Tempered in fire, Rebirth of the Y'he

[Deleted]

These are the origins to Splinter Fleet Hephaestus(my fleet). Anything I fail to complete I shall elaborate on at a later time, so this might become a WIP thread.

Chapter 1

897.M41 Gorgon Strikes

Fight or Flight

Race to adapt

903.M41 

Having preyed significantly on the tau worlds and been routed and cut down making planetfall on to the sept world of Ke'lshan, the scattered remnants of Hive Fleet Gorgon flee some of the hive ships making their way back into the eastern fringe. Three fair sized tyranid bioships furiously drift from their predators, triggering long inactive instincts within the titanic would be predators(the nids). Mostly silent, the chitterings of the beasts within these living vessels feel the near foreign excitability of fear. Not fear of the dark, or the horror stories of Catachan devils mothers in imperial space tell their children of, but the adrenaline and panic that prey feels while hunted. Making their way north(in the imperial map of space) of Pech(fleeing southeast) deeper and deeper into the eastern fringe in retreat retaining biomass where it would normally sow seeds of infestation on worlds it passed. As the light of living worlds dims to their backs, the fleet goes into an energy conserving slumber and drifts.

910.M41

The triad awakes groggily as the sensory tendrils on the ships passing a nearby string of planets taste chemtrails of elemental compounds suggestive of a pressurized atmosphere. Beasts akin to gaunts within the ships scurry through corridors seemingly as if driven by some unseen god. Silent chittering is heard within the corridors, only inaudible in the intestine like tracts as sphincters belch open to allow passage into chambers that otherwise would be closed off. A maintenance gaunt plugs its limbs from a bloated fluid filled sack into a glassy organ into the wall of the vessel and it's pouch deflates with a hiss before it disengages from the apparatus, flees into the corridors, and another gaunt takes it's place filling the gestation chamber with biomass. In the darkness of the ship, a faint glow emanates from the translucent gestation chamber as the early nervous system of a synaptic cortex flares with white hot electricity. Outside in the void a ship tendril grips and crushes a probe whining in a dialect that seems to be that of the tau, silencing the infernal racket.

911.M41

A group of hounds and warriors having just caught and skewered the massive armored boar like creature pause from carving and sampling their spoils of the hunt  as they see a dozen streaks fall from the darkened sky. They gesture in silent agreement and four of the warriors split their prey into pieces so the warriors might drag it back to the kindred while the fifth quells their kroot hounds. Their skin thickening from their newly ingested prey, they make haste to reunite with their kindred to alert their shaper. The sky darkened days ago, but these falling things are strange and new. 

Their shaper, through his beak bellows angrily at the news the pack has brought. He foretells of visitors who would challenge their kindred's dominion of their woods on a world having dozens if not hundreds of competing Kindreds. His warriors mass and he instructs them to go out in larger hunting packs for fear that they might encounter the visitors he speaks of. The entire kindred gathers and feasts in primal preparation for what is to come.


The weeks that follow are not pleasant for the kroot. The kindred has not encountered any new foe or beast, yet the hunts become more and more costly. Kroot and Kroot hounds shriek and disappear into foliage during hunts leaving the kroot chasing their hunters and brethren into the native foliage only to find nothing but convulsing half-dead and eviscerated corpses. Across the planet from the distant plains, the sparse desert and mesas, as well as in the plurality of the surface jungles the story is similar for all kindreds(who are the dominant species on this rock, as well as the few neighboring rocks).

Those in the field ceremonially devour their brethren, their skin hardening and their talons becoming razor sharp. The shaper deems it a good omen as they genetically sharpen their nails for war.   


In the months that follow tribes of kroot begin acting strange. Entire tribes find themselves slowly losing their ability to take on the genetic material of their prey, as they reach evolutionary dead ends, all the while sustaining losses to unseen enemies. New fauna begins invasively taking root in their familiar home. Hunting parties become erratic and rage filled to their kin as they obsessively pace towards the horizon keeping their eyes on the sky as if waiting. Vocalizations become insect-like and aggressive towards their own kin occasionally resulting in outright murder as some tribes fight mini-civil wars. 

Within a span of hours the planet is overwhelmed with bad omens.  The first, a large ball of fire the size of a small mountain falls from the sky making a thunderous roar in the center of a heavily wooded area. Second, entire packs of kroot warriors, those fixated on the sky, wander off into the woods abandoning their kin. The last omen of their fate, and the most horrific occurs as a Shaper witnesses one of his females regurgitate it's young, one of his own consorts. This is the first the kroot come face to face with their enemy from the sky, as the creature born is some horrific four armed humanoid-kroot hybrid. As the shaper raises his blunt axe to kill the abomination, his mate rips out his throat and chaos ensues within his kindred as they fight to kill the female kroot and the kroot fledgling.  

This is the scene across the planet.

Weeks later, in the shadow of the large pod that has become the center for the tyranid invasion, kroot that wandered towards the object willingly throw themselves into an early digestion pool. Their senses snared and corrupted by the very DNA they feasted upon that had been implanted by vanguard organisms into the flesh of their fallen brothers they cannibalized. Biovores, warriors, gaunts, and zoanthropes drift around the digestion pools beggining to mobilize their invasion while other maintenance gaunts terraform their environment actively and some biovores launch spores across the planet. 

The native kroot stand little chance as warriors and scour the environment bounding through cover providing a directive for the fleet to pummel large groupings of organisms with spore mines from afar. Rippers carpet the landscape, a mobile wave skittering across the plane devouring everything. Those foolhardy enough to engage the warriors find a myriad of hormagaunts and termagaunts emerging from cover to quickly engage would be attackers. The dwindling kroot label their enemy cowardly as any organized effort to engage the larger warrior beasts is met with ambush and any sort of phalanx the kroot can inch towards the leader beasts is quickly bombarded with flesh bombs lobbed through the sky from unseen sources, turning the would be warriors into a choking mass of blood and acid. The few, skilled and suicidal enough to bypass the barrage and swarming intermediary beasts aiming for the warriors find a chilling truth: the warriors bony blades are not just masses of flesh and bone. The last kroot on the battlefield wear masks of twisted horror as they see the few who engage the warriors that are wounded explode in psychic(synaptic) fire. 

912.M41
A string of 3 planets burns in digestive acid, all kroot worlds, where the triad has begun its uphill battle of recovery.

Only warriors and rippers remain on the battlefield engulfing every scrap of biomatter feasible. Bloated corpses of gaunts, biovores, and the like churn in digestive acid of pools around the crashed hive ship and tentacle like straw appendages pump the liquid goulash back into the hive ship. The ship is stranded and will make no effort to leave until the planets are barren. Spore chimney's harvest the very atmosphere both for biochemical components and so that once the atmosphere is gone the hive ship can dislodge itself from the planet with ease as the atmosphere makes it more difficult. 

The hive fleet strengthens one of it's most prominent qualities with this victory, enhancing the hyper adaptability of it's parent fleet(gorgon) by assimilating more kroot genetic material. 

913.M41 Having finally completely scoured the three planets the synaptic workings of the splinter fleet takes to space to regroup. There are still only three large ships, looking as if they have each grown in size. They will come to be known as Ultimus, Primaris, and the nameless one. Primaris is by a wide margin the largest of the three having encountered the most resistance, while the nameless one is the smallest. Besides their growth, would be passers by would notice a host of "small" flying vessels with them drifting around them like remoras to a shark before one of the remora like vessels or a tentacle appendage from the behemoths tore them asunder. 

Eyes to the sky

930.M41
They moved further into the eastern fringe and further up the imperial galactic plane drifting for more and more prey.  Continuing to find smaller and smaller kroot worlds they grow and strengthen their numbers but quickly find their prey becoming ever more sparse. Despite this a dozen small worlds fall in the splinter fleet's wake the fleet finding little need to refine it's vanguard and siege tactics. 


931.M41

The fleet while beginning to turn away from it's course into the eastern fringe come across something entirely foreign to them. A large sparkling blue planet, the biggest the fleet had encountered since it's split from gorgon, with several large fiery red punctuation marks visible from space, and dozens of trails from space blazing down to the surface near the fiery markers. This is not the alien thing to the hive fleet. The truly alien sight is the origin of the trails of light, a truly spectacular sight. Five chaos ships, ranging in size stand across from eachother above the planet warring amongst themselves apparently trying to become the dominant force in the heavens of the planet.

A chaos Daemonship, vibrant in color, and Iconoclast Destroyer warred against a Pestilaan Class cruiser with five Infidel Raiders en tow. Whether mutiny or outright assault caused chaos to turn on itself is unclear to the tyranids. Hundreds of winged warp creatures fluttered from the Daemonship completely overwhelming one of the Infidel Raiders while supporting it's spawnlings with bizarre multicolored fire. A dozen more light shoot from the raider to the planet as it starts to twist and explode, some of the debris cascading into the atmosphere of the planet. During this disaster the fleet slowly approaches the skirmish cautiously. The daemonship slowly but surely turns it's attention to the cruiser.

During this the Destoyer wages all out war against the cruiser and remaining raiders. All the ships sustain heavy damage, and one of the raiders barely operational attempts to slowly flank the enemy ships. It's mission is quickly cut short as it's hit my waves of bio-plasma and small beasts assault it while Primaris wraps tentacle tendrils around it literally ripping it asunder. Through small explosions, Primaris reels in pain as it's tentacles while effective are ripped apart in the fire of thrusters and plasma. The ship would survive these injuries, but the triad of ships learned the lesson of direct contact being costly immediately.

The Cruiser unloads heavy cannons at the destroyer and the destroyer reels as it begins to implode firing munitions as it is ripped into debris and flashing explosions are visible through openings in the ships. Despite this the Cruiser and two raiders are in horrid condition. The cruiser immediately finds itself assaulted by the same winged bird daemons that destroyed one of it's allied raiders and the daemonship and cruiser turn their guns at eachother. Barely functional and having lost almost the entirety of it's crew, a khornate infidel raider decides to employ a hate filled and risky gambit to stop the Tzeentch-ian daemon-vessel. It engages it's warp drive and blazes a trail directly into the daemonship causing a cataclysmic explosion.

In the crossfire another raider falls victim to the collective biocannon fire of the nameless ship and Ultimis while Primaris brings up their flank inching towards the remaining ships. Vox communication between the cruiser and remaining Khornate raider exchanges alarms, concerns, and outright rage filled dissention is heard upon seeing the new fleet approaching interrupting their victory celebration. As the ships arpproach the raider, the khornate raider's crew still mostly intact realizes that the cruiser has sustained too many losses to be maneuverable or of value and similar to it's kin engages it's warp drive and escapes back in the direction of the ultima segmentum and the maelstrom. The Khornate and Plague marine warband is shattered. Realizing their warp drives are badly damaged and taking advantage of the fleet's confusion, the cruiser engages in it's only option while pummeling the hive ships erratically and deploys all it's remaining drop pods as it began emergency planetfall procedure.

Nameless One sustained the brunt of the disorganized fire, literally placing itself as a shield to the already pained Primaris, and its synaptic feedback was felt by it's brethren well into space. The now rage filled fleet focused it's efforts on the plummeting chaos cruiser and the big blue ball of prey. Despite grievous injury, Nameless One Plunged its way through the atmosphere making planet fall. This would be the most aggressive invasion the young splinter fleet had engaged upon, and as Nameless fell Primaris and Ultimis already prematurely engaged in providing as many bio-bombs unto the suface of the planet as it could, sending hundreds of prematurely formed mycetic spores filled with vanguard organisms. This was not a prepared assault, but the two brothers began to rapidly process their biomass as maintenance beasts and gaunts began the spawning process internally once again.

Lemnos is the word the fleet's creatures would eventually hear their prey call their planet, though they would not understand it or it's significance.



 

[Deleted]

Chapter 2: The Battle for Lemnos

Touching down

Captain Nathandar Fourier audibly cleared his throat as he processed what his Lieutenant relayed what her men had seen via a scratchy vox. "Roger that Lt. Petlyuk, bring your troops doing drills into formation and *HISSSS* NCO's to scout ahead and maintain contact- the Major is going to keep us busy with this one". "Affir-*HISSSS*, Captain" Lt. Szina Petlyuk responded. Petlyuk was a strong willed by the books type and got to work immediately. As she turned from the communications array she heard it hiss back to life once more "Szina! One more *HSS*ng! Your vox feed is coming in weak, have you communications NCO *HSSSSSSSS*-" and then the feed went dead. She sighed and opened her helmet vox to her troops "ALL TROOPS FILE IN, BREAK INTO FIRE SQUADS AND REGIMENT RANK, ALL NCO's CONVERGE ONTO MY LOCATION".

Captain Fourier waited a minute looking from the high fortified walls of San Jean-arc. Staring over the vast Watercrest forest and to the horizons of the Glass desert where Petlyuk would be running operation, he squinted to see if he could see what she described but to no avail. "Open a channel to Major Montus, would you Richart" he commanded addressing his page. "He can handle telling high command". The feed remained silent for a minute with the occasional clicking of a dial tone before the voice of a grizzled old man finally crackled onto the feed. "Captain Fourier, to what do I owe the pleasure?" chided Monuts playfully. "Major, one of the LT's I'm in charge of, Petlyuk, is reporting strange activity in the sector she's culling natives in while running drills. She-" "OUT WITH IT BOY, I don't need the details of her operations!" interrupted Major Monuts. This sort of behavior was entirely typical of Vivaldo Monuts, a grizzled old combat veteran that had been alive during the time when rampaging nomads with their occult deities warred against their metropolis, before the days the young major and his cohorts beat them into little more than interspersed superstitious tribes to be culled on contact. With an annoyed trickle of sweat running down his shaved head, Fourier responded "My apologies Major, she reported what seemed like las-fire coming down from the sky on her far horizon. No less than 50 clicks from her location. As well as some mild seismic activity". The tone of Montus quickly changed "Are you positive Captain? You understand that could mean visitors". "Positive Sir" said the Captain. After a ponderous pause Monuts voiced his decision "Maintain constant communication with your LT, and approach with extreme caution. I will petition the Colonel to see if we can't get some of the Warguard to intercept her location. "Understood Major. Before I go Major, vox communiques with my LT have been poor reception, but I will keep you updated if the situation changes" reported Fourier. "Good job Captain" uttered Monuts before the vox went dead.



Lights flickered down the hallway Rhicius strolled through, and glanced down the remnants of a twisted and collapsed hall leading to a wing of the ship that didn't survive the impact. It was clear reminder that despite their active devotion the god of death and decay, he owned their mortal souls regardless if they flew his banners or not. Of the near 250 crewman and 50 renegade astares that didn't vacate the Cruiser previous to it's atmospheric entry, just under a hundred crewman and 30 astares survives the impact of entry as the damaged vessel plummeted and made a cataclysmic impact with the sand dunes of the Glass Desert. Even fewer crewman lived now, having been snatched up on occasion to Rhicius "The Absolved" Fabidimus' twisted arcane rituals. The Cruiser had only managed to stay intact by diverting all power from all systems to the ship's shields and thrusters in a near vain attempt to reduce the significance of their fall.

Though they didn't know it, the name was appropriate since their entry left the valley like crater coated with walls of glass as sand melted to the super-heated touch of the ship. It had been days since they had made planetfall, and already the ship and it's inhabitants perverted the otherwise silent landscape. Around the ship piles of corpses of former cohorts lied in decay and cultists surrounded the fetid rot as shrines to their dark master while uttering dark incantations. Where they had lost virtually all their support from their former Khornate companions(of the remaining astares, only 12 maintained devotion to the blood god in a fleet of corpulence), the festering one would provide. To glance upon the scene was to gaze into a post apocalyptic bazaar of horror surrounding a decrepit mechanical leviathan.

Rhicius finally came upon the blacked out corridor of the vessel he marched towards and rattled on the door as he entered. The sweet scent of wax luminaries and rotted flesh filled the large chamber that had clearly become a ritual chamber for the Sorceror of Nurgle. Three robed cultists chanted in a triangular formation without paying Rhicius heed as they stood around a group of about 10 men who in the center of the room created a spectacular riot by rattling their chain-linked restraints to the floor and moaning incoherently while scratching at their bindings to the point of digging into the red of their flesh. A large circle of blood on the chamber floor surrounded each chanter, arranged in such a manner that each of the three circles touched the other two.

