The rain splattered against his battleplate, the drops running down his bare head and cheeks. He watched as the blood of his slain xenos enemies mixed in with the mud, the fluid draining out of lifeless, twisted bodies.
“It had been so easy”, he thought as the energy fields crackled on his lightning claws, blood and fragments of flesh sluicing off the blades. Like wheat before the scythe, the Eldar had fallen one by one, the pitiful bunch.
He knew they didn’t stand a chance, having fought their kind before. These were lowly guardians, their weapons no match for Astartes battleplate. Three jagged slices out of his leg armor were all the evidence of resistance from the weak xenos.
He looked down at one of the Eldar, his torso severed from his legs and wondered why he and his brothers had even been called to this world. Surely the Imperial Guard could have dealt with this pitiful excuse for an invasion.
Suddenly a strained voice, barely audible above the deluge reached the warriors ears. “You have doomed this world”, the dying Eldar snarled. The warrior walked over to the prone xenos, a sneer of hate across his face. “The only thing doomed is your wretched race”. Before the xenos could reply, the warrior stamped on the Guardian’s face, crushing it’s skull. He shook off his talons of the filth and blood and made his way back to his brothers.
-
Crusader
The Battlecruiser had been screaming through the warp for 9 weeks, eager to reach its destination. Just as eager, the battle brothers of the Black Templars inside it were preparing for war. Fervent prayers to the Emperor echoed out through the corridors, contrasting with the ring of steel as warrior sparred against warrior.
Brother Dietrich of the Crusader Squad Demies stalked through the corridors of the Battlecruiser lost in thought. He and his fellow Initiates had just attended the daily sermon of their company chaplain after which Brother Dietrich felt the need to walk the halls. Soon the sounds of his brothers died away and without realizing it, he had made his way to areas of the bowels of the ship where his brothers rarely tread. The warrior passed terrified serfs, caught by surprise by the towering Initiate. Many of them cowered in the corners as the warrior passed, some whimpering, some whispering prayers to the Emperor, some just stared in awe. The soldier paid them no mind, they being beneath his notice.
Thoughts raced through his mind. It had been several months since The Barbarossa Crusade had been fought, and he and his brothers were hungry for meting out the justice of the Holy Emperor. The Cruxis Crusade was just outside of their grasp, the physics of space and time delaying the slaying of witch and hated xenos.
He closed another air lock and stopped, resting the butt of his battle axe on a storage container. The cramped corridor felt oppressive to his colossal bulk. The incense from his censers rose to his nose, calming him and silencing the turmoil of his mind.
Just then klaxon alarms rose and the overhead lights turned a sharp red. Brother Dietrich raised his head, a fervent smile across his face. His power fist clenched involuntarily. At last, he thought. The Black Templars were going to war.
-
Ecclesiarchy Confessor Adric Rhyne
Starting out his career as a humble preacher in Hive Decius, Confessor Adric Rhyne tended to his flock with great zeal. It was in the solar year 756.M41 that an outbreak of the deviant Confederation of Light, a heretical sect of the Imperial Cult broke out of hiding in the lower Hive. His faith threatened, Confessor Rhyne whipped up the populous into a great frenzy to help eradicate the infidels. He was successful in his shaping of the citizens into an effective fighting force and subsequent eradication of the Confederation. The eye of the upper echelons in the planets Ecclesiarchy saw fit to promote Adric to Confessor.
Notable exploits include exposing a decadent chaos cult of Slaanesh within the nobility of the Hive. Stopping the summoning of a cursed daemon of the warp by a deranged low level psycher. Breaking the back of numerous heretical uprisings through out the hive and maintaining the flock in the lower hives.
For several years he stood as a high-ranking noble’s adviser, but was cast out of the role after exposing a minor transgression of a powerful relative of his master.
In his crusade against the forces of chaos, the Confessor bit off more than he could chew and ran into a formidable cult of Khorne. Lucky to escape with is life, his desperate fight for survival meant the loss of his hand to a fanatic’s sword. His lesson learned he decided never to enter a den of evil alone. Training his most trusted followers, he bought them each a suit of protective armor and dubbed them the Crusaders of the Veiled Word. His hand now gone and replaced by a crude mechanism meant his fighting prowess was severely diminished. It seemed to the Confessor that divine intervention was bending his stiff back and showing him the way of brotherhood.
Confessor Rhyne has carried on his role as an enforcer of the Imperial Cult, preferring the surrounds of the lower hive to the spires of its rulers. With him he carries a holy book of the Imperial Cult and his ever-present icons of purity. He denounces the enemies of the Imperium as the Crusaders of the Veiled Word hack them to pieces in the name of the Ecclesiarchy and the Emperor.
-
Skaven Warrior
The Skaven warrior stalks across a stinking trickle of thick sludge leaking out of the depths of a sewer pipe.
