sauhan, after the reforms, he's in a different part of the galaxy now. Pyrr is on site and has the rank to stand besides Alexandros.]

Edited January 23, 2019 by simison

[Beren]

Dramatis Personae for the Grave Stalkers Anthology:

 

.K'awil Pakal, Primarch of the XVth Legion-the Grave Stalkers

-Ajaway, First Captain

-The Corpse Taker, unidentified Legionary

-Death's Herald, unidentified Legionary

-Reffain, Legion Serf, Survivor, formerly Captain in the Judiciary Militia.

-Vigen, Legion Serf, Survivor

-Maleev, Legion Serf, Survivor

-The Stranger, Legion Serf, Broken

 

 

.Azus Bahmut, Primarch of the XIVth Legion-the Dune Serpents

 

.Gwalchavad, Primarch of the XIIth Legion, the Wardens of Light

 

.Venutius, Myvrallen of Clan Garda of the IIIrd Legion-The Crimson Lions

-Sigurd, Apothecary in Clan Enthos

-Aerthred, Rix in Clan Enthos

 

Ventaja, Statesman in the Judiciary Council

-Vilen, Commander in the Judiciary Militia

-Tully, Sergeant in the Judiciary Militia

-Mitch, Private in the Judiciary Militia

-Tora, Private in the Judiciary Militia

-Jolden, Private in the Judiciary Militia

-Hafeenir, Private in the Judiciary Militia

 

Lord Feymir, Master of the Halls of Orathyc

-Valeryt, First Son of Feymir, Knight of Orathyc, the sword breaker

-Edelhyn, Knight of Orathyc

-Dakyllhart, Knight of Orathyc

-Tyndellios, Knight of Orathyc

-Culdwynt, Knight of Orathyc

-Byntos, Knight of Orathyc

-Jyknor, Knight of Orathyc

-Toldyn, Knight of Orathyc

Edited June 9, 2019 by Beren

[simison]

Setting up the Godslayers' anthology.

 

• A Terrible Weight - 437 words (may add more to it). 
• The Terran Way - 4162 words (needs to be edited)
• Liberators - 448 words
• A Cordial Welcome - 1109 words (needs to be cleaned up)

 

It's not as bad as I thought it was, but mostly because Beren's The Terrible Way provides quite a bit of lift. At 6,156 words, the Godslayers' anthology is halfway there. 

[simison]

Similar ping for the Scions.

 

• A Line Drawn - 1849 words
• Scientific Projects - 2770 words
• Severity - 1194 words
• The Hunt - 5882 words
• Once More, With Feeling - 1596 words
• The Beheading - 3078 words
• Dinner for Eleven  - 956 words
• The Justice of Salvation - 747 words
• A Question of Damned Honour - 1000 words
• Treat it like a Duel - 1293 words

 

 

Whispers and Worries and a couple of other stories are odd in that they are almost exactly balanced between two Legion perspectives which makes them hard to categorize for just one. 

 

Beyond that, the biggest challenge for the Scions will not be making any more words (20,365 is more than enough), but figuring out which stories will be selected for the anthology.

[simison]

And one more ping for the Drowned.

 

• Drowned Men - 1239 words
• From the Deep - 1507 words
• The Under-Worlder and the Over-Worlder - 1124 words
• [beren's first story, needs title] - 993 words

 

4,863 words offers a solid start. I could potentially use sections of Second Son for a boost, but as it stands we're halfway there.

[Beren]

Does that include both of Helt's stories? Also, I'm fairly sure From the Deep is post-DoR, while my one is somewhat ambiguous since it includes a tech- priest. Edited June 19, 2019 by Beren

[simison]

I'm not sure I did. I only searched the Fluff Challenge and the Stories threads. 

 

Also, good point about From the Deep. Lights in the Fog is 849 words. I couldn't find another one.

[Beren]

The other one's 'Dares'. I think it's a page in front of the other ones in the Monthly Fluff Challenge thread.

[simison]

Just did a search for 'dares'. Nothing pops up.

[Beren]

Try just 'Dare'.

 

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/331712-botl-monthly-fluff-challenge/?view=findpost&p=4952138

Edited June 19, 2019 by Beren

[simison]

Ah, the child kidnapping one. It comes to 567 words. Brings us up to 4,772 words after losing From the Deep.

[Beren]

Before I forget, there was also a story in one of the General Discussions on the buildup for Untarra. I'll try and dig it out, but suspect that it has canonicity issues.

 

 

Here:http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/311978-general-discussion/page-51?do=findComment&comment=4320579

Edited July 5, 2019 by Beren

[simison]

Reviewed the story. Definite violations, such as Coch'ise, but the overall story can be salvaged. It stands, for now, at 1,415 words, adding for a total of 6,187. This is a welcome improvement. 