Erneg the slaver, a fourth robed male that would likely have once been human addressed the chaos sorcerer as he entered "My lord, the warp is weak here.....we are far from the maelstrom and something is interfering with the already taxed reach of the warp". Rhicius was already aware as his own ties to the warp seemed distressed here, a situation that did not seem to be improving. Figuring there was no way to solve the problem immediately he made note of the captives. They were clearly human, having no real significant genetic divergence from their isolation in the brink of Imperial space other than their flesh. Where normal humans had the pink tainted color of life, these humans had skin who's color bordered on a reflective obsidian color and though it was difficult to determine their pigmentation in the dark room the candles reflected light off of them like pools of water. This was primarily due to the nature of prey on the planet, as the crusts were largely inhabited by a diverse lot of insectoid life, the favorite prey being gigantic dung beetles slightly smaller than a Rhino transport. The beetles were a favorite staple of the diet of many humans on the planet, and a consequence of ingesting them was the skin distilling the coloring pigments on the bugs' chitin into their skin as the human body was not able to metabolize it in a normal fashion. The tribesman hailed from a barbaric lot of nomadic hunters that had come to investigate the object fallen from the sky that was butchered and whose scattered remnants were captured for things far worse than slaughter. "What manner of rituals are you conducting that they succumb to death so loudly?" prodded Rhicius. Through the fungal and rotted jaw that was the instrument of the arcane, Erneg revealed that the natives had their tongues removed, and this blood was that which was used for the blood of the ritual circled. The thought made some part of Rhicius tickle on the inside with a truly dark glee. "How goes the dark pact?" asked Rhicius, knowing that the souls were intended to be sacrificed to open a small warp rift through which the sorcerer could bargain for daemonic aid. "Not well my lord,"proclaimed Erneg between coughs " you can see warp energies fluttering about them and the warp tries to form but there is too much noise- not even the vox units are doing well to contact our forced that took the pods, including Lord Hexadis".

Understanding full well a warp rift would not be manageable under the current circumstances, Rhicius The Absolved paid homage to the warp dieties in the manner that best suited him. In a swift flick of the wrist motion he impaled the face of Erneg on the side of the pointed star that adorned the top of his staff. The Slaver wailed as Rhicius approached the ritual circle the writhing body still attached to the staff as he dug it's hilt into the ground right outside of the ritual rings. Almost immediately the candles dimmed and the room despite the arid heat outside grew frigid. Rhicius knew no portal to the warp would open, and he also understood he was in short supply of men. The warband would have to rebuild, and the inhabitants of this world would suffice as his army. A river of blood drained from Erneg and re-inked the already marked ritual circles. The motes of smoke and cinders from the burning wicks started humming like insect wings as plumes of dust turned into tiny musical carrion beetles. Rhicius' eyes became glowing yellow-green embers as he joined in the chanting of the three and added his energy to the ritual. He had thought to turn the men into mindless plague daemons to go forth and spread rot while they grouped but because of the state of the warp and the need for numbers something more sinister came to be. And he prayed a dark prayer to the great father, for a great plague. The beetles in the air moved to the men in the center, and it was pleasant for those building and chanting outside the vessel that the men in the dark chamber had no tongues, for the screams that would have erupted from them as the beetles bored into their flesh would have been maddening even to a cultist. Flesh twisted, and contagion spread altering the men to their very being.

The 10 dark skinned men stood behind Rhicius as he ordered the remaining ritualists to help those toiling to build more shrines to chaos to help focus the warp, and to when able bestow the boon of the greatfather to their own, many of whom already sported the early mutation signs of daemon and spawnhood. The obsidian men echoed the words of the sorceror, the plague inhabiting them having regrown their shattered bodies as the plague god too often gifts. Turning to his retinue "return to your people, and spread the word of the magnificence they have stumbled upon in the desert. Before this accompany me to the barracks and make sure you greet our Khornate renegades in arms" ordered Rhicius with a sinister smile twisting onto his features within his helm. They did so, fumes invisible to the human senses trailing from their mouths like a smog. The Sorcerer, content with his work, takes leave of the ritual chamber and approaches the chamber of the ship now being used as stand in barracks to his remaining astares so he might gain any updates as to the vox-situation.


On the opposite side of the desert, in a sparsely wooded area at the break of the sand of the Glass' dunes, a huge beast heaved as it began to die. The nameless one was not long for the hive mind and it's bretheren above knew it as the nameless one's synaptic neurons began firing signals for spawning beasts to go into overdrive and ignore the cost of biomass. In it's bleeding and shattered body, gestation chambers cannibalized the interior of the ship sending fourth waves of gaunts and warrior beasts from the site of impact. Maintenance gaunts on the outside of the ship began terraforming the ground around the ship, clearly intending to create a digestion pool in the very crater housing their matriarch. Lictors and genestealers began wandering into the wilds to scout the native surroundings. The first biovores began haphazardly seeding terraforming and explosive gas spewing bubbles of flesh all across the plane.

Mycetic spored dropped en masse on the planet from the orbiting hive ships, attempting to ensure the gambit of the nameless one was not in vain. Far into the fringe of space, the synaptic shriek of the nameless one echoes into the void.


Lt. Szina Petlyuk and her personal retinue marched forward through the now thinning tangle of the Watercrest forest. At it's center it was a tangle of giant gnarled roots the size of buildings and trees towering above even armored scout tower fortifications with ease, making navigating the labyrinth like wood a matter of survival. keeping their pace, the Lt. and her 20 guardsmen could now begin to clearly see the other combat squads marching at differing intervals but all clearly in the direction of the dunes of the Glass now visible within several hundred meters. Before they'd began their scouting journey they reported back to their outpost to procure transport and supplies. Command had told Petlyuk that in addition to her own 8 squads, to take the two combat squads that had accompanied them on training drills so they might get field experience.

Lt. Petlyuk clicked on her vox to the frequency of all her men "Soldiers of the exalted, keep your eyes open and keep distance between your squads. Weapons primed but don't engage without permission from your NCO's". Then switching her comm to the frequency of just her NCO's spoke " Permit no treachery, reward desertion with death. We have no idea what we're dealing with yet, approach with extreme caution and if we find resistance terminate with extreme prejudice". All was silent, and as the sun began to bathe the soldiers the glint from their obsidian colored skins betrayed their locations more than even the sound of their tread.

Under her command she had 8 NCO's, each of them having a squad of 20 men strong, as well as the two trainee units who's composition mirrored that of her own. And knowing that they had quite a distance to traverse to conserve resources and time they had all been loaded up and dropped from armored rigid looking speeder barges into the thicket of the forest nearest the border of the desert so they might find cover. They had hoped to have the superhuman Warguard elite in their armored battle suits that she had been told Maj. Monuts had attempted to requisition for her, but command alerted her that they would be sped to her location only if hostile activity was reported. None had been thus far, however they still had a good 10 clicks before they would be near where they expected they had seen the UFO's shoot down towards.

Her men were on edge, she could tell. This sort of activity had not been reported in generations, and her command would be given the honor of potentially engaging an alien threat in addition to the local wildlife. If this had not been enough pressure in it's own right, now becoming clearly distinguishable from the heat lines over the dunes, plumes of smoke fluttered from multiple points across the horizon as well as from a few great hall sized craters coated with the gloss of recently formed crystal from superheating of sand. Treading through the sand you could feel the tensing of flesh in the soldiers as they scoped around them while keeping speed.



Ornate steel and ceramite shone in the sunlight as heavy casings flew from the Umbra Pattern Storm bolter and made contact with the colossal beast interfering with Hexadris' regroup effort. Scattered in an emergency pod disembarkation, the aspiring chaos lord clad in full terminator Armour found himself feeling atypically vulnerable due to the circumstance in which he had been thrown into. Someone in their warhost had turned on them and sold them out to the enemies of the plague father, and his humors reflected such betrayal. To add injury to insult, he was painfully aware of some of their warhost abandoning them in cowardice, and was sure that the vessel they originally called their was inoperable if not completely destroyed. He had made vain efforts to reach the sorcerer, Rhicius, via commlink but whether it was the desert storms or destruction of his allies he could not reach them, and in every direction there was only sand.

Since their landing on Lemnos everything had gone wrong. Everything. Whether it was from the seismic activity of their entry or if they'd stumbled on the creatures territory, the moment they touched ground he and his men found themselves assaulted by horrid sand worm creatures with no visible face save for a circular maw of teeth. Wide as three astares and roughly 6 long the beasts were a hellish writhing mass of claws and teeth that erupted from the sand to cause havoc and dove back into the earth like a fish in water while taking with them a victim. Steeling his grip while charging at it, Lord Hexadris opened fire on one of the creatures as it broke out of the ground lunging at one of the younger marines to have made ground in his same drop pod. The sand worms while agile and deadly had no protective plating to speak of, and soft flesh exploded into a hail of watery pink fluid. Without breaking pace to ensure the creature was dead, he bounded over his comrade and brought Noth, his power axe blessed by his master, to a crashing halt in the maw of the creature. Almost instantly the creature began to wither and bubble into a mass of pox ridden contagion. Opening a comm with his scattered troops he barked " Marines, group into phalanx formations to take ou-HISSSSSSS- when they go airborne, and stay in firing range of other phalanxes to provide support -HISSSSSS-. TERMINATORS, TO ME!". The marine he saved got to his feet to thank his liege, and as he began a salute the dust at his feet erupted and he disappeared under the upkicked grainy fog. Whether the creatures were employing new tactics or he had yet to see them yank a full sized astares under the ground, he cared not as his bolter unloaded a hail of fire into the ground and he saw pink fluid barely boil to the surface of the ground.

All around him there were dead worms and scattered pieces of power armor. The creatures had been relentless as if they had shaken some nest of them, and now the rotted corpses of no less than 30 of the beasts littered the sand. It was difficult to predict the losses of his men as many of those killed had been dragged underground with the beasts. Based off his initial estimate he lost no less than 10 of his marines, one of which was of his own personal guard of terminators which post-head count now dwindled from 5 to 4. This was completely unacceptable as he had far too few men as it stood, and they should not have been so thoroughly routed by a weak enemy who relies on guerrilla tactics, wild beasts no less. A cursory vox check suggested with him he had just under two 10 man squads of marines with him, down from the original three, piecemeal regroupings of their original rank hierarchy...if you could call the loose organization of their ranks a hiearchy. Besides this Hexadris' own guard made their way to him. His second in command, Altimus, addressed him approaching "Sir, we must remove ourselves from this barren hellscape. We're vulnerable from all sides and we have no way to bolster our cause in these mountains of dirt". "I agree Altimus, gather the men and try to open a link with the sorcerer once more. When that fails we march" said Hexadris, locking eye slits with the hulking figure clad in ceramite decorated with the three circles of nurgle on his shoulderplate and holstered storm bolter.

Their weapons linked Hexadris and Altimus back to their earliest days as astares, hailing from the same original chapter. He was the only true kinsman Hexadris had among his marines to his knowledge, and the Storm Bolters were relics from the first time they heard the call of the dark god. They had been under siege with their battle brothers, Champions of the First Legion whom they had been pursuing saboteurs of Chaos when they had found themselves in a system rife with ork activity and were instructed to cull their numbers. They had battled tirelessly for days, maybe even weeks and had made significant progress having even taken a chunk of the warboss' enclave when the orks renewed their numbers and converged in the shoddily constructed bunker the orks themselves built where the deathwatch and Hexadris' squad fiercely held position where the rest of their allies had broken. Then the whispers began, and in an all too sinister understanding Altimus asked his squad if he heard the voices via a link the deathwatch were deaf to. Hexadris and Altimus weren't the only to hear the whispers, but they were the only to remain standing. Orks now pouring through the openings caused a fierce melee to unfurl where Hexadris and his men fought and the terminators rained hellfire on their opponents. It was insanity, and each swing of a weapon brought each marine closer to death as a slew of greenskins fell screaming in ecstasy. The young lord had been denied his power sword by a greenskin and was using his bare hands and now empty boltgun to bludgeon his opponents, all the while suffering cuts and blows that would shatter a normal human being. "There is no honor in this deathhhhh" wispered the voices in their heads "We can raise you to true glory above your highest mortal expectationsssss". Snatching a twisted mangled poweraxe from a charging ork, he cleaved through his would be deathdealers and gave his cohorts a moments reprieve and the deathwatch moved up to relieve the fighters with a plume of fire expending the last of their flamer's fuel. Glancing at eachother knowingly, Altimus and the two remaining of their squad edged up to the deathwatch using their flamers, and cleaved open their skulls. They did not go peacefully, and two of the other marines in Hexadris' squad fell during the retaliation. They would have died right there to the greenskins had it not been for the youngest recruit in Hexadris' squad. He didn't understand exactly what had occurred at the moment, but the young marine began to radiate warp energy and his form twisted into something that dwarfed a terminator. The warp beast erupted from the bunker sundering the ork lines and causing more casualties and distractions than any organized assault might have, and during this time the young astares committed to shedding their power armor and looting that of their deathwatch companions. They knew they had crossed a line that could not be crossed back, and looting seemed trite compared to betrayal. "Gooooood Goooooodddd" they could hear the whispers. The planet would eventually be deemed fit only for virus bombing, but before the order could be struck more than a few imperial vessels had gone missing from the warhost and could be seen approaching the maelstrom.

Back in the Glass dunes, Hexadris bellowed "We're to advance and find a way out of this arid hell! Before we move, mark the corpses with nurgle's rot!". His men knew what he meant, and they all took their plague knives cutting into the corpses of the fallen, xenos and marine alike while looting their brothers for munitions. Immediately pus oozed from the dead and bled into the sand under the boots of the marching soldiers of chaos. Their ranks marched, and all that could be seen was the shine of sun on pallid power armor, and a glowing green axe in the hands of a terminator lord who's birthplace was a long dead ork world eons away.



Within the walls of San Jean-Arc, Captain Fourier pleaded with the Major "But sir, they haven't reported in and comm-HSSSSSSSSSSSS- the whole planet is going -HSSSSS-n't we at least send a scout force to ensure they're-HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS". The major resolutely responded "THEY ARE THE SCOUT FORCE! I don't like it anymore than you Captain, but we have protocol. I've told the other Captains -HISSSSSSSSSSSS- their men of the situation and move towards the edges of their borders nearest those of your LT. should they -HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS- aid" and the comm went dead again. This was becoming more and more common even for short range communication. Just earlier that day they had tried a hundred times to contact their fortified port city of Vaderloo far to the south through the Watercrest wood's lower expanse, through the swamplands of the Yid, and upon the Posiedus sea but couldn't even secure a signal to them.



Just on edge of the sands of the glass in an area who's native vegetation grew more and more sparsely while odd new fauna erupted, a cold hive ship sunk deeper into digestive waters now circling it like a moat while all matter of beasts skittered about it cleaving off hunks of flesh and dropping them into the gruel below. A group of raveners made it's way into the desert sands slithering and hissing as they dug themselves into the hills. Save for statue like Hive Guard, a pair of zoanthropes, and biovores continuing their seeding only guants and rippers remained terraforming and tearing apart the dead space hulk. They were now reliant on the hive ships above for reinforcements save for a few more spawning cycles that remained in the slowly dying spawning chamber beasts within the ship, starving as their lifeblood within the ship was cut and now only operating until death while gaunt-beasts carrying sacs of digestive gruel manually pumped the chambers. The ship had done it's job, the fauna by the ship had quickly been filled with all manner of lictors, genestealers, gaunts, and warrior beasts already making quick work of the native population thought he native wildlife it found was more resilient than expected. Giant beetles and centipedes had managed to turn predator into prey as a few ill prepared lictors attempted to stealthily dispatch the creatures only finding their barbs stopping short of evisceration upon the armored core of the bugs who then would tear into the shocked tyranid assassins like a battlemace hitting a rag-doll. These incidents however were the minority, and were quickly rectified with rampaging squads of genestealers eager to rip the creatures to shreds( In professor hubert farnsworth voice:"to shreds you say").



Evil takes root

The infected nomads upon leaving the chaos cruiser remnants bounded to the horizon almost with some unknown purpose. Finally after what seemed like an eternity the horizon broke and masses of color erupted upwards. They hadn't stopped for anything yet and knowing the desert they didn't have particular desire to remain. Only a few hundred meters from reaching the early breaking of a wood did they stop as one of their number fell to the ground and they rushed to his aid. They thought momentarily that he had only purged from overexertion in the heat, but their friend continued to spew a viscous green bile that seemed to have no end. They feared. Four of the nomads in terror started to continue for their destination while their cohorts looked on in shock at their desertion. While deliberating on how to proceed, the ground around those that stayed and their ill fated companion seemed to just fall from under them. In their native tongue one of them yelled "SAND WORM" before dark red talons dissected the falling man from neck to groin. Landing on his feet, one of their number could now see their assailant. Monstrous beasts of nightmare, the triad of tyranids boasted a serpent-like body and black armored plates. Deep red talons jutted from their wrists on their several sets of arms that only seemed a blur as his comrades fell to the ground in pieces. As he turned to run, one of the beasts lunged at him and it's jaws closed on his back as he felt the weight of a creature easily 5 times his weight crash into him.



Gaspar Kupfer readied his men for their duty. The Lt. had received order from Captain Fourier to take a small contingency of his men away from their standard drills, mapping, and dealing with the local tribespeople and make their way to Vaderloo as his normal patrol area was that nearest the port townships own. He had decided to take half his force, a full four combat squads and his own personal guard. Besides general communication being completely nil for days which was completely against protocol, it was vital they be made aware of the strange behavior in the desert as a precaution. A man of few words and by the books Lt. Kupfer chimed in over the hangar comm system "Load up in 5, all NCO's should be checking your equipment and loading up." before holstering the laspistol he had been so meticulously cleaning moments before and headed to the low atmosphere transport his own guard was strapping itself into.



