Suffer Not The Xenos To Live
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.
Experiment 295-E
It had been in captivity for countless centuries, held in its prison with powerful wards and psychic shields by its captors. Those long centuries dragged by with endless questioning and experiments done on its person.
First came the questions. Such simple fools. Where did it come from? What was its agenda? Soon after came the pain, with their crude implements. They cut and they drilled and they probed. They removed its hands. Once they realised the regenerative power of the creature, they soon stopped that practice. The creature’s bodily defense mechanism generating scything talons where once there were hands.
With each question and each answer, the creature of Chaos injected its captor’s demise one word at a time. Oh, they thought they were so clever, so smart! So safe with their wards and their ‘power’. Little did they know the destructive power of knowledge. And so year after year, decade after decade the creature slowly twisted and bent its captors until one fateful day when its plans came to fruition and its captors tore themselves apart. At their last they had tried to destroy the creature. Their fruitless efforts were mocked and laughed at all the while by the creature.
None survived but the creature now, all alone on this planet.
But the creature had made a miscalculation. It had made a fatal error, an assumption. It had thought the shields and wards and spells would dissipate with its captors demise. They had not. But little matter. The creature was patient and the wards could not last forever.
And so it waited and the seasons turned and the stars died and were reborn again and still it waited, searching, always searching for a weakness in the defenses that held it in this prison.
Until one day it found a crack.
With renewed vigor the creature attacked the breach, widening the crack until the first layer shattered, weakening the rest. It knew it was mere years away from freedom. It did not need sleep or rest as mortals thought of it and so it worked day and night on the breach, picking away at the threads one at a time and then the second and third barriers were destroyed. The rest were childs play, and fell away like rotten cloth before its might.
It was free! It could do the work of its master once more! A thousand worlds would be destroyed before the creature was brought to heel but the damage was done and the creature’s task completed.
Ork Painboy Wazgrom Bonestompah
The ork stumbled out of the Painboy’s makeshift surgery rubbing his freshly attached arm, blood still leaking from the stitches. Wazgrom Bonestompah looked on, satisfied with his work. “Dat dar iz some lovely work i fink”, he thought to himself. “Oi ya lazy little git, get back ta work!” Wazgrom kicked the gretchin at his feet who yelped and scampered away, picking up bloodied tools up off the floor hurriedly.
The orks had been camped here for several weeks and were starting to get rowdy with inactivity. Several fights had broken out with today being the worst of the injuries. Wazgrom had reattached several limbs, a head and in one instance had to fit a kustom claw to one of the Nobs. Needless to say once he came to he was right back into the fight with his new toy.
Wazgrom thought back to the last time he had this much trouble with the boyz. He remembered the time several years ago when Da Big Boss came in hollering about his arm, smashing heads of his boyz that couldn’t find it anywhere. He had finally given up in a rage and came to the Painboy for assistance.
It took several boys to hold him down with leather straps whilst Wazgrom attached a right proper Klaw with down right nasty flamer attached. The teef flowed that night, and Wazgrom became rich overnight the Boss was so happy with it.
The noise of fighting grew louder and one of the gretchin jumped up on Wazgrom’s back holding a needle sticker in anticipation. Wazgrom looked up at his trusty Kustom Klaw, stretching out each digit making sure everything was working before the boyz turned up. One of the knifes was a bit stiff. “Might haf ta get da Mekboy ta hav a peek later”, he thought.
A Guardsman Meets His End
Written by Harper. Original post can be seen here.
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.
The Last Litany of Endless Despair
The breaching pod slammed into the space hulk, cutting deep into it’s twisted body. With a jolt the pod screeched to a stop and opened up into the belly of the hulk. Code named Endless Despair, the space hulk lived up to its name. The five terminators turned on their shoulder mounted spotlights, cutting into the gloom as the decouplers hissed and detached.
With their sergeant taking point, the terminators of the Blood Angels chapter resolutely moved into the oppressive darkness. Their stomping armor drowning out the clunks and hisses of the hulk.
It did not take long for the enemy to attack Hated xenos attacked them soon after their extraction from the breaching pod. The Blood Angels welcomed it. The Sergeant’s power sword thrummed to life and cut down the first, his storm bolter taking the next in the chest. Explosive rounds covered the terminators in gore, their holy armor sullied by the filth.
Suddenly a door exploded inward, a thrashing xenos besetting brother Petrarch. Brother Acrion behind him cut down the twisted this with his lightning claws, the pieces of it’s body splattering to the ground it’s claws still twitching. Without missing a beat, Brother Petrarch turned his heavy flamer to the destroyed door and filled the chamber beyond with purifying flame. Screeches and howls emanated out from the opening eventually diminishing to pitiful squeals as the xenos burned alive.
First to fall was Brother Belarius who held up the rear. A xenos claw burst out of the wall and slashed across his throat, taking off his head in one savage blow. His body fell to its knees, blood spurting out of the exposed stump and slumped to the side against the wall. Storm bolter fire rang out from the survivors covering the wall in exploding shells.
Then silence.
Smoke rose from the barrels of the terminators guns as they waited for any movement, the blood rage rising. Still they controlled themselves, for they were of the first and discipline was firmly entrenched. Hearing nothing, they carried on, marking the resting place of their fallen brother for later extraction.
Twenty minutes later Brother Meros and Petrarch were the next to fall, rushed by several genestealers at once from the rear. Brother Petrarch’s heavy flamer chaotically spraying burning promethium everywhere, covering the ceiling in flames as his ruined chest spilled out it’s life blood. Brother Meros in the midst of slamming his chainfist into the chest of one genestealer was taken out by another, his arm shorn off at the shoulder, quickly followed by his torso.
The sergeant, overtaken by rage at seeing his betherin slain pushed past Brother Acrion and slashed one of the surviving xenos to pieces with this power sword. The warning from Brother Acrion fell dead on his lips as the berzerker Sergeant overextended and fell to slashing claws. But even in his death throes, the Sergeant managed to blow the head and shoulders off of one genestealer and slice another in half with his power sword before he finally succumbed to his wounds. Brother Acrion dispatched the remaining two with his arcing claws. The silence was oppressive. Only Brother Acrion remained.
Stamping down the corridor Brother Acrion watched as a xenos turned the corner and charged towards him. At the same time another genestealer broke out of the ceiling and scuttled down the wall. Brother Acrion began the litany of battle, bellowing iit fruitlessly at his foes.
I am the edge of His Sword,
I am the tip of His Spear,
I am the mail about His Fist,
The Emperor’s chosen,
Covered in the Blood of Sanguinius,
I will smite my enemies,
I will purge the heretic,
I will burn the witch,
For I am the Emperor’s judgement.
He splayed out his claws as another genestealer burst out of the floor, ready to deal out the Emperor’s justice against the hated xenos.
Brother Acrion fell to the ground as a claw pierced his heart, his litany still thundering in his head.