[simison]

Reread Beren's first story. It's also in the Insurrection period and has to be removed from the list. Figuring out what to write for the fluff challenge and for the anthology...

 

• Dare is a recruitment story
• The Under-World and Over-Worlder is a moment between Morro and Alexandros
• That last story is Morro preparing for the Day of Revelation
• Drowned Men is a snapshot of the Legion itself.

 

I'm inclined toward capturing Morro in battle since we don't seem to have that currently.

[Beren]

Preparations

 

Dragging up the lithographs from the Queen of the Damned's databanks, Morro studied the works with a deep intensity. The disgraced equerry, Boræo stood someways off. His time served in the Destroyer companies had wrought horror on his features. The fog-grey of blindness of his left eye was stark against the dark tan of his worn-in face, while the marbled appearance of the acid splash had given his face a slight tilt that in certain lights appeared at times sinister, at others, half smiling at a private joke. The failure of an impossible task was both what had resulted in his promotion and what ensured his unofficial mark of censure, an irony he appeared to appreciate. That battle had proved his absolute loyalty, a value that Morro required from such a close servant. Perhaps more to the character of the Legion, he had proven his skill at the oldest game of all: survival. Still he sought constantly to redeem himself for his failure. Morro could rely upon that. He could also rely upon the Equerry to actually stay alive in his quest for 'redemption.'

 

On the other side of the room stood Hennasohn, masking any unease he felt at their guest by burying himself in reports and prognostications that glean some additional insight into the coming battle. Where perhaps Boraeo was the more reliable tool, Hennasohn was the more flexible. One was a butcher's cleaver, the other the duellist knife of an artisan. Hennasohn was bound to the Copper Prince more by proxy than true fealty. Even in his days as Legion Master, the veteran had reigned command in such a way that much of the decision making was delegated to the wider Legion. In many it was a trait that Morro would find detestable, even a sign of weakness. He knew Hennasohn well enough to know that was not the case. Besides, Morro would have never tolerated competition for leadership of the Legion, and it would have been a shame to waste such expertise. The Albatross' long service had given him a plethora of vital insights into war in general and other Legions in particular.

 

The devilweb lattice that had been stitched into the Primarch’s skin and his soul by the accursed deep-fey, Karkassac, had retracted back into his skin. Once again he appeared as he once did, the walking nightmare that he became when featuring other extremes of emotion hidden behind the facade. His head, in the past kept smoothly shaved, had gathered the stubble of two days of growth, and his eyes showed a weariness that had hitherto not crossed his features. Maintaining such a guise required substantial effort on his part. Those of the Aeldari that he had done business with in his youth had spoken much in hushed words of the abhorrent talent of the flesh sculptors, a rare sub-type of the vicious and depraved branch of that race. Even amongst the slave traders that spoke of them they were seen to be notoriously cruel and twisted beings, and prayers were spoken to dead gods that the notice of the sculptors be avoided.

 

It had taken Morro years hunt and trap one. Two had slipped through his grasp and five more proved to be nought but myth before he had succeeded. Karkssac had exceeded expectations and desires alike, giving Morro the tools to reshape his body and his Legion how he desired.

 

Other Astartes were dotted around the room, and in the far corner stood a creature of darker shadow, the Penumbral Angel. That it had seemingly materialised within a sanctum that had been sealed by a adamantium-tungsten alloy door that would take a lascutter over four hours to cut through, and without ingress or egress for two days, had surprised few. It had an annoying habit of turning up without invitation, and not being in places at request, so for a top secret tactical plan be no different was only to be expected. Precisely why some aeons old creature decided to spend its days acting like a spoilt pup was beyond ken.

 

All were hard at work making plans, counter plans, theorising over tactical procedures of the Scions. While Morro himself had the closest relationship with the target, the Primarch Pionus, that the Scions had been trained by the Drowned in the matters of thalassic warfare was something in the XVI^th’s favour. That they hadn't taught them all that they knew was a matter of course. 

 

Untara Prime. A planet sized oil well, and now a production centre for the synthesising of materials, it was a prime target. It was a large resupply depot, used essentially as a forward operating base for the Great Crusade, and had been conquered nearly thirty years prior. Since then thirteen trillion barrels had been extracted each year, and had supplied the Great Crusade’s voracious appetites of both promethium both in fuel form and the weaponised gel. Other places acted as a stockpile for munitions. The world itself was considered to be an Oceanic-1b; a classification that made it ripe for human habitation. The planet was of a size and overall sea biome equivalent to what had once covered nearly 3 quarters of Terra's surface, and it had been the Fire Keepers who had aided in its construction. Among the array of planetary defences there was a total of four starforts, two of the ubiquitous Ramilles class and two more that were unique in construction. The nihilism and pragmatism shown by Niklaas' men had prepared the world for self destruction so as to prevent the world from falling into enemy hands - such a lynchpin could not go undefended. All of this information skidded across the screens in front of the officers present.