Lt. Petlyuk and her men heaved over a singular massive sand dune and began their descent when the visual distortion from the heat melted away to reveal objects scattered in the sand over a fairly wide span. Tabbing her radio she blared "Combat approach, guns up". The widespread cadre of soldiers slowly began to converge around the point turning the firing line into a V as they closed on what now was clearly the sight of some recent firefight. Craters littered the whole area, and in some large clunking structures that seemed to had landed from the sky jutted upwards. There had been pieces of armor, armor that the Lt. realized looked eerily like that of the city's elite warguard, and littered limbs....and corpses of beasts she knew all too well torn asunder in manners that caused twisted glances of confusion and horror to the faces of her men. Flies and beetles made the air thick. "NCO's investigate the ships in 2 -HSSSSSSSSS- squads per ship" she whispered over her line, clearly captivated by the scene. One of the Sergeants from one of the trainee squads, Sgt. Bure made his way around the corpses of the sand worms with his men as they investigated the bizarre almost ceremonial carving of the beasts and the manner in which flies clung to the corpses. It was unnerving, and the sweat dripped down his brow from being confounded as much as from the heat. Nervously, he opened his comm "Lt. Petlyuk, Ma'am, there's something off about these corpses- it's like -HISSSSSSSSSS- killed them carved them- HISSSSSSS-". She ticked her comm on briefly "Keep investigating, the ships are priority". The other NCO's shambled around the vacant drop pods while Sgt. Bure and his men still combed around the bloated shreds of animal when a terrible sound rang. The bloated corpses heaved and burst flinging blackish blood over Bure and his men and instantly agony erupted through the desert. Skin sloughed off to the bone where the blood had made contact and Bure's unit shriveled to near nothing. And then the flies came, an angry wave of darkness swarmed the survivors and picked their flesh clean before moving on to the rest of her men tearing into the shrieking masses.

Panic spread throughout the Lt's men and she roared " FLAMERS TO THE FRONT!". In an instant the desert's temperature raised what seemed like a hundred degrees as flames bellowed into the sky and a cloud of black turned to ash and blew into the wind. When the sky went silent, she ordered her troops to return into scout formations and tried fruitlessly to radio command.


A green brown gruel made it's way up the young nomad's gullet as he and his comrades exchanged glances and knew they all were ill with whatever foul pox had a hold on him. The four were wary, especially after sprinting to great length away from the shrieks they began to hear coming from their own companions. Only one of them had held himself from vomiting, and even he was visibly beginning to scratch at hives that began to float to the surface of their sweat dripping skin. "How far?" one of them rasped in their native tongue. His only response was a shaking of heads as they continued to trod warily through the sands leaving mostly only footprints behind them, though one of them concealed that at an area of severe pox on his feet one of his toes had literally rot off. Just as their spirits was reaching it's limits with the sun finally beginning to fade into the dunes, the dark crusted line of something on their horizon and they knew their trip through this hellscape was near over and they would be reunited with their people. Maybe there they could find aid from the medicine men of their kin.



Rhicius appraised his work from the edge of the ships' crater. A scene that days ago had been a lot of groveling cultists and mechanics toiling to raise a effigy to the unclean one had become something truly remarkable. Beetles and pox flies seemed to circle the crater as if it was the eye of some great storm. Impaled on barbs welded onto the vessel's wall were dozens of human corpses, near stitched together into some great humanoid looking golem in a horrific medley of rot and decay. Jutting from the blackened sand and ash of the hole were several twisted stakes of scavenged wood and metal with half dead humans that had been bound to them and kept alive under the summer sun to cook and fester. Some of them were natives, but some had clearly been former crewsmen. Desertion had been a problem on an afternoon a few days ago; until his astares had chased one of them down and torn him to shreds. Some of the others had upon seeing this stopped running and surrendered, which turned out to be a poor decision considering their current bindings.

He decided it was time to check on his patients in the remnants of the medbay. Passing the spires of punishment, one could now clearly see the cultists that remained had taken their dark worship to new heights, as many of them now had extra limbs, fungus growing on parts of their bodies, larva colonies busting beneath their flesh, and in some cases the early signs of becoming daemons of the plague. Ignoring the weak amalgamations of humanity and death he made his way to the locked room and activated the security panel that forced the battered airlock door screech open. In the dim lit room, large beasts scurried between medbay tables as their domineer approached. Two more of the remaining 9 had died, bringing their original numbers down from 12 to 7. Rhicius glanced past disheveled scraps of blood red power armour at the corpses on the floor in disgust as he noted the other creatures had been eating them; evidence of corrosive bile near bite marks covered them. One of the former marines dragged itself forwards on it's belly like some serpent, belching up venom where it trudged through on it's hands for it's body from the waist down had rotted completely off. Fingers elongated and started to become tentacle-like, and the skin on their backs began to form the early layer of a chitin like carapace. And on their backs, the early buds of wings could be seen attempting to break through. Despite their appearances, these were not beasts of the warp or possessed, Rhicius' prayers had been answered on that fateful day and the greatfather had send him a truly great pox that at the most fundamental levels turn the hosts body against them and begin to change them into plague bearing animals that would spread the contagion of nurgle. The creature approached Rhicius with a speed that betrayed it's appearances and hurled itself to his feet where it gurgled and spat clearly trying to have some sort of coherent speech burst from it's gullet. "You're pathetic" whispered the sorcerer, mocking his former brother while enjoying what her perceived as his superior tactical prowess. Not knowing the full extent of the disease his master had begot him, he made sure the nomads he had sent out shadowed the marines of khorne that remained in his camp. Not because of some ill will, simply as a field test so that he might know the extent of his favor. He knew, even now the nomads must be among their people, changing similarly, and infecting their former kin. Rhicius would have an army on this world, no matter the cost.



In a villiage that was once that of the nomad's original tribe, three of the sorcerer encountered tribespeople writhed in pain as death clung to them. The shaman and witchdoctors had begun to cough and hack as they desperately tried to treat their brothers, but thus far they had no success and one had even died- cast aside in the dirt outside the straw hut. They had not coaxed a word from their butchered scouting party, and now they began to twist in horrible ways in the darkness of their holy ground. Their spiritual leader had declared them cursed by some foul force, but had proved unable to stop the evil. Flies fluttered here and there as the nomadic warrior tribe seemed tired and sweat clung to them in the day's heat, unaware of what was to come.



Feeling the hairs on his skin standing for no apparent reason and needing to break the silence, Altimus opened a comm to his brother and leader. "Sti-HISSSSSSSS-from Rhicius?" he said with a fleeting glance at his lord and remaining 3 squad members clad in terminator army of assorted origin. "Nothing" replied Hexadris, completely unphased by his second in command's informality. They had abandoned their formalities and hierarchies when they forsook their vows to the emperor, and the rank of chaos while similar in appearance to the mismatched wargear of their new brothers, was a rank founded in power and the favor it attracted from their lord and master. He who was the most powerful would rule, and it was in this fire that he and the sorcerer had forged their warband. A warband that upon it's emergence from the maelstrom had ravaged worlds looting and gathering followers, even boasting having boarded and stolen an imperial military cruiser while crushing their fleet. One that would later become a daemonship to all of his men's chagrin. A warband that had fought under Lufgt Huron, before he was the tyrant of Badab, and one of the last groups to abandon his conquest as his defeat unfurled. Then, after their forced numbers were shattered they had still once again managed to rebuild their legion. Now he could see their indiscriminate respect and assimilation of powerful marines from the warp may have been their most costly folly as he knew they were responsible for unleashing the corrupted touch of the twisted abomination of change on their commandeered imperial vessel. Hexadris knew that he had to get back to Rhicius, immediately, because while he wasn't exactly sure what had come upon their firefight with the daemonic enemies of the greatfather nurgle, he knew that before they dropped from the ship that one of their attackers ships was on course to follow to the planet with them, and it was vital he have the sorcerer's power if they were to stand a chance.

In a second, all that focus and thought washed away as at the peak of the highest dune they could rightly see, the air around them turned into roaring thunder.In what had to be half a second, all of the marines pivoted and open wild fire on the line of soldiers that had come up above the hills in the sand to their rear. The shots fired were wild and inaccurate but from only 20 something marines, well over a hundred bolts were streaked across the dusk red sky and in a glorious homage to the god of decay, dark skinned limbs flew from their torsos like the dirt from an ordinance impact. Static ridden fury blared over the vox units of the marines, and their line charged headfast at their targets already buckling lines. What ensued could not rightly be described as a battle, or a skirmish. Marines that grasped the tiny men in their hands simmering in the horror of their victims as they tore off their armor and took near slanesshi indulgence in watching their victims dark tones curl off as they gently raked their plague knives over their victims skin. It came off in sheets, almost as easily as one might peel a ripe clementine.

Even outnumbered 4 to 1, this was not a challenge for the warriors of nurgle. A few soldiers did manage to scurry off during the butchering, and Hexadris yelled curtly over the vox for the few marines frenzied enough to pursue them to break off their trail so they might move on. Their foe was broken, and if the cowardly whelps did manage to return to their masters they would only be spreading word of the glory of the greatfather. He was now more sure they were on course with Rhicius, for why would natives send out such a large force into a desert for no reason if not to investigate their visitors from space. Turning to their original course he saw Altimus dragging a woman on his bolter, and as he caught up she sloughed off a fetid soft bag of gelatin more decorated than any of the rest of the soldiers. And he could read on her uniform in some twisted form of imperial gothic, the name Petlyuk.

A good way across the desert, huge mechanical tendrils writhed over the lip of the crater housing a shrinking chaos wreck. While still large in statue, one with attention to detail could see the readily identified charred and twisted debris of sections of the vessel, and a screeching daemonic mechanical roar echoed through the darkening dunes.



Lt. Kupfer and his men struggled to make heads or tails of the scene in front of them. They knew something was terribly wrong as they approached Vaderloo when the specialists with heat sensors were reading values on par with exploding mortar munitions, but seeing what had become of what was their third biggest walled city on the planet did no justice to the glory of the long estranged people of terra. Where there were once walls that towered over the treelines of the forest, stood pieces of molten hot slag. A cityscape almost 12 kilometers across was now a collection of burning indentations in the crust of the planet where munitions from the sky clearly crashed down into the unsuspecting townspeople and vaporized them near instantly. The ocean poured into some of the craters that had replaced the once significant port. Over a scratchy comm link men gasped to eachother while Kupfer and his comms team tried desperately to reach San Jean-arc to no avail through what had become an increasingly desperate situation. Even close range communication had become littered with static and discord and even maintaining coherency with his men was difficult for the young Lt. Regardless he knew that they had to return to command and tell of the situation, but turning their backs towards their path of origin rustling could be seen in the brush and a sinking feeling made itself palpable to the Lt and his men. Still, they had a job and they knew they must push forward.



A group of cultists struggled under the weight of the hefty astares they carried as they brought him to their master in the dank inner chambers of the ship outside the former medbay. Near gawking, Rhicius demanded to know what had occurred. The mangled marine before him was from a scouting patrol sent out hours ago to do more reconnaissance while the sorcerer made his final preparations before engaging the locals. The bloodied and broken marine struggled to spurt the word from his lips, gasping as his word's true resonance crashed onto the faces around him. "*cough-hack*.....Tyr....Tyranid *hack*...Ravener". Rhicius' face contorted examining the wounds on the marine's plate. Horrible eviscerating gouges into the ceramite, sections of it melted in visibly porous patterns as if some sort of acid had burned it. Now it was clear, the interfering ship in orbit, why one of their allies had abandoned them in orbit, and the issues with planetary communication. "We need a ship" Rhicius whispered to himself. "WE NEED A SHIP" he bellowed at the terrified cultists. "Alert the parade outside and our astares to mobilize immediately, we have to see if any locals have some sort interplanetary vessel". The men scattered like roaches in the light leaving the wounded patrol victim to Rhicius. "And you? Well I shall take you to the medbay" with an aura that projected unease unto those that could hear him.

The walls of the medbay were very different now. Swathes of what remained of their re-purposed ship had grown a variety of plague molds and it had become difficult to discern if parts of the wall were composed of rot or insects. The wounded marine glanced around, groggy from his injuries, and began to wake as his eyes darted from concern to concern. Puddles of luminescent vomit threatened to flood the room and broken pieces of astares power armor littered the room. Pieces of bone and torn garments were sprinkled sporadically. Suddenly the man found his breath "What have you done you witch?" he spoke. At this point it had already been too late, the chaos sorcerer's shadowy figure became a passing silhouette behind a door as the marine realized he had dallied far too long acquainting himself to his surroundings. Then the sounds began. Horrible inhuman sounds that were a cross between vomiting, chittering, and screaming closed in around him. And flapping, the flapping of insect wings. Large armored beasts ascended from corpses near the walls of the room and behind the medbay tables, with pale green skin, black chitinous armored plates, and horrible hose-like limbs tipped with deadly red colored scythe blades. Plague drones. He realized that's what the infection was, the plague he heard whispers throughout the camp that the dark gods had gifted to Rhicius. He couldn't successfully summon beasts from the warp so he turned his own into warp fiends.

The fly like beasts charged him with their foul cries as he got to his feet to defend himself, and as one charged him head on and stared at him in the eyes he knew if anything was left of the marines that the beasts once were, they were screaming husks driven mad by their fate. Hose like mouths tipped in teeth tore into his armor and flesh. He was burning, and his strength bled from him as he glanced to see the wound. Acidic vomit poured into his already battered plate slow cooking his body into a viscous gruel within his own plate as the plague drones slurped and chomped on their prey.

Outside, marines began to yell between eachother and cultists made final preparations clearly readying to leave their short lived home. A massive writhing mechanical figure with tentacle arms and a reptilian face roared as cultists herded the machine-beast towards scaffolding for them to make last second improvements and alterations. Having so many tech-engineers and some chaos magiks had allowed Rhicius to infuse the mechanical frame they had built from their vessel with a daemon engine. A Maulerfiend. Rhicius could be seen marching towards the central effigy in their camp.


In a cluster of local villiages on the edge of the wood before the desert, giant armored flying tentacle-flies savaged their prey spreading disease through their ecosystem. Just as the tyranids had taken root, so had chaos.



"I understand Colonel" stammered Major Monuts while a scribe frantically jotted down what the Major said, transmitting through a more primitive but unaffected medium of communication in script "but my teams out in the field need aid! It's been days since I've had anything other than static or screaming come through the comms!". "That is not my concern Major, we are attempting to reinforce our positions we have contact with and fortify. Based off the unusual circumstance and the unknown nature of our planetary visitors we have no idea if they're hostile or the cause of our taxed communications network". "But sir! My me-" "YOUR SOLDIERS HAVE MUNITIONS, if anything out there is capable of wiping out over a hundred men we're better off fortifying San Jean-Arc and if we can establish communication with Artens we might fortify or converge on their location." "yes sir" acknowledged Monuts, and the feed went dead.

He gave a heavy sigh staring at the darkened sky, knowing the reddish darkness to the sky was the fault of whatever was assailing his men. The air was.....thick...almost saturated with humidity and pollen all at once. He regret his position in his old age, having learned the hard way dealing with the bureaucracy of their planetary armed forces. The horizon stirred with motion, in the woods birds and insects stirred from the treetops. Clouds of greenish fog making it's first debut crawled over interspersed clouds of toxins in the woods, and the desert.




Kupfer's men were scattered. A sweat broke his brow as he and the comrades to his sides ran after scoping out the tiny clearing in the trees. All they had wanted to do was return to command and relay their findings, a difficult journey in it's own. Disregarding the fact that one of the three crowned cities had been burned down completely to molten slag with no sign of survivors. The only path back would be through the wood, and for the first few hours everything seemed fine. You lost sight of the people to your sides but made no thought of it because of the amount of soldiers. They realized too late though they weren't losing sight of each other because of brush, but they were getting picked off by something.

The Lt. Saw a brief shimmer to his left, and then saw a long scythed limb erupt through the helmet of one of his men. He screamed, but the assassin disappeared back into the brush instantly. That's when what should have been an ordinary patrol mission went from bad to worse. Creatures the size of swamprats and large dogs came out of the foliage with giant maws of teeth and 6 small limbs tipped with deep red talons as they skittered all over the Lt's unit and ripped them apart. Their long tails and chitinous backs made them difficult to kill, and there were so many of them. Some of them died, as lasguns hummed to life and blasted their assailers, but wherever rank organized claws appearing from air ripped apart men in a near surgical manner. They had failed, the Lt. knew, and he could only watch in horror as a horde of creatures knocked him off his feet as they devoured his knees.

Into the killing fields

In the battlements above Artens mighty walls her guard holed up like rodents as they endured a barrage of constant fire from the wood a bit over a mile away. Strange sac like flesh pods exploded oozing acid or noxious gas wherever they made contact. More than several men had died, and a few had managed to cross the wall, but damage had been minimal, and the lascannon emplacements atop the walls managed to pick off most of the assaulting mines while airborne. Artillery teams worked furiously to calculate their munitions for counter-fire while several spotters gazed on through ocular enhancers and determined distance.

The teams had fired before, and eventually their assailants had ceased fire, but they learned quickly their forced had merely used the time to re-position. Strange creatures like small dogs or large rodents had cluttered around the center of their now closed walls, and several had initially attacked their guard but they had not posed a significant threat yet. The biggest concern was the catastrophic loss of communications with everyone. Townships, Vaderloo, the capital. No one was responding. New strange creatures now bounded across the field, larger than the small chitenous six armed insect beasts bounding on two powerful hind legs with a middle small set used for balance and two savage front limbs sporting long crimson bladed talons. Hormagaunts that managed to reach the walls leapt up trying to scale the high walls, and a few did manage to get close to the top, but the walls were too high and steep. Most of the hormagaunts would die at the walls, but this was no true loss. This had not been a siege for the tyranids, but an exploratory prod of their prey. The humans had no idea of this yet though. And they would not likely learn it in time.



Rhicius was relayed the information by a marine that a small force could be seen on the horizon, but in the desert the horizon was quite some distance away. Already having been mobilizing to approach a walled city scouts in the past few days had caught a glimpse of, he decided these new visitors would be their practice for actual combat. That being the case the sorcerer was preparing to make one more measure. Chants of chaos, and praises to the lord of rot rose to a fevered pitch as Rhicius approached the remaining effigy to the unclean one. The warp had become near inaccessible but with the combined energy of his warhost acting as a beacon he would gain the favor of the gods once more. Removing his glove, he used his barbed staff to prick clean some blood from his palm onto the flesh-golem, which quickly went from a gash, to a trickle, to nothing at all due to his astares physiology. He had given the golem some of his lifeblood, and then began to chant. It was difficult to catch at first, but lightening began to jump from place to place around the golem, in different colors. Blue white, and electric green sparks darted from the metal ruins of their vessel to the now stirring flesh creature. Viscous green moss and mold grew across it like a new carpet of skin, and two giant beetles crawled from the ground up it's torso and lodged themselves into it's face like two black moving eyes, with entrails hanging from jointed limbs having been made from cultists left to bake in the sun. It bellowed as it tore a huge walled sect of metal from the wall of the ship and dipped it in a pool of corpulence turning it into a huge broadsword like plague shard. In size it was like that of a large winged daemon prince of Khorne Rhicius had recalled seeing in person during the Badab years. "MORTAL" it roared, low and like the wings of bugs chittering "You have brought me forth, now let us tend to the garden of nurgle" it replied with almost the tone a father might take with a son.


They began to ready when suddenly it was yelled "Hexadris and his men! They're coming!". Rhicius couldn't help but wear a devilish grin. Now they not only had a daemon and a siege engine, they had Hexadris. They WOULD get off this planet, and nothing would stand in their way.



A group of tyranid warriors marched forwards through the groves of fauna, now rampantly interrupted with the early buds of spore towers and chimneys, simply keeping pace with waves of skittering creatures marching forth gobbling up everything in their path when the warriors knew something was awry. Not feeling the death of a comrade like even a housepet might, the warriors through atunement to the psychic frequency of the hive felt the reeling and dying squad of gaunts ahead of them like an amputee might gaze upon their limb during a bout with phantom limb syndrome. Sinews and tendons wretched in the clawed warriors as they leapt to a charging stride.



Guants lay mangled, burned and boiled to all sides, some of them on the ground simply writhing from some unseen agent, but their executioners were clear. Five large plague drones hovered spitting and hosing an ill concocted assortment of toxins that were not only terrorizing the tyranids but visibly corrupting the ground with a medley of pox wherever they dripped their foul drool. The warriors called forth their nearby fleetmates as they charged and immediately two of the flies plucked a slashing warrior into the air and dragged it into the sky all the while drenching it in their spit cooking it alive in disease as flesh sloughed from bone, and bone and chitin de-ossified into spongy brittle stone. Two of the warriors had simultaneously assaulted a plague drone, hacking off it's wings and stabbing it fatally before moving in to engage other drones. As the two fly-beasts that killed the first warrior re-joined the combat the tyranids grew weak and faltered. Disease ravaged their body at an incomprehensible rate, and they realized their scything talons where they had killed the initial drone began to dissolve in writhing pain as the trace blood on their talons acted like an acid. Shrieking madly in pain, both assaulted independent plague drones biting and slashing with every inkling of their being as they awaited other tyranids to enter the fray. Before being stabbed to death by similar talons on the plague drones, one of the warriors ripped out the gullet of a plague drone sending it spasming to the floor. The third warrior was swarmed and was being torn to pieces but was granted a final reprieve as it realized the hive had come. In a blue-white fire, two of the plague drones near eachother exploded as psychic energy hit them with the force of a railgun at close range. A single, massive zoanthrope hovered crackling in psychic energy with an oncoming wave of rippers and gaunts both shieldign and closing the distance between the drones and the tyranids.



The flies of nurgle would kill more tyranids. But unlike true daemons, beasts from the warp, these plague drones would not disappear back into the warp upon death. These were once mortal men, with the guiding mutating hand of the master of pox. The tyranids would deny the corpse god his fill when they drag the corpses of both friend and foe to their digestion pool. And perhaps, because of the carelessness of a chaos god, learn from his secrets.





Hexadris barked orders to his men and bolters and the occasional lascannon munition polluted the air. He and his men had wasted no time mobilizing once they tended to their armor in Rhicius' camp, and seeing how busy the sorcerer had been filled him with hope and pride, for he could see the signs in the sky of what was happening and the absolved one had not wasted words describing to him the ordeal with the scouting party. They had to make haste to the city the scouts had found, and would have to take it locals be damned. Now they stood at the battlement walls providing supporting fire to the Maulerfiend inching towards the walls as marines and cultists fired at an especially undefended area of the wall. The defends hadn't even seemed to notice to be frank, almost as if preoccupied. A plague daemon wrung his blade into the wall and dragged it through layers of concrete and steel with a screech. Balls of green fire and clouds of flies burst from the sorcerers staff blasting away sections of the wall and biting at some of the few soldiers atop the walls attempting to mount a defense. *THUD* Concrete wretched and buckled as the Maulerfiend charged and assaulted the wall, struggling to sustain the brunt of the attack. "Sir, a spore mine hit some cultists and one of our plague marines is down as well" Altimus radio'd to Hexadris on a channel Rhicius also had privy to. "From what direction?" uttered Hexadris with an inflection clearly unnerved and urgent. "Unclear, Hexadris. With wind drift either south or southwest". Hexadris opened his channel to all the marines and made them aware of artillery and ordered them to spread wide. Then, the wall's surface sheared off at once, bringing sections behind it collapsing as the maulerfiend regained it's footing. The plague daemon wasted no time, as a wave of plague drones and the daemon charged through the new opening marines and cultists pouring in behind them. Of all the things the citizens of Artens had expected from the sky, the death and decay that would follow would not fall within.



Making their way into the city, Altimus and a personal guard of marines was made in charge of the opening they had carved through the wall and they were to establish a defensive perimeter until otherwise instructed. Hexadris and Rhicius had no intentions of finding themselves flanked by the enemy they knew lurked outside the walls, likely stalking them.



Nathandar Fourier stared at the written comm mouth half open, twisted in disbelief and grimace. How the hell a comm from outside the walls finally made it through in what seemed like weeks he had no idea. He hated the Major, despite the fact he knew in this case the Major was only disseminating information from higher command, but all the same a little warning would have been appreciated before he paged through the words. "VADERLOO DESTROYED. Refugees fled via ship to Artens. ARTENS UNDER SIEGE. DO NOT ASSIST, SITUATION GRIM. ASSUME DEFENSIVE PARAMETERS". Chills ran down his being with a gut wrenching feeling he sent his Lieutenants to their deaths in the field. Most of his command had still been in the area, but to lose two of his eight Lt.s as well as a host of their soldiers.....it was downright foreign. The loss of the cities? Incomprehensible, as they had stood for longer than anyone could rightly remember. Gilded in his finest leadership garb the Captain's boots clicked heel to toe as he strode down the hallway with purpose to hit the open air of the battlements of their capital. Soldiers saluted and the Lt. in charge of the men rushed to salute and report to the captain. These were all good men, ready to do their duty. But the darkening amber sky and the movement in the woods spoke all it needed to. Whoever was outside the city was waiting, and it would be soon when they reveal themselves.



932.M41

Fall of a planet


Also atop battlements, but in a very different part of the planet, struggling guard fires lasweapons at the oncoming hordes. The creatures had been terribly calculating. On the ground, so many corpses now littered the field that the new waves of creatures had cover, but this had not been the extent of their tactic. A new creature, armored similarly to reports of creatures on the other side of the siege the men knew themselves to be suffering, with black chitinous plates, a hose-like mouth, and four rapidly flapping insectoid wings spewed what seemed like a fog of brown-green mist or fog. The tyranids had indeed adapted and used their gene sifting to emulate the creature recognizing it as an effective platform to spew venomous clouds from and make it neigh impossible to make out one of their numbers from another(I use modified plague drone models for my venomthropes, so fluff in this story is likely to explain more conversions in my army). Additionally, these same winged beasts flew straight at the men atop the battlements, thus far only having succeeded at being blown to pieces. Creatures similar to the clawed beasts below, flapped with leathery wings firing off strange salvos of weapons and ripping the occasional soldier from atop the walls with lightening speed. Still they fought. And still, they held the walls. They had no idea how long they would hold out against such a horrific foe but in their eyes they were winning.



Across the same field, the city's honor guard fought valiantly against a much different foe. Standing inches short of an astares with a slightly less bulky build and wearing peculiarly similar plate armor- though more ancient- valiantly trying to repel the enemies pouring through the breech. It had been a bloody mess since the enemies entered, bringing with them a terrible host of different tortuous weapons and tactics even employing creatures so evil and foul looking that they had called them daemons. Bolt-weapons superior to their own fired from men who looked like larger twisted versions of themselves, and a giant metal tendril'd beast tore through soldier and house with equal ease. They had been instructed to go to the opposite gate and begin a counter-ground assault until they got wind of a secondary assault. And breaking the horizon they could see strange manner of creatures on the wall where guard fought against their first foe, surrounded by winged creatures and even catching a glimpse of a gargoyle snatching up random soldiers. Hopelessness dug at their core, but they fought tooth and nail, and they did inflict casualties. Just as the forward-most remaining enclave of honor guard thought they would fall to a tide of fire, something spectacular happened that seemed to garner the attention of over half the foe ahead of them. Claws burst from thin air tearing apart multiple power armored figures near instantly. Enemies turned to face invisible foes, with the occasional broad chainsword sweeps catching a lictor moving between them. Nearly a dozen of such strikes had occurred simultaneously, with varied degrees of success and now it was clear one of their assailants wasn't just trying to destroy them....they were running from something bigger. And now both of them were trapped in Artens while a huge force encircled the entire city and spore mines bombarded down on them from the heavens in all directions.



Brother-Captain Arteuro and his men stood atop the capital city's of San Jean-Arc's battlements picking off swathes of gaunts with their boltweapons when the ground itself seemed to buckle in the trees outside the city as something moved beneath the surface of the crust, scattering trees and stone to either side of it's tunnel. He and his honor guard immediately tore the ground asunder with the drum of their weapons, to no success as the creature creating the turmoil made it's debut. Bursting from the ground, a guant worm like creature flew at the wall with clawed limbs and a battering ram like skull, causing dust and rubble even at the top of the battlements shake and tumble. "TAKE IT OUT" bellowed the captain of the honor guard and the combined fire of the guard and military descended on the mawloc like a hundred tiny lasers. As the beast struggled to raise itself to the wall once more, it began to lose momentum as it's carapace buckled under the heavy fire causing blood and bile's alike to froth into a blended mess. While the mawloc didn't breech the wall, it's corpse still hit the wall fairly hard and it was visibly obvious the wall couldn't sustain another attack like that. Feeling something terribly awry for even the given circumstance, Arteuro ordered his men off the battlements to the lower levels and had them ready themselves for a face to face confrontation.



The death of the beast enraged hormagaunts at the base of the city and caused them to jettison themselves up the corpse of the mawloc in vain trying to scale the walls. As a momentary silence broke, large mechanical gate motors could be heard as the first wave of guardsmen had been ordered to assist in thinning the number of xenos siege forces. As they poured out of the gate, already spore mines fired through the open gate into the city slaughtering guardsmen and weapons teams behind the walls prepping fortifications and turrets. The guardsmen were brave though, united in not losing their home, and as a wall of gaunts and warriors assailed them they suffered minimal casualties hammering away at them with their lasweapons.




At a massive digestion pool near a desert, a planet was scoured of non-tyranid fauna and liquid. Sandy dunes shrank as if the sand had been taken elsewhere, and even the air seemed thinner- perhaps due to the spore chimneys inhaling air and belching out some strange spore. Pods erupted from a fleshy mass that once would have been a hive ship, and something truly large stirred. The hive mind felt it's creatures struggling to get at the inside of the stone caves their prey holed up in and would not have their death cries go unheeded. Doing something it hadn't since it had been part of the gorgon fleet, it spawned a hive tyrant. A roar took to the sky as the winged creature made itself known and flicked the digestive goo off it's wings and weapons. Two massive devourers with armored plates on their underside similar to those on a mawlocs head extended from the arms of the creature, with strange flesh hoses connecting to the devourers as well from another set of arms pumping in some unknown venoms. A head telling of senses enhanced, antennae made of bone, multiple eyes, and a maw with bone that could crush steel focused on the skyline and the muscles in powerful hooved legs hurled the creature into the sky with the mighty beating of wings that erupted from the very carapace of the creature. Doing homage to it's fleet of origin, it had hyper adapted the hive tyrant with plated on it's weapons to be used as siege rams, and it began it's journey to where a nearby conflict raged.




Hellfire burst from the stormbolter at Altimus' wrist, boring massive holes through a variety of tyranid creatures. Gaunts of different genus', warriors, and the occasional lictor turned into an explosion of splintered carapace as he and his small contingency of marines remained at the flank of the assault. It had been a wise decision, for the tyranids assailing the city wasted no time finding the new opening in the city walls- though they paid a high price trying to enter the walls. In an effort to make their numbers hold, the tyranids employed what the forces of chaos could only rightly call an abomination as insectoid reflections of their plague drones flew among the tyranids clouding the targets in a fog like spore cloud. This only infuriated the chaos marines who now fought back with an almost violated sense of pride shown in their vigor.



Altimus had with him Hexadris' personal retinue of terminators, and the group of four terminators were a beacon of chaotic energy in a battlefield of utter carnage. They hadn't had to deal much with their human adversaries within the city as their forced almost unilaterally broke under any pressured assault since the breech of the wall, however the tyranids were a different story. Altimus could taste his hate for the agile stealth beasts that seemed to calculatedly intercept and execute any of his squad leaders in the field straining an already strained line of communication. Still, bolter shells and flamers scoured a clearing near the delta of the walls opening creating a literal column of fire burning any tyranid forces foolhardy enough to brave the gap. "Sir-TCCHHHHHHH- Quiet at the gap" he voxed to Rhicius and Hexadris who's only responses were intermittent clacks of their vox units and the sounds of combat. They had seemingly repelled the enemy successfully, but something was awry. Gazing to the horizon he could see that the wall on the opposite side of the city was slowly warping inwards, as if strained by some great force, and the winged gaunts now swarmed the top of the battlements like a flock of angry mockingbirds defending their nest. The natives stood no chance, it was evident. While observing, almost instantaneously the ground began to shake and rumble, and Altimus struggled to yell "RUN!" over his vox though over the sound of scattering debris and a roar few of his men actually heard him. A huge, clawed, serpent like tyranid had dug a massive trench, not just to emerge at the hole in the wall but to create a trench that threatened even their forward assault as the beasts tunnel collapsed indiscriminately burying chaos and native forces. Even the maulerfield wreaking havoc was partially buried as it lost it's footing and was dragged into the collapsed earth. It struggled to tear itself free, sustaining some damage to its mobility but otherwise resumed it's rampage with a provoked anger.