 

Truthfully, it had already been committed to their eidetic memories through the psycho-mnemonic machines, but there was something different with actually going through it in a physical format, the visual senses played out in their heads. Schemata for the standard template construct buildings which made up the demersal wells drawing out the unprocessed raw material were already being loaded up into the tactical simulators, the hangar sized foundries within the ships loading up practice killing rooms to match the known specifications of the various layouts. Squads of veteran XVI^th varied between practising running these gauntlets and training the Auxilia in how to slay Astartes, though that term was never used openly. Questions regarding such were ignored, although several continual offenders had been referred to med-arrays. They weren't ready to be briefed on the nature of the foe. 

 

While all of these standard operating procedures were initialised during this final month of preparation, they were something that all Drowned knew. Although they had come to blows with Astartes in the past, it was not the full scale war that was due to be committed now. The Drowned had rarely deployed in this strength before. They operated with a wide dragnet, various tendrils seeking out targets of opportunity and identifying others which would then be marked for other fleets.They  would close in and strangle their prey, striking at all possible levels: psychological; informational; insurgency; economic; endemic; proxy war  and even meteorological, before striking home a killing blow. Against the Astartes, there could be no such demoralization. No such preliminary victory that could be won. Despite the advantage in numbers, the true advantage stood with the Scions Hospitaller.

 

In addition to the neutralisation of the starforts, and the defense monitor vessels alongside the Scions fleet, there were a further three primaris ranked targets: the Districtas Facilitas Majorum, the Omnium, and the Crucible of Embers. The former was rather self explanatory in its role. It was the primary loading hub, and could accommodate more than twenty immense Macro-Haulers as they were stocked for exportation. Seizing it intact was an utmost necessity for the planet's continued viability in the coming war. The Omnium was another target. Again, with the intimacy of friendship, Morro knew that if there was a place for Pionus to be, it would be here. The Omnium was the de-facto capital, and typically where visiting dignitaries and commanders who were using the facilities would pay their respect. Pionus was ever one to observe the ways of another’s culture, even that sickening "chakai" tea ceremony on Pheltos. His brothers had attempted to explain it to him, and even Pionus had despaired, but Morro had found a small sense of pride in his obstinance regarding heated water and a leaf. His thoughts drifted off to a time over twenty years prior, the memory waxing in his minds eye. You ask me why I do not sit and sip a beverage in some ritualised custom. It is not my culture. I do not force you to partake in the sacrifice of newborns or virgins, or whatever other rumours precede me as to what passes for tradition within my house. I see no harm in joining with you, yet I also see no harm in not doing it, other than it offends your sensibilities. In which case, do us both the courtesy of acknowledging our offending of you, princess, and we continue on with other matters."

 

That had been the last time that he had seen the meekling Alexandros von Salim. Promoted above his betters simply because he was malleable and less contradictory. One who sought a compromise was not a Warmaster, and the condescension in his brother's face - after his mask of diplomacy slipped at the disappointingly base insult - was apparent. Returning to the present, Morro reviewed what tactical data was present on the Crucible of Embers. Ostensibly a Fire Keepers garrison, it was in truth a gaol. The Witchbreaker’s sons were often plagued with a psychic ability that in other legions would have been welcomed. But to Niklaas, they were little more than shovel-jawed goatsons who should be hidden from site, and punished. There was space for over two thousand, although the number of "residents" was nearer probably less than a tenth of that. To their own gene-sire they were little more than dangerous and self destructive weapons, better sent to die in hopeless battles or else left here to rot. Getting them on-side would be the job for the Albatross himself, Hennasohn. He had served with the Firekeepers for a few years. During that time he had even participated in the innovation of the Seeker Terminators, variants of which were still used by both Legions today. If the Fire Keeper's battlemages could be brought on side, then it was almost guaranteed to be Pionus who would be rotting in the Sea-Between...

Edited September 1, 2019 by Beren

[simison]

1. Italicize ship names

Why is Boraeo disgraced?

"Once again appeared as" [is there a word missing here?]

" smoothly shaved[,] had gathered"

"While theirMorro himself  had" [Two ways to fix this one]

What is 'thalassic'?

"hangar sized foundries within the ships loading up practise" [What is practicing?]

"veteran XVI[^th] varied" [Remember the superscripts]

"They[ ]would close in" [Extra space]

" psychological; information[al]; insurgency;"

" of the tarforts, and"

" levels: psychological; information; insurgency; economic; endemic; proxy war  and even meteorological, before" [What's with all of the semi-colons? Is this a British thing?]