As the trygon emerged from it's hole, it impaled two of the terminators with Altimus instantly, and with a wide arc of it's arms struck down multiple other marines. As this occurred waves of beasts suddenly charged through the breech in the wall now that they had been given a moments reprieve from the warriors of chaos. Altimus flew through the air colliding into a slab of concrete torn up from the ground at a near perpendicular angle from it's origin in the earth, and looking down at what ailed him he saw metal beams impaling the joint of his knee. Knowing he was pinned to his position, the terminator captain grabbed his bolter and fired at the face of the serpent several dozen times as it slithered through his men butchering them in small groups while they worked to regroup and return fire. Some of Altimus' shots hit home in the eyes and maw of the creature and it wretched and spasmed even killing as it's mass rolled on the ground crushing those unlucky enough to be near it as it died to a hail of bolter fire and flamers,but the smaller tyranid beasts now ran among them and the chaos warriors knew their defense was all but lost as they started to slowly fall back towards the spearhead of the assault while returning barrages of shells and red hot flames. But there was no falling back for Altimus, and he accepted his fate as he killed dozens more tyranids still stuck to the concrete slab. In a final gesture he radio'd Hexadris screaming "Hexadris, you've been my brother through the warp and hell, may our lord see you to victory".



Across the battlefield, Hexadris hearing Altimus message crystal clear for some reason glanced back at the man most worth of the title of being his brother, and he felt his soul ache knowing he would never again see his friend. Feeling the air, and pausing from incinerating guard with plague green fire, Rhicius placed a hand on his epaulets in consolation and his eyes glowed with power. Both their eyes burned with putrid green rage, and they knew they would not be stopped here. A psychic aura erupted around the sorcerer and a distance away, a marine in twisted terminator armor was lifted into the air as he frantically continued to fire his bolter at the swarm and warp energies encircled him. Altimus' form flickered like a weak fluorescent torch, as a larger humanoid-like mass silhouetted Hexadris' former friend. Chiming on his vox, with tears in his eyes the chaos lord whispered to Altimus "Thank you...old friend".



Warp energy exploded around the chaos daemon that was once Altimus Herenious, slicing open and cauterizing friend and foe within ten meters. Toxic smoke and ash lingered in the air around corpses, as a daemon prince charged forward with a mighty daemonic sword and cleaved it's way into the charging tyranid lines, ignoring claws trying with little success at piercing it's ethereal form. Synapse creatures fled the path of the beast, and well over a hundred gaunts would die with ease at the onslaught while the forces of chaos consolidated towards the center of the city. The daemon prince that was altimus would not last, it would certainly fall, but he gave his men the only chance they had of reuniting with the warhost desperately trying to reach the fortified palace at the center of the city where gargoyles already harassed lascannon turrets and soldiers atop fortified emplacements.



Just when Altimus' former form reached the breach chaos created for the third time a screech was heard and chunks of concrete and metal fell from the already mangled walls of the city hitting both the daemon prince successfully and doing damage to the battlescape below while tyranids knowingly moved out of the path of the falling rubble. Knowing the daemon prince would not fall so easily, perched atop the jagged remains of the wall the hive tyrand unleashed an onslaught of brainleech worms that gnawed with toxin filled maws through stone and warp infused flesh alike. The daemon prince struggled to stay on it's feet while it continued to cleave through tyranids, all the while being eaten from the inside out by toxin belching worms. Still the prince of chaos refused to fall, though visibly wavering. The shovel tyrant(what I call my flyrant with armored plated under its' devourers- as mentioned earlier they're the top of skull plates from the mawloc/trygon kit) bashed loose parts of the wall as it's powerful limbs intended, letting loose a slew of rubble that adorned the buried and broken daemon prince's resting place like a tombstone.



The tyranids would win, but chaos raced to see if there was respite from this demise in any form within the walls of the palace as they stormed the gate and beat the tyranids to the inside of the fortress within a fortress.


Large embellished fortress doors bent inwards and screeched open as a colossal mechanical figure rammed it again and again. One of the two doors buckled at the hinges and fell inwards into a large darkened corridor. Daemons poured in front of the maulerfiends hulking form rushing into the corridor searching for any gleam of life when several automated heavy lasturrets roared to life and splattered plague drones and nurglings into pulp. Six turrents were placed, three alone the tops of the ceilings with two hugging the walls towards the far end of the hallway and three on the ground directly beneath them. The maulerfiend roared and charged careening down the hallway and bounding over several obstacles intended to stop a more traditional tank, under a veil of corpulence lingering in the air around the freshly dead. As the mechanical monster closed the distance between the guns, it's mangled footing caught on a jutting tank trap causing it to collapse within feet of the closest emplacement and leading to the machine suffering multiple significant point blank range lascannon fire that left the maulerfiend mangled beyond belief, but not before it managed to reach and writhe around the ground completely mangling two of the emplacements on the ground and completely blocking line of sight to the remaining ground turret with it's immobile wreckage.



A dozen or so meters behind the assault of the main gate of the palace, Hexadris, Rhicius, just under thirty renegade marines, and about three dozen cultists moved a loose phalanx formation as they moved in behind the daemons and their now silences armored support. During this, the daemon of nurgle Rhicius had summoned before towered on the battlements of the palace inflicting horrible poxes and twisted executions of those soldiers unfortunate enough to have been assigned defense of the palace. The planetary defenders died in droves to the daemon all the while abandoning their posts and many jumping from their fortified positions choosing death over standing ground to the rotted beast cleaving indiscriminately at turrets and soldiers leaving burned sword marks wherever it's plague cleaver touched down and turning soldiers into disintegrating puddles of goulash. The daemon stared at the flying tyranid leaderbeast that circled it overhead and uttered something terrifying and unintelligible clearly speaking in some daemonic warp based tongue as if issuing it a challenge while the mortal minions of chaos rushed into the fortress disabling the remaining sentry turrets at some decent cost in manpower- mostly restricted to cultists and daemons. Rhicius and Hexadris didn't let eachother out of their sights, each knowing their partner was the most likely to get them through this catastrophic failure of a planetfall without selling the last remaining scraps of their souls to their dark god.



Daemonic spirits whispered to Rhicius everywhere he strode, the energies of the dead leaping around him in homage to nurgle, empowering the sorcerers dark magics. Raw warp energy flickered around his form, not going unnoticed by Hexadris' peripherals while he focused on his armors scanner programs attempting to map the fortress as they ran through it and browsing the scan for a likely armor hangar of any type that might fit the profile of an air-hangar. As they turned the corner and were greeted by armed native forces, Rhicius turned the air in the room into plague and fire decompressing the room for a moment before the forms of the soldiers flew around like rag dolls before shriveling and bursting open like a scarecrow torn from its post. Hexadris stifled his shock at the visibly growing power of the sorcerer while he planted boltgun shells into shadowy figures down the hallway and saw their human forms slump into the ground clearly bloodied and unmoving. Then, Hexadris saw it. It hadn't been clear to him initially, but looking at the tower that overlooked the throne of the palace, the telltale signs of an ancient vessel became clear. The natives had clearly not ventured into space for some time, but what must have been eons ago the last people to make planetfall integrated most of their ship into what would become the construction of the palace- and the navigation chambers were mostly towards the top of the tower. "RHICIUS, I'VE GOT A LOCK ON TRANSPORT! ALL MEN CONVERGE ON ME" Hexadris roared over his comm unsure of who heard him or not. Rhicius broke from sending bolts of green flame at men charging their position clearly having heard him and a handful of cultists and marines poured into the corridor Hexadris brought to life on the scanners and maps of all the armored astares around him now numbering just over a dozen.




In another city, Fourier and his squad rushed through the smoking remnants of the command block that once housed his superior, searching for any semblance of command that kept their communication in line. It had been over a day however since anything that could be considered an order from higher up had been freely disseminated though, command having been seemingly silenced when not one but a half dozen of the strange worms that previously smashed against their walls burst through the very ground outside their command center within the walls. The tyranid diversion while eventually silenced came at great life-loss and many buildings lay barely standing in piles of their own rubble. And during this time, a barrage of aerial mines seemed to increase twenty-fold causing the members of the city to be butchered in numbers previously suspected inconceivable.



To make matters worse, during this time two more mawlocs continued to smash against the already weak section of wall initially attacked causing it to tumble down and dragging chunks of the battlements with it. San Jean-Arc had not only been breached but it was quickly being snuffed into the ground. Fourier finally made his way into the battered remains of a chamber he'd been debriefed in countless times under his superior, and tears slightly came to his eyes as he saw the still breathing form of one Major Monuts heaving under rubble and bleeding profusely. Fourier ran to him but only a gurgle of blood found the mouth of the major and his lungs strained and failed under the accumulation of crimson fluid. A tears ran down the Captain's face as the reality of the situation had sunk in. There wasn't an escape of these beasts, and their walls had only served as a container holding them in like livestock while the beasts devoured them. Fourier's men screamed for a moment as the Captain's skull exploded in a light of lasfire and his corpse slumped over Monut's figure, the lasgun still in the hand of the captain who deemed it all too much.



Genestealers, warriors and gaunts burst out of vents and charged down annals of the palace at the core of Artens. Sweat ran readily down the guardsmen operating the heavy weapons emplacement at the junction of three corridors as a rumble like an earthquake shook the palace and the power flickered multiple times in rapid succession- leaving only the flash of the turrets firing before the electricity in the palace just seemed to quit altogether. The air around the defenders wreaked of panic as a genestealer dislodged a flooring panel from a subcorridor and squeezed its way into the back of the turret. Other five guardsmen didn't initially notice when their volley of fire dwindled slightly. The genestealer had come up behind the defender and literally used it's incomprehensibly sharp claws to remove the throat of the soldier, plopping off it's head like a grape from the vine. The next guardsmen started to wonder when he saw more gaunts than expected rushing into his firing lane but when turning to find his battle-brother only found the teeth of an angry genestealer closing on his face, tearing out a huge mass of his cheek and ripping apart his helmet but allowing him to yell out a blood curdling scream that gained the attention of the other guardsmen. By then however it was far too late as four more genestealers sped towards them emerging from the same hole. The last of the towers defenses were falling, and the tyranids were only hunting down survivors. Even in the battlements of encircling the city, the only remaining survivors were those who had found somewhere to hide and await the eventuality of being consumed. A similar scene wracked the landscape in San-Jean Arc, however the tyranids there had sustained significant losses when a munitions factory in the city with a production line that went underground into the military's personal stockpile was intentionally detonated, leveling a third of the city in a second incinerating most of the biomass caught in the blast radius.







Hexadris threatened the few humans in the ranks of the cultists en tow at gunpoint, screaming for them to get the ship running. Rhicius had proceeded to the warp engine room with a few of his marines that displayed affinity for the warp, while every hand on deck attended to a specific duty. Marines held a gunline at the entry to the ship while the crew struggled to channel power from a shattered power grid, causing the power in the entire facility to cycle before it blinked on and stabilized in the ship. Adamantium and ceramite doors scraped as ancient engines and cogs started to dislodge them and close the door while the marine defenders let their bolters scream at the tyranids trying foolhardily to chase them into the ship. For a moment everything shook, and it almost had felt as if the ground ceased to exist. And then, there was only the sound of white hot fire as the ship rumbled and began it's ascent to the sky as the cultists raised their arms and screeched with glee in the name of nurgle. Through the front viewing bay however, their ascent was quickly brought to a horrific pause when the flying hive tyrant roared and peered through the port slamming it's fists into the side of the ship in succession trying to break a hole into the armored form of the vessel. Immediately automated starcannons heated and fired, the hive tyrant doing a backward dive and completely avoiding the munitions meant to pierce starships and gliding down towards the rear of the ship- when the daemonhost gained a victory not expected by the hive mind. A daemon prince, the very one that had challenged the hive tyrant earlier as it tore through the palace bastions, had been climbing the tower in an effort to reach his winged foe, and upon seeing the tyrant dive had jumped from the ascending ship plowing it's plague sword into the exposed breast of the beast and dragging it down into the oblivion of the fiery pulsing engines of the ship that began to make it's way into the upper atmosphere and in the process completely burning Artens to the ground. Rhicius and Hexadris had agreed to venture back into the warp, and as they broke the planets' atmosphere their warp engines powered up at the whim of the sorcerer and his psychic acolytes with near half of the half dozen having their souls drained to exertion and the remaining three sitting on the verge of death. Still it was not enough, and in an all too classic fashion Rhicius impaled the liveliest of the group on his staff empowering their warp focus with the boon of the god of death before their ship shot back into the realm of their deity.



Haephestus would gain an immeasurable gain in the biomass Lemnos would provide, but the stalwart defenders and escapees of chaos denied the tyranids some of the most resource rich areas of the fighting with calculated explosions and retaliation from fleeing prey. It would still take the hive fleet another month before the planet was scoured completely, and while their chaos prey would be long gone the fleet would be rejuvenated. Despite "losing" a major vessel of their fleet their original triad had a half dozen ships of equal size being formed on the surface now and their next campaign would not be so easily impeded. The battle for Lemnos was over.

[barbedsparky]

They so need to employ you.

[Deleted]

Chapter 3: Ascension to Olympus 

933.M41

The surface of Lemnos now lay charred and barren, with only silhouettes of now dead spore chimneys and tyrannid spires left punctuating the shriveled husk of a planet. Splinter fleet Haephestus had blossomed, and beyond Ultimus and Primaris, Haephesus now bragged 6 more hive ships: Eucleia, Euthenia, Eupheme, Philophrosyne, Palici, and Cabeiri- all of whom had finally managed to become skyborne. The fleet began to move up in the galactic plane, in the direction of the extremely distant ice world of Shadrac. 

Beyond the significant vessels of Hephaestus' armada, a host of lesser creatures drifted attached to the ships like remoras occasionally drifting between them or trading off with a handful that scouted ahead of the hive ships.  

The hive fleet began a near stasis like state and drifted for some time. Their time on Lemnos had marked their heritage forever though having picked up so much biomass and adopted genetic code from the native beasts that their chitin of their carapaces had become an obsidian color, both on the hive ships and spawned creatures. Relatively lightweight and dextrous, the gained adaptation would prove invaluable in later squabbles.

936.M41

The fleet encircles a small star-centered galaxy who's sun sustains life to two planets only one of which sustains intelligent life. However, the human beings found had been long lost from the guiding light of the Imperium of man lacking even more basic mechanized ground based armored transportation. The planets combined don't match even half the biomass Lemnos contains, but a new ship joins the fray, Erichthonius. They continue on their path after a brief stop to absolve the planets of worth.

939.M41

The Splinter Fleet encounters a Dark Eldar raiding party that had been ravaging worlds . Their dark lances and perverse technologies while effective, prove insufficient due to the numerical superiority of the tyranids who's defense and scouting beasts suffer the brunt of the casualties. In the skirmish, Primaris, Cabeiri, and Eupheme are badly inured and the fleet is subsequently slowed.

940.M41

The ships recuperate, but relying primarily on inertia in a vacuum for movement they continue on their slowed path until prey reaches their sensory tendrils.  

942.M41

Ultimus, acting like a big brother spearheading the hive mind's exploration, was the first of the larger vessels to detect the familiar firing of neurons registering the flavor-scent of distant prey.In the distance, too far to discern as more than a collection of asteroids, a moderately sized celestial body that bragged 5 moons lay scattered between a handful of other planets long abandoned of any sentient life. Unbeknownst to the approaching tyranids, three of the moons bore a host of long inactive battle-cannons and high velocity time delay explosive projectiles that would work similarly to a grenade or flak explosion scattering shrapnel.

While effective, the hive mind had no real concept of these defenses other than obstacles- and obstacles that could not be sensed or appraised could be of no consequence. 


Biting the Hand that Feeds



Ocular sensors that hadn't lit up in months, or maybe years hummed lightly to life within the cranium of Eisen Drustos. The homunculus like figure whirred to life with chirping gears as his entire frame pivoted and intralunar communications began to come online. The techpriest had been unconscious for such a very long time, his few remaining organs being sustained on minimal life support wired into the technologies of Exgaligus, the moon closest to the crust of Olympus Extremis. Already signal feeds began pouring in through the wired devices the techpriest interacted with, in the physical sense as much as the mechanized sense for Eisen had long ago abandoned what little humanity became him.



Olympus Extremis hid a dark and checkered history, having eons ago been within the fringe of known human colonized space in a time even before the dark age of technology. Prior, the Red Priests of Mars had in standard fashion worked with the early empire of man to dissect technologies, and the brink of space rife with potential for alien life and technologies at that time was far too enticing for the Mechanicum to have not taken stake in the expeditions of man. But when the dark age of technology came, Olypus Extremis found itself very disconnected from the guiding hand of the Emperor or their own questionable cult. At first, the planet operated very similarly to most imperial worlds, organized and clinging to the workings of known technology at their disposal- but over time their aristocracy became misguided and over a few generations their planet went from a thriving colony boasting over fifteen million to a puppet government operating under the hand of the Red Priesthood that comprised nearly half a million people and was completely immersed in every standing venue of civilization on the planet.



Initially this hadn't seemed terrible, and the planet had maintained initial ability to leave their own space- in doing so had even managing to vacate several other dying human worlds in the area. With the oncoming of new visitors however came a much less disguised taint, of some foul deities though difficult to discern. While the inhabitants weren't knowing enough, they had housed refugees that once stood against the emperor and behind horus' banner. Members of the Mechanicum no less, and "living" beings now more metal than flesh who would live neigh as long as a veteran space marine who's thirst for technologies only rivaled the thirst for excess of the dark eldar.



Olympus Extremis raised a small raiding battalion of ships, hungering for artaefacts from alien worlds, and for a long time the planet prospered in a fashion highly oppressive to the now slave class of the citizenry. They had skirmishes with the Dark Eldar who's own raids both stole and provided diverse and powerful technologies for the Heretical priesthood of Olympus Extremis to dissect and fawn over. The Eldar had crossed paths with them as well, but had just as soon disappeared into their hidden tunnels abandoning the planet as they knew its true fate. Truly, the beginning of the end was when their raiding fleet came into the crosshairs of a bloodthirsty ork WAAAUGH chasing some unknown prey far from the planet. Over 80% of their raiding fleet had been completely decimated that day, and upon that the ships had pulled back home and only executed isolated raids. Technologies poured in slower and the anxious priesthood looked internally to pick apart even the most mundane goose chases for artaefacts.


Then, almost overnight, the populace of the planet was decimated. The priesthood was pushed onto the defensive from an unknown evil, likely unleashed from one of their own insidious aspirations. As far as Eisen knew, the only survivors had been those who had escaped to the stars having commandeered all but a handful of ships now used to traverse between the moons in times of need. Even that was rare however, as the priesthood only awakened each other as necessary and it was unusual for more than fifty of them to be toiling at necessary maintenance at any given point. This however was all what Eisen knew, for he was born and then reborn in the image of the priesthood on the moon and had never seen any other life. It was not a concern or a thought to the mechano-man, and he proceeded to transmit code back to the priests who had awakened him while awakening other priests in his station within a cascade of electric signals.

The hive ships in a loose delta formation encroached on the line of moons who's orbits placed them relatively near eachother regardless of what face of Olypus they circled, but at different altitudes from the planet. As lightening shrieked across neurons of sensory organs in the biovessels, they slowed to a crawl as they began to appraise the brown sphere of a planet in front of them thinking little of the dark seemingly dead moons in their path. Initially the moons had seemed more like asteroids, nothing more than floating rock. Even the highly sophisticated sensory organs of the tyranid hive struggled to detect even the faintest traces of remaining life that might be identified as prey in the lunar bastions of the mechanicum.


As Ultimus,Eucleia, Euthenia,and the injured Eupheme spearheaded the assault and bypassed the first moon, the hive fleet's instinct was proven correct. The outermost moon, while having traces of debris from what non-tyranids might readily have identified as space ships. The ships drifted by the moon and had nearly bypassed the fourth moon from the planet, Cholos, when the fleet recognized the tell-tale signs of an attack. The space around the moon became hot, while mechanisms came to life intended to repel invaders similar to the tyranids, and the the munitions finally began to fire the energy in the synapses of the tyranids became very different. Eupheme and Ultimus took the brunt of the heavy flak-like fire and the ships floated about in pain unable to properly defend themselves after the white hot accelerated shells pierced their forms and exploded behind them riddling their frames with a jigsaw puzzle of shrapnel. The four had all been injured, but Eupheme having already being injured had began to spawn the most it could while dealing with the chemical processes of shock- the vessel understood it's mortality. Ultimus struggled to and failed to retreat to the other ships but would not be discounted from the fight.

So began the invasion of Olympus, and the space invaders launched themselves at the dusty cold moon. Inside Cholos, every member of the priesthood stood in wake hurriedly sending signals to the other moons and activating the powerful but limited defenses of the old fortress. Cholos however could not be easily aided by the other moons, for the first and second moon nearest the crust of Olypus contained the remaining members of their crippled and estranged order. Communication channels were so busy that to any other navigator the white noise would just seem like static as the hyper efficient machine men jumped to defend their keep.


Eisen was receiving chaotic and badly distorted communiques from a host of members of the priesthood. So many had been channeling into his frame via humming wire links attached to an iron rod apparatus jutting from where his spine once rested. Messages like ---URGENT---SIEGE. ERADICATION. REINFORCEMENTS---- and ---EVACUATE---DO NOT ENGAGE. DOOMED.--- flooded into the senior techpriests' already taxed mind. Dozens of requests were pouring in faster than even he could begin to address, and the sparking chamber he worked from made his eyes water as current surged through old conduits creating an occasional wisp of smoke. Eisen didn't really have a say in Cholos or Exgalius' response- he was merely a vote within an overly complicated voting process where those receiving information submitted their vote to higher authority and decisions were made. This was not an issue though, he had heard more than enough to make his judgement call. There were too few of them to repel any true invaders, and so Eisen clacked the digital code in his mind and submitted his response "Fortify. Maintain low profile. Do not engage or assist."


Cholos' main cannon began to thum to life while the flak battlecannons fired into the tyranid forces. The tyranids could sense the slowly building heat from the building and descended on Cholos' tech fortress like angry hornets. Eupheme and Ultimus had finally managed to compose themselves while Eucelia and Euthenia had plunged to the near surface of the moon rampaging the fortress with weapons hive ships generally only used on space craft. Still it held, and munitions peppered and punctured a wide array of tyranid organisms. Crones flapped about raking the turrets occasionally removing one and leaving it slowly plummeting towards the low gravity moon. Gargoyles had come from a hive ship and they tried mostly unsuccessfully to breech the fortress shooting and clawing at breaks in the smooth metal. And while the fortress could no longer see through the swarm of bugs into space their working cannons castigated the tyranids with indiscriminate fire clearly trying to buy time.


The fortress began to heat up to higher temperatures as the destroyer cannon began to engage a host of magnetic fields preparing to launch a projectile of unimaginable proportion at the invaders at speeds rivaling even the tau's railguns. The tyranids, sensing the heat and the source had a spark of insight as creatures moved towards the primary cannon. The hive mind could tell beyond this however that something was ill with this prey. Eupheme stirred and moved to the forefront of the conflict and approached the cannon structure with unease before sensing that the heat building suddenly to white hot levels and the bastions shook with the energy flowing through the structure.

Ignoring the battlefield and venturing onwards, Erichthonius, Philophrosyne, and Cabeiri inched towards the planet ahead while maintaining a speed allowing them to reinforce the battle behind them without too much effort. Passing the third moon, shimmering metal almost invisible could be seen mangled punctuating the smallest of the small moons. Twisted eldar wraithbone constructs sat collecting dust from an era unknown to even the techpriests around the moon. Excavation had clearly occurred as techpriest mining tools still littered the area, likely searching for artifacts in some ancient machine lust, but the planet had no reading of life whatsoever now.


The destroyer cannon began to launch it's projectile, and the hive fleet would suffer if it made contact. At this point Eupheme and the hive mind knew Eupheme's purpose and fate as the ship charged directly into the cannon with it's remaining energy- all the while sustaining fire from the iron lunar tomb. And at this moment, in a maneuver only executable by a race with a psychic collective mind, all the tyranids on the moon tried to pull back to the stars in an effort to preserve any of their numbers that could be saved. Then, earth flew in every direction and a psychic shriek heard across a galaxy rang as Eupheme was disintegrated at point blank range by the destroyer cannon but causing the clogged cannon to implode and detonate the moon leaving more of an asteroid field in it's place.


The forward advancing ships came to a halt for a moment until they knew via synaptic communication that the threat was extinguished. Eupheme was the only hive ship lost, and a large chunk of the hive fleets numbers that had been dedicated to the ships' protection were scattered and burned into nothingness during the detonation. This was a grievous blow to the fleet but not one that could stop them for long as the psychic shriek threw their hive ships' reproductive organs into overdrive and they prepared to storm Olympus Extremis.


Very far away, a presence felt the psychic shriek and tuned it's direction towards the blossoming splinter fleet.



The dust storms that ravaged the dead world of Olympus betrayed the import of the medium sized planet. Through the sand a whirring drone could be heard more than seen every few moments while in non-human tongue transmissions rang clearly in the comm systems throughout the Kavaal. Shas'o GalVior'la maintained his generally cautious leadership approach in directing his troops. Having three full sized Kau'ui in each of his four Tio've meant he had just under two thousand loyal battle ready fire warriors at his disposal, and this was a luxury he was not like to squander on what was expected to be a fairly routine exploration and colonization mission.

Exploratory drones had managed to covertly enough scan the moons and active technology had been discovered without any real detection by their owners. Having sufficiently mapped the planetary landscape prior to returning to their base of operations, the home's political castes had deemed the planet a desirable scouting location for operations deeper within the eastern fringe to warn of oncoming attack, without having lost the significance of technologies on the planet in minimal numbers- likely relics of a prior occupant that might yield valuable tactical insight.

Shas'o GalVior'la, or as his closest most trusted men called him "Shas'o Gal", had managed to entirely bypass the lunar defense systems with precision planetary deployment means similar to that of the imperial drop pod, but more maneuverable. His forces ground presence had been almost immediately been reinforced boasting enough manpower to qualify for a small city. After the first day's expansion however, he directed an entire Kau'ui to forward scouting and fortifying roles. And wherever the fire warriors ventured, Earth caste soon followed erecting watchtowers and sectioning off drilling sites for archaeological digs near immediately. Command had mandated to Gal that he must have operations running planetside before attempting to engage the lunar bases for scouting readings indicated some potentially hazardous imperial weapons technology that was not to be taken lightly. The element of surprise from an attack force coming from the planet rather than space had been deemed an invaluable tactical advantage.

Expansion and some light mining had occurred for nearly two Terran weeks when undesirable activity had caught the attention of the Shas'o. Building the colonies had gone smoothly, but incidence of mining activity had gone over less so. Initially it had been attributed to particularly dangerous dig sites, small groups of earth caste going missing under collapsed rock. Fire warriors had been sent to check after some of them, but now it had been considered a problem. The mining incidents alone had cost Gal just over 90 fire warriors across the entire planet and protocol dictated action. The vast majority of mining activity ceased and had been re-organized to bring all the diggers and subterranean construction to only the two largest mines.

Early dig hadn't been fruitful, but the concentrated effort had uncovered a wealth of imperial technologies ranging in date from the age of strife to more recent. Additionally, a minuscule amount of wraithbone constructs had been uncovered. Mostly spire like structural supports, however one aforementioned Earth Caste engineer boasted at his delicate touch when he uncovered what appeared to be the broken remains of an eldar wraith construct of giant proportion that seemed to had fallen in conflict and had been left abandoned for the ages. A worrisome prospect for the tau considering their knowledge of how precious the wraithbone and life was to the eldar.


Now things were different though. Those were all the concerns of the previous week, and now that seemed like a lifetime ago. The tau had found themselves completely engaged on all fronts with an unseen enemy for days, sustaining heavy casualties from pallid glowing streams of energies when the Shas'o was so callously interrupted by technological advisers frantic about the fact the most distant moon had just exploded in a cataclysmic fashion.



Seeding

Whatever resolve the defenders of Olympus' moons had would not be remembered. The death of Eupheme had driven the invaders into a frenzied madness and the third moon, Errant- easily the most armored and developed of the moons, had been enveloped in shadow as if it had disappeared into the warp. A pinprick of fire would be visible erupting from the darkness it it's previous location where munitions had fired but the shear speed and volume of tyranids pouring at the fortress was less a slaughter and more a mercy.

It was no surprise when Ultimus, Philophrosyne, and Cabeiri plummeted through Olympus' atmosphere and registered on Tau seismic monitors. The preoccupied tau would make a note of it, but warp free communications and advanced technologies ignored the tyranids' trademark distortion. This perhaps served as more a curse than a blessing as their scans failed to distinguish the alien invaders as any different force than that they were currently engaged upon. It would be appropriate that Hephaestus, a splinter fleet of Gorgon who's adaptations first raced the technologies of the tau, would perfect planetary seeding with hive ships on Olympus. Several of the ships had began to adapt armored plating for planetary descent that was covered in a porous and flexible coral like substance that also excreted an extremely viscous and rubbery mucous that would harden to extreme durability in thin sheet-like layers when exposed to intense heat. This provided both an excellent defensive adaptation, but additionally one that was ideal for bursting through the atmosphere of a planet.


Eisen stared, mouth hanging slightly ajar at the screens in front of him. As his request, voted on and passed, almost the entirety of Exgaligus had been powered down. A vote rarely passed, and never with overwhelming support- powering down any mechanicus facility proved a near religious slight, but one that ultimately saved them as the planetary invaders plowed past them. Some ships lingered above the atmosphere of the planet, and others even stayed within firing distance of the moon oblivious to the fact the moon had life as the little remaining power had been diverted to cloaking devices and scanners. He probed databases for descriptions of their foes, and no documents registered within the databases of manmade technologies of the strange aggressive xenos. Biological scans had told him the entirety of their foe was living, a rare and foreign interplanetary means of travel. However, from the days of Olympus' former glory and raiding scanning a tau database had registered compatible descriptors of the ships. Cold mechanicalness resisted the fear instilled of harrowing portrayal of land creatures with scythes for arms and cannons that fired flesh eating creatures. Throughout the text one word prevailed. "Y'he". Eisen had decided this is what the tau had called the strange race of creatures- and he was correct.


Shrapnel and metallic limbs scattered around the battlefield as a resonating empathic obliterator was raised by it's wielder in challenge of their opponents. It pointed onwards, the necron overlord pointing a bony metallic finger in the clouded direction from which a salvo of tau munitions emerged. The Vanguard of the Watcher, the lords formal title, and his contingent were instructed on a special mission of a peculiar nature as they utilized a long unused path in the webway leading them to this isolated planet.

The necrotyr had not set foot on Olympus for an eternity, nearly since the war in heaven having brought them to what at the time was a growing eldar enclave, but now the archeologic activity of the Tau had awakened long dormant necrons on the planet. This had in turn alerted the master of the necron overlord, who calculated something of import on Olympus warranting that the necrons scour the planet of life as they had in times past. The overlord advanced with silent vitriol, his lychguard lagging behind him silhouettes of the tau gunline edged into view. A squad of pathfinders had the misfortune of rolling into the path of the overlord, and before the lychguard could join the fray scarabs flew from the radiating empathic obliterator literally smothering two of the six pathfinders while the Vanguard of the Watcher swung the weapon in an arc decapitating one pathfinder and nearly cleaving the wretch next to him. As the others turned to flee a psionic shockwave shook rendered the escaping pathfinders unable to run as the overlord used the butt of his weapon to impale their skulls as his lychguard caught up. The Vanguard of the Watcher understood his masters directive, and the overlord would retrieve what was asked of it.


This was not an enemy Shas'o GalVior'la had experience with. This was a foe that completely challenged and unraveled the military dogma instilled in him by his predecessor. They came from within the colony, far from initial deployment of his men and just the initial attacks had been devastatingly one sided before they routed the insurgent metalloid men. He gripped his exposed temple with an armored hand and sighed as he processed the front line dossiers coming in while the men in his personal control re-armored and re-supplied on ammunition before returning to the gunline. They had been holding off the foe now for weeks, and frankly it had taken far too long for their warriors to realize their guerrilla units had been coming in isolated numbers from the archeological dig at the center of the colony. Each subcolony had similar tunnels but as of the previous day the one Shas'o GalVior'la occupied was the last as communication to the other planetary outposts had been snuffed out by the metal men. It was a tragic thing, the tau had only just began to unearth a surprising amount of wraithbone line framework buried before the catastrophe started- and any insight into the cryptic race was considered valuable.

Contact with the nearest tau military contingency had not proved fruitful either, as the nearest reinforcements would still take a few more days time to arrive to the fringe planet. But the tau were far from beaten, they had slain more necrons than could be tallied and frequently gained and lost ground against what was an endless footslogging horde. Shas'o GalVior'la predicted that they could without too much trouble hold for a good week longer past the arrival of their reinforcementseven without aid, but the commander had now lost just under two fifths of his men and these losses were completely unacceptable. Shame filled him as he reached for his helmet and pulse weapons and he tempered his mind for combat with shame that turned to hatred, that turned to focus. The necrons would suffer for the greater good.


Ultimus, Philophrosyne, and Cabeiri had made planetfall easily, and already a mostly barren landscape began to show the investment of tyranid bioorganisms. An armada of biovores truged from the spawning chambers of Cabeiri while a choir of zoanthropes from Philophrosyne scattered to provide directive. Ultimus struggled to spawn, as organisms from the other hive ships focused on sustaining the badly hurt biovessel. Initially the hive mind suspected Ultimus' wounds were fatal and threw the ship into spawning overdrive, significantly taxing the creatures within. However, a testament to the resilience of Hephaestus, Ultimus began to heal. Surprisingly enough that the hive encouraged the beast to slow it's spawning to a crawl so that it might not die. The tyranids circled and swarmed their crash site in a frenzy looking for prey but found little. In the previous days lictors and hormagaunts had encountered and fought strange gauss wielding humanoids, and suffered losses but eventually overwhelmed their undesirable prey. Since then, they had not encountered life at all, as if the metalloids had been moving away from the tyranids towards some focused point. This had not bothered the hive mind.

Spores now rained down fairly regularly from the skies, enough so that regardless on where you were on the planet you were likely to at least see a streak of movement you knew wasn't dust in the storms. Beasts moved under the planets' crust, having been delivered from the massive spores. The inhabitants of Olympus would not be prepared.

Sleek, fluidly moving shadows danced through the Exgaligus' corridors. It wasn't clear what had been occurring, but as Eisen pivoted towards the lit doorway to his chamber, he was greeted by a host of razor sharp shuriken rounds from a pistol as a figure whispered something about a mon-keigh abomination.


The days spent awaiting reinforcements had pushed the tau on Olympus to the brink of extinction planetside. The necrons endless wave of footsloggers had only been a vanguard force, and elite necron assassins had been executing higher ranked officers serving under GalVior'la. Before long lumbering fortresses blurred into sight, firing gauss artillery and obliterating fortifications and the living indiscriminately. The tau had become so desperate that they had fallen back towards the central mines they worked so forcefully to seal previously in effort to stifle infiltrating necron forces. The pried open tomb had become the last major strategic point for GalVior'la's soldiers now numbering under five hundred fighting. Tensions were high, morale was low, but they knew that their reinforcements would be within range of the planet in less than a days time.


Fauna now spanned a previously barren landscape. A large blot clearly visible from space now boasted of the presence of the tyranids on the planet. While the tau barely encountered any tyranids(and those that had, hadn't survived), the necrons' purge of the planet had become disorganized. The choke point that had been the central tau mining colony should not have required nearly so much effort to sustain a stalemate. Squads of necron warriors disappeared beneath the earth as trygons and mawlocs burst from the earth only to reburrow beneath the crust with metalloid men still clinging to their beastly frames. Explosive gas spore mines were launched nonstop from the hive ships who were undergoing a new adaptation preparing for their next prey world.

On the front, where tunnels remained from the burrower beasts, waves of hormagaunts clashed with and dragged down necron warriors into their tunnels where swarms of rippers and warriors marched covertly under the crust of the earth. A shadow moved over the span of the battlefield twisting and turning, blocking for a moment the glare on the blacksun filters of the tau while the armor plated winged monstrosity perched on a wrecked building and for a moment watched the tau repel the necrons with what might be seen as curiosity for a moment. Not the type of curiosity of a person, for the hive mind is too vast- nor the curiosity of a panel of scientists examining a specimen. The curiosity was that of a pack of seasoned wolves who had a wounded rabbit stumble into their lair. Hunters, understanding the fate of their prey and not seeing the need to expend effort to provide mercy. The hive tyrant roared before taking to the sky again and as it took off from it's armored plated twin linked devourers it unloaded salvos of destructive leech parasite worms into the necrons advancing towards the tau- nearly breaking a full rank of the metal warriors.

The tyranids were already fighting the necrons. They understood the necrons were a larger threat, and the hive tyrant was merely scouting to the extent their prey spanned- consequently learning the focal point of their prey's interest. The hive tyrant swooped down low towards the ground approaching the rear of a triarch stalker and unloaded hundreds of worms in an effort to breech the metal chamber. A few worms would break through, the walker sustained the attack despite buckling for a moment as it's joints heaved and it turned to face a hive tyrant backhanding the pilot chamber with an armored plated arm, shattering the stalker in a fly by fashion as the tyrant returned to the sky and the mechanical walker lumbered and fell punctuating the fields of marching necron warriors. Gauss cannons fired at the tyrant from monoliths and warriors alike but it glided and evaded taking to the higher sky as it returned towards the tyranid offensive.


The Vanguard of the Watcher choked the life out of the fire warrior squad leader with icy cold metalloid hand as he fired Gauss at foes in the distance and his lychguard massacred the fire warriors they were currently fighting. The lack of progress was unacceptable to Tazyrn, and he had demanded the cursed eldar wraithbone blade buried deep within the grit of Olympus. But their advance had been fruitful albeit slow, and despite an aggressive enemy to the rear of the necrons warhost the priorities of the purge had been made clear to the necron overlord by his master. Wraiths raced past them towards the fortified tau barricades as typhoons of railgun and railrifle fire turned one of the wraiths into ash. Flayed ones shambled by as well as the necron overlord demanded their psychological effect warranted draped in the torn bluish tannin's of tau.

In space, crones, harpies, and hive ships locked tendrils with the early approach of a tau warship. Tau scouting ships broke against lines of tyranid ships overlooking the planet in hunger.


While the searing thum of gauss peirced the breaking Tau lines, GalVior'la heaved a sigh of relief while recieving medical attention for minor wound, for in this desperat time even the makeshift medbay was a respite from the deafening front lines. Hours he knew now, it was a matter of hours before he and his men would be dead. Suddenly a familiar and heavenly blinking light made itself known across the table within his helmet and he knew his reinforcements had arrived.


Far above a thinning atmosphere, debris now littered the span of moons surrounding Olympus. Ash from incinerated corpses and broken bodies floated around lifelessly while shadowy figures darted behind them using them as cover even in space before a Crone would latch onto the cockpit of an unsuspecting fighter pilot and filling their ship with corrosive goulash.


The tau reinforcements had been nowhere near prepared to handle such a large atmospheric defense force. Of their three largest battle carriers, only one badly damaged one remained while a swarm of metalloid fighter pilots swarmed around dissecting any tyranid unfortunate enough to put themselves in the paths of angry rail munitions.

The Tau were losing, but they had done irreversible damage to the fleet. In space only Erichthonious, Primaris, Euthinia and Palici. The resultant synaptic feedback had driven the tyranids into such an aggressive frenzy and spawning that for every tau vessel the tyranids bragged no less than 50 darting around. The Tau carrier tried to reverse direction and flee but Primaris and Palici gripped the sides of the ship and began to shear metal apart while pulling. Metal plates heaved and buckled while parts of the ship began to succumb to the vaccuum of space. The only communique GarVior'la would recieve before the ship snapped like a wishbone was a sorrowful apology for failure.

Behind an outnumbered fire caste line within the mines they hopelessly defended runes under dust sang. A cloud of dust and psychic fire erupted from the wraithbone arcs in the cavern, ignoring the tau but decimating the front line of Necron warriors and sending the Watcher flying from force. His guard was obliterated in the reaction, and as he popped his wrist back into its socket and retrieved his weapon he deemed enough enough. Three massive gauss explosions outside pulped the ruins of what were formerly Tau fortifications while three monolithic behemoths phased into reality. Gauss cannons on the monoliths charged and discharged repeatedly, shaking the mine over and over to no avail as if some psychic barrier maintained its silhouette. While the Tau were as good as dead, and the tyranids flanking him were of little consequence, the Watcher knew some immesurable obstacle now lurked in that mine along with his masters' precious prize; now more than ever time was of the essence for the necrons.


Across the sphere bulbous fleshy spheres hailed now from many directions, and where they touched earth clouds of gas flooded the area before igniting into plumes of fire throwing around the humanoid husks in every direction. What was once a desert home to the tomb race was now a vibrant planet difficult even for the Necrons to comfortably traverse. Before where many could stealthily emerge from sand, now layed swamp like sink holes of tar and digestive pools. Even large spire like trees boasted large whip like tentacles that would grab any unsuspecting prey and savage it against chitin like rock at its' base before moving on to the next husk.

Despite necron preoccupation with the mine on the side opposite to the tyranid base of planetary operations, the machine men knew the tyranids could no longer be avoided as they cut swathes into phalanx like lines that rarely buckled to even the hardiest foe. Spider like creatures shoved stalling vehicles while attempting to repair others and wraits cut navegable paths into the fauna with white hot whip coils to allow their waves of infantry and groud vehicles alike to move towards their objective.

Where thousands of hormagaunts leapt forward darting through noxious fumes of venomthropes, flayed ones and pariahs went hand to hand with the beasts while Necron Warriors towards the rear of the advance turned at the hip and provided supporting fire from the hip while continuing towards the mine. Necrotyr staves of pariahs shattered chitin with ease and bladed claws seared even through the chitinous scything talons of tyranids allowing each warrior to fall dozens of tyranid organisms before succumbing to the physical weight of the tyranid swarm trampling their bodies in such a manner that even their reanimation seemed neigh impossible.


Back towards the landed hive ships something odd was happening. Where Cabeiri simply grew, fleshy wirelike strands began connecting Philophrosyne and Ultimus. Worker beasts skittered tirelessly and belched mucousy translucent films to connect each strand to another as the sihlouette of a living biodome began to connect the ships. And at the center of this bioglass dome, a large spawning chamber writhed. More terrifying still, huge creatures bearing brainleech devourer hives on their four arms lurched forward in broods. The Carnifexes had many odd adaptations visible between the broods. Some had sensory horns that let them sense electromagnetic waves to aid in targetting and others bore scything talons rather than legs which they used to move quickly like arachnids across hive ship and planet alike. Some hooved carnifexes on the forward advance of the newly spawned like had Brainleech worm hives grown like thumbs onto scything talon arms ready to both shoot or hold off any foe the several hundred carnifexes encountered. And while the skies had more spore mines than anything, several hive tyrants and crones now darted through noxious atmosphere. The flying shovel tyrant continued to wreak havoc with guerrila tactic dives unloading munitions before smacking a chitenous fist like plate into armored targets warping and bucking necrodermis plates occasionally bursting through the entire end and leaving an exploded wreck where armor once stood.


In the mine, tau vigor blazed as they and their new Eldar allies of convenience decimated advancing tau. And while a spirit seer and guardians remained working on wraithbone in the back of the cavern cryptically, warp spiders erupted from blue warp flares cutting down immortals and necrons alike though the unfortunate few who got too close to the watcher found themselves suffering the most painful of deaths. Guardians and Fire Warriors unleashed salvo after salvo and gained ground. Up in the sky two shadows darted above, nicknamed the twins they had some horrific anger towards the monoliths outside as when the two winged dragon-like figured neared them swarms of what appeared to be insects dancing in lightening engulfed the pyramid figured before leaving them unlit and frozen resting on the ground.



Glassy obsidian eyes interrupted the several long writhing electric eel embryos gestating in a dome so rife with toxins and poisons even most daemons of plague would find themselves disintegrating in with glee. Electrical impulses raced up and down unprotected synaptic neural nodes and spawning microorganisms clustered around the flesh ropes of the twelve creatures gestating. The largest of them seemed to swim around checking on the smaller beasts alongside it knowing these would be its guardians. There were no longer three planetside hive ships, but two, ultimus having completely cannibalized its cohort.

Further across the planet carnifexes thundered completely decimating necrons they came across. The necron threat seemed to be failing catastrophically on both fronts until The Watcher employed a tactic as risky as it was beneficial. Using ancient wargear entrenched in his staff, he teleported within enemy lines after stealthily having approached. The fifty or so fire warriors that remained could not have prepared for such an assault.


Burning gauss tore through the fire caste warriors even before The Watcher raised his weapon as he teleported within the body of a fire warrior literally exploding him in a gush of bluish-purple blood. Gauss current fired indescriminately as the lord fired as fast as he could and in every direction. He knew his target, and as panicked warp spiders charged his position he plucked them from the air by random extremity and moved through their brittle forms like a las-shot through paper. Finally he reached the spirit seer who hailed him with psychic fire to no avail and the necron lord decorated his staff with the seers chest cavity. Almost immediately the entire planet shook violently, and while wraiths and footsloggers flooded the mine wraithbone walls heaved and shifted as one of the walls seemed to raise itself out of the roof of the mine.

Furious GalVior'la zoomed towards the watcher pulse weapons blaring deathwishes. There would be only tragedy in this expansion for the tau, as The Watcher flung the seers corpse at the Crisis suit to distract him and then after rolling under him and slicing into his propulsion slashed at him with his weapon till the commander was little more than raked earth soaked in blood.

The Wraithknight kicked dust off itself as it awoke, dropping the artaefact blade the seers and necrons alike had come to claim. Seeing the necron lord darting towards the blade and Eldar at its feet, it lifted its arm mounted cannon and made sure the necron lord could never piece its broken body back together. This necron lords watch had ended. The construct portal the eldar had used to infiltrate the mine hummed louder than ever as guardians began to emerge to ensure their reclamation would be successful.


Outside the tyranids had made their presence known, the necron warriors having killed one of the twin tyrants in a vibrant emerald volley more effective than flak fire. Many harpies and crones had perished and even their corpses pinned the metal figures under them as they flailed attmpting to rebuild. But the remaining of the twins had spun into a blind rage as its adapted neural network had intended at the death of its partner, having been infused with almost identical rage complexes as those of tyrant guard; the shovel tyrant had been badly wounded and been grounded but even used its remaining good wing as a scything talon, impaling foes where able while unloading its hives. Zoanthropes hovered maintaining order while bringing to life psychic fire.


Their hunger would soon be sated.

Running of the Bullgryn

Metalloid rubble laid strewn pressed underfoot where so many black carapace bodies moved that ground was scarcely visible. The necrons had been surprisingly resolute despite the loss of their leader. Huge beasts appeared like large stone formations poking from where one would expect the ground to be in a sea of gaunts and hormagaunts. Remnants of the dead carnifexes that had charged through and utterly decimated huge swaths of necron lines. The necron warhost only reached about 10 miles outside the city that was the eye of the conflict. And while of the hundred plus devourer wielding beasts from a mass spawn now numbered just over fourty, having proven the prowess of their tomb world foes, the remaining carnifexes had reorganized a focused point to spearhead towards the mine. Initially the siege beasts were spread too far and the necrons employed hit and run tactics with both deathmarks and wraits where a squad of deathmarks would stand in more open ground to attract the beasts and focusing on one of them while wraits darted in and out of phase literally hamstringing the beasts at the knee joints. The occasional fallen carnifex had continued shooting, and some of the spider variants had even figured out how to stay mobile with fewer working limbs. Evidence of this was only seen on the corpses however as the deathmarks found the slower prey easy to land killing blows on. Helping maintain order, a necron lord eerily similar to the one the wraithknight had blown apart reigned from a skimming barge from which it skated around cold and gracefully dealing death sweeping in while continually swatting away gaunts and raveners leaping at it with apparent ease and no sense of urgency.

The shovel tyrant was not clear on what it's prey wanted but it understood something valuable was contained in the mine. The crazed and wounded beast of burden stomped and leapt around the melee of now mostly eldar and necrons. A few dozen fire warriors remained inching backwards toward the eldar gate, not really pondering if they could use the eldar warpway but simply trying to get closer to their new allies for some hope of salvation knowing otherwise they were already lost. Gliding from a high leap through a collapsed wall of the mine, the tyrant landed with a stomp on the back of the remaining seer and a few guardians trying to move the large wraithblade towards their gate killing them instantly and completely by surprise. The webway flickered and fluctuated with the death of the seer while more eldar found their footing on the planet. But the reinforcements trickled, it was as if only a fifth of the eldar entering previously were able to find their way to assist. Screaming, the tyrant leapt again unloading it's worms into the wraithknight who with the fury of a fiery god turned around and smashed the beast into the rubble before vaporizing it. Meanwhile an angry former twin continued to fly around, even angrier now swooping in and crunching necrons with firing worm hive arms and claws, occasionally even managing to land a necron silhouette into it's jaws and letting fragments of them fall back to the ground.

Already dust clouds could be seen approaching where this tyrant fought from the distance, where a stampede of carnifexes literally trampled necron phalanxes underfoot, and while many managed to repair and get back to their feet after being crushed they were quickly drowned in claws and teeth of hormagaunts and rippers. It would be no more than a few hours before they carved their way to the center. Still a lone command barge floated hammering down tyranid beasts of significance.


There was no more radio communication between the tau fire warriors, only the hum of gauss, thud of shuriken weapons, and the discharge of railrifles with the occasional sad clicking sound of a railrifle gone dry. Eldar fighters looked back as the last of their guardians poured through and the webway flickered and died as a mawloc erupted from underneath it breaking and warping wraithbone. The mawloc ripped apart several eldar before it had enough shrapnel weaponry in lodged in it that projectiles were as likely to hit flesh as a previously lodged piece of metal. A lumbering behemoth shrugged off fire as it unloaded wraithcannons into the metal men charging it. Where the odds looked poor for the faltering necron force, they looked worse for the eldar and the tau had lost hope long ago.


A trail of toxic corrosion and miasma lumbered from a ruptured glassy biodome towards the front. A large walking hive tyrant, a troupe of venomthropes, and a toxicrene marched onwards with toxins literally dripping from their claws. Their carapaces were thicker and skin more leathery than their bretheren, evidenced by the occasional drop of venom falling onto smaller tyranid beasts and fauna and leaving them writhing before they shriveled and died. The Fleshy glass of the biodome was shriking from the point it had ruptured to release the hyper-toxic force, and it began to fit a large frame where the creatures were incubated in a manner similar to hot wax over a mountain. There were no longer two hive ships connected, this was now a titanic hive ship four times larger than any one previously part of Hephaestus. The beasts charging towards the brawl were barely visible shrouded in vile spores and the rare steam of spit venom that could be seen dissipating nearly a mile away. Their prey had been corralled like cattle, and Olympus was little more than a farm to the tyranids now.

++INTERMISSION TO 3++PRELUDE TO CHAPTER 4
++INTERMISSION TO 3++


943.M41

A bulky winged figure with an earthy booming voice barked orders at twisted broken marines whom scurried off as a familiar form approached. "SORCERORRRRRRRRRRR" it growled calmly with the last shred of restraint it's humanity offered the familiar face. "You're looking....strong Hexadris" uttered the heavily armored humanoid figure in heavily archaic and runed terminator armor. Thunderous laughter erupted from the blood red frame of the Daemon Prince as it's eyes remained fixated on the humanoid figure touched by the lord of plague. "YOuuuurrrr MAeSSSTTTER keeps TRUE power from you RHIIIIICIIIUSSS, THE THRONE OF BLOOD IS THE ONLY TRUE SEAT OF POWERR".

Rhicius uneasily ignored the remarks of his former friend, knowing full well any scraps of his humanity left were the tortured morsels of the daemons that now claimed his vessel. The years after their dealings with the tyranids had been dark and bloody. Having fled Lemnos and ventured back into the warp they had to carve their territory back from dozens of warbands of angry daemons. But Hexadris was lost before then, as early as their departure from Lemnos he had changed. He was consumed by the red rage, often slaying even his own who faltered in faith or strength- but never did he turn on the sorceror even as he became increasingly paranoid of the magic user. And after multiple small campaigns and a full chaos incursion that ripped a rift into the warp so large an entire Imperial world had fallen, finishing what they sought to do on the planet that was almost their tomb, a greater daemon of khorne emerged from the warp and gifted Hexadris with daemonhood. Rhicius had already been offered such a gift much earlier in the campaign by the lord of plague during an assault that left his head hanging by threads of flesh but because of his resistance brone from knowledge of the price such gifts carried he managed to only become infected with a life granting plague. This had made him insurmountably more powerful, but the dark magi knew that his vessel was now the claim of another- this was an eventuality.

"Are your beasts ready?" Rhicius asked while surveying and appraising the waves of bloodletters and chaos marines raising chaos amongst themselves on their god given daemon world. "OUR MIGHT WILL BOIL THEIR BLOOD, AND I SHALL MAKE A WREATH OF THEIR SKULLS FOR THE THRONE" Said the daemon prince loudly as he turned away towards his minions. Rhicius stared pensively at his comrade and fretted for their next prey, and during such he had set his own plans into motion unbeknownst to Hexadris. Already strings threading space in the mortal realm to that of the warp weaved through the fabric of reality.


Ultimus now vaguely resembled an above ground ant colony of crystalline glass and bulging fleshy sacs of coarsing biomatter and different amalgamations of venoms and fluids. The dome that birthed the hypertoxic node had began reconstruction and re-purposing almost immediately, and while it was clearly still a spawning chamber adaptation of some sort that connected the now single ship, only time would reveal the true function of the long wormlike tunnels on the sky facing belly of the hive vessel.


As Necron warriors ravaged and executed the last of the tau and the eldar, a dying eldar seer tried deftly to communicate to the last firewarrior as the scene around them turned from execution to genocide. Guardians physically torn to pieces by superior numbers of necrons while others burst into smoldering blackish-green resin. And while the two figures from two races did not well understand eachother, the fire warrior knew he wanted to hear what the spirit seer had to say. A model of ferocity, the fire warrior unloaded his rail-rifle more mechanically than any necron could muster until his clip ran dry, rarely averting his gaze from the seer's elaborate faintly glowing hand motions. Clips ran dry and the fire caste moved as if the world was in slow motion around him, picking up a nearby rail-rifle and continuing his blaze of glory. A thin bony dying frame heaved on a splinter of wraithbone lodged into it's torso, and smiled as the fire warrior made eye contact with him for the final time despite a tide of xenos genestealers pouring in through the collapsed wall of the mine to meet the Necrons. Suddenly the fire warrior was airborne, and he was moving faster and further than any manner he understood, leaving only a husk of a psykers figure with dark empty eyes. The fight was over for the fire warrior, and psychic forces removed the rail-rifle from the guarded grip of the fire-caste as well as a large ornate wraithblade from the floor at his side, but he knew whatever magics the spirit seer cast on him had saved his life.

A necron lord roosting on a barge skated through a mass of dead tyranids slashing at them and bringing them down in droves. Trygons had their face plates torn asunder, and carnifexes despite unloading volleys numerous beyond comprehension fell to the mercy of the barge lord. Still everywhere around him, the shimmer of necrotyr metal was beginning to drown in flesh and obsidian carapaces. It seemed that only the lord was the last remaining fight, and the tyranids knew it throwing hundreds of hormagaunts at a vessel that simply hovered higher momentarily as the bounding beasts jumped into the air even off eachother's backs. Still wherever the Necrotyr faltered the vessel swooped in and gave them momentary reprieve. It was unclear why the necrons remained, their prize and prey had fled and now they remained in the maw of the swarm. As the lord darted in and delivered a deathblow to one of the last twenty or so Carnifexes from the mass spawn, a massive corrosive blast ripped apart the barge throwing the lord to the ground.


The entirety of the hypertoxic node project Hephaestus had spawned charged the metal man getting to it's feet, eyes burning green as it raised it's warscythe. It was almost as if a wind tunnel had turned on as the toxic spores gusted ahead of the charging creatures. The toxicrene made first contact and as it's tendrils reached inches short of the lord, scarabs erupted from the clouds around him and the beasts' connection to the Hive tyrant and hive had been strained through some necrotyr trickery. This enraged the hive tyrant and venomthropes who now lumbered down on the necron lord, lash whips restraining it's arms from using it's warscythe as it was strung apart and the hive tyrant delivered a deathblow. But before the necron lord was cleaved in half-down the middle and pulled apart his dark influence had the barbed tendrils on the whips of the toxicrene pierce it's own skull and it fell limp. The tyrant roared in anger, and the beasts continued to cleave through the last of the necron lines before the tyranids found most of their prey had started to disappear altogether.

It had been a bloody and ill fated campaign for the tyranids, as the biomass that would be gained would only barely provide more than replenish their losses, but Hephaestus' beasts tempered their steel through trial, and now Ultimus boasted a new horrifying bio-weapon as well as having adapted the plague viruses they exposed themselves to in combat with those followers of the god of rot into something even more terrifying on the field. Olympus was won.

As the remaining ships that comprised Hephaestus(to those counting Eucleia, Euthenia, Ultimus, Primaris, Cabeiri, Erichthonius, and Palici) hungrily fed and became bulkier, turning the scarred orb of Olympus to little more than a ball of dust, the appraisal of the fleet was understood. Even though the tyranids spent their entire time changing, adapting, becoming more aggressive and forthright, the foes they had faced on Olympus cared little for the presence of the tyranids and were less prey than observers of a slaughter. On an instinctual level this gave pause to the Hive Mind as it was peculiar to have prey so capable of savaging the epitome of Tyranid evolution with so little ease yet have it pay it so little significance as they were hunted. Hormones pumped through the fleet to warn of panic as a result, struggling to comprehend the foes that made the fleet feel....weak.



Layered and otherwise heaving armored plates thicker than any ceramite became light as the atmosphere went into the final stages of dissipation, and Ultimus' massive frame began to lighten along with the gravitational pull of the planet. Where Ultimus was by the wide margin the largest, a living biological biodome housing millions of tyranids working in unison rivaling and surpassing the populations of thousands of actual worlds, this was not to detract from the shear magnitude of the hive vessels. Even the smallest ship, Palici, had a horrific hunger during it's gestation and was equal size to a Retribution class Battleship of the Imperial Navy. And Ultimus would dwarf 5 of it's kin combined. Even the gestation chambers in each ship had taken horrific new adaptations in preparation for any new unpredictable prey.



The hive fleet would soon completely leave the rubble of Olympus, with no knowledge or concern regarding the artifact taken or why it's pursuers had been so voracious in its claim. And they would hibernate and drift for a bit continuing their path northwest in the galactic plane, but at a much more reserved pace stripping bare another dozen easy prey worlds before they would stop again for considerable amount of time.




+END 3+

[barbedsparky]

Moar?

[atraunam]

Noo... there must be moar.

[Deleted]

Chapter 4: Inner Daemons


944.M41

The Hive world was abuzz. Rioting, looting, general malcontent that far surpassed the status quo of crime family violence being law. And where powerful families raced to rip out each others throats to get ahead politically even a little. But all throughout every level of the city-world one phrase stayed on the lips of people in the streets and back alleys: "Lord Rhicius has come to save us all". 

[Deleted]

945.M41


The Aetnaean Hive World was a common type of Hive world boasting few remaining natural resources other than it's populace. The remaining water on the planet's surface had long ago been so contaminated with industrial pollutants that coupled with the arid and sub-zero conditions loaned a mercury-reflective tint and caused severe chemical burns. While there were few to no major bodies of water planetside, many tributaries ran between larger rivers, making the planet mostly connected by narrow water passages. Besides this Aetnaea boasted a mythically flat landscape with intermittent dips for a small crag large enough to house a Rhino and nothing more as well as large patches of dingy creeping moss that would grow between streams until it would detach from their rhizoids and float down a length before repeating in search of nutrients. Inhabitants of the Aetnaean Hive city were told from adolesance, half-jokingly, that if you let the moss crawl onto you it'd eat you alive- a meaningless Jest as the temperature, and chem-fog atmosphere would kill non-astares well before the moss could do anything. 

Still, on this near-death world, lightening fast creatures darted over rivers unbeknownst to the planetary inhabitants, desperately trying to find some sign of life. The humanoid figure could see the mountainous spire on the horizon as anything nearly anywhere on the planet would, and let out a horrible gurgling hiss as its eyes strained under the chem-fog filtered sunlight that rendered Aetnaea in greyscale. 


Within the walls, the undercity was nearly a relic devoid of anything but nightmarish noises from behind closed doors. What had been extreme organized crime had become something more sinister, as anyone on the streets now was like to be kidnapped for something more horrifying that any organ theft or slave-trade, to be dragged into the cult of the damned stronghold. The Cults of Chaos were now operating less and less in secret within the city; having incited near civil war, that now took heavy toll on the ground level of the hive world white bureaucrats and aristocrats fiddled trying to peg which family and figurehead would be the winning horse to back to return some semblance of order.  As a result a small contingent of Grey Knights had been summoned but would still not arrive for quite some time. 

Far in the cloud districts, a familiar presence finds himself as chief adviser to the family of Turrtius Popientius, an aristocrat in the forefront of the power-struggle grossly entrenched in the arms trade which shot his family to greatness in the current circumstance. Turrtius had been acting differently though, paranoid, now oft likely to seek private council with the absolved one rather than his former associates and family. Rhicius had fixated his burning gaze of arcana on the Aetnaean hive world, and infiltrated it from the lowest crust-caked stims den to the lofts towering even above St. Jaulirius',  Aetnaea's temple of devotion to the emperor.

[Remalis]

Annnnnd dennn?

( a subtle prompt for more via a movie quote)

[Deleted]

hah, yeah I need to knock out more of this. Have a bit more than a day off and painting atm, but been working full time and taking classes full time again. Playing in an apoc 3000 pts mega battle xenos v imperium so I'm PSYCHED about that. But I just got a new job, which will give me more regular hours and is a big step up.

Buuut some of what I'm working on painting-wise will see face time in the story. Not necessarily in this chapter, but I have some stuff I'm excited to eventually write about.

[Deleted]

preface: small update for you guys. I had a lot typed out at one point, and because of me carelessly hitting back on my browser lost what was like 1/3 of this whole chapter a few months ago(which left me really discouraged to keep working).


In a dark room occluded from sight of the mainstay of St. Jaulirius, a staircase of shimmering twisted metal slithered awkwardly around the inner supports of the vestibule of the temple. Heavy ceramite boots and a bronze tipped staff rang lightly as they slowly glided down the passage into the hidden antechamber of the temple.

The pallid pauldrons of the towering figure glinted as they caught the occasional beam of reflected light from imperial curiosities stored within the temple room whose only luminance was candlelight. Early investigation of these oddities had initially yielded no promising results, but Rhicius' persistence had found a few mildly interesting artifacts among the toys of the Imperial clergy. Nothing that could outwardly be used to reap his will or advance his conquest of the hive world, but several warp touched relics would make enough of an impression to be kept nearby.

Going to the corner of the room, prying the lid from a stone crate too heavy to be opened by the non-enhanced. Immediately the stench of death permeated the chamber. A withered elderly man's eyes opened in terror as he glanced up at his captor knowing what was to come. The previous head priest and advisor to Turrtius' spat out a plea from his lips nearly incomprehensible. "Please, no more" rasped between coughs. Giving his holiness Golias no plea, Rhicius pulled him up by the arm, covered his face with one hand, and snapped off one of Golias' remaining fingers. Three thought Rhicius to himself, as he dropped the sobbing corpse back into the box of blood and excrement. Before resealing the lid, Rhicius removed a bottle of water, a towel, and bread tossing them haphazardly onto the man ignoring the muffled protests. As the lid sealed a finger was caught under the lip of the crate and was crushed immediately. Four, Rhicius mused to himself.



Rhicius approached one of the few things he had brought to the temple upon his arrival, a water basin holding a glassy translucent white fluid. Tracing massive gloved fingers along runes circling the top rim of the dish. Slowly, the color changed from white to a bluish-black. Squeezing and dripping blood from the digit removed, the pool again changed, now a deep clouded red from which flashes of lightening could be seen bubbling beneath the surface. Staring into the pool he could hear Hexadris barking orders to an army. "Hexadris" he said aloud, noting the sudden silence and snap of attention the Daemon Prince gifted him. "How many of your followers are ready to enter the world?" He spoke. Laughing Hexadris voiced "My master's rage stands ready for the puny vessels you may offer" oozing contempt. "There have been complications Hexadris" spoke Rhicius matter of factly, "some of our warehouses holding ready vessels have been housed in were found only containing trails of blood to the undergrounds". Hexadris bellowed in rage, "SORCEROR, I HAVE NOT TIME FOR YOUR EXCUSES, MAKE IT SO". The basin slowly lost it's sheen and again the room darkened.



Deep in the city sewers, fanged and clawed beasts horded corpses of bodies not unlike the clergyman in Rhicius' crate. They fed and gorged themselves as an alpha figure watched it's children feed.

[barbedsparky]

Nice to know you're still kicking.

[Deleted]

Tei'syr knew his progress would please his master. Tei'syr knew. 

In a manifest sorting bay he had done all his superiors had told him. The finest details had not escaped his glassy, chem-strained eyes. Draperies from lesser nobles, torn and snatched occluded almost any streetlight that would bleed into the darkened garage. Scribblings stretched not only from the metal paneled walls but spread under curiosities shipped in to help the ritual. 

Blood doused the ground making a nine pointed makeshift star, with a slumped, clearly drained psyker punctuating each barb. He was uneasy at the five large gene-warriors full clad in a horrifying parody of astares battle plate looming to one side of the room, suspecting them of chatting amongst themselves by vox noting them exchanging glanes. 

A crackle, betraying the confidence in his words, interrupted Tei'syr as he barked orders to a handful of scurrying devotees and then unveiled cages with psykers locked in an assortment of glowing runed chains. Astares shifted around the room taking up a circular perimeter. Psykers marked themselves with ink and took up positions guided by their psychophant captors. Starved and tortured, the innocents only reprieve for their aid was would be promises of freedom.

A low thum echoed through the room as chanting began from the psykers, droning out the peering eyes from the floor grates. Lights and fog flashed around the facility.

Warp energy crackled illuminating the center of the room as a portal that one second was fire, and another flesh struggled to maintain any sort of coherency in the foreign plane of the matterium. Eye sockets bled, psykers screamed in agony, still astares watched unflinching. Tei'syr had known the function of the ritual, but the contortion worn on his face showed he had not expected so horrific a sight. Creatures that induced insanity to onlookers, balls of eyes and limbs of every sort of creature shifted along them as if sliding on ice. Slop sounds punctuated their sloppy movement while their flesh turned from blue, to purple, to pink, and white all at once. 

It was as these pinkish horrors came through the warp that one astares found himself falling, blood erupting from his knee, getting only the glance at an claw moving fast as sight back into the water grate behind him. Immediately the room turned to chaos, astares rushing to their battle brother scouting the room trying to register any sort of life signatures in the fog of the warp summoning. A ceiling panel came down and immediately the astares unleashed hell on the genestealers falling on to them. Four had come crashing down and while two died outright in the bolter fire, one badly wounded swung wildly at scattering cultists and astares alike. The other sprinted for cover, decapitating two menials as it dashed behind a crate and waited. 

The resulting aggression brought life to the warp spawned creatures, as a portal now closed behind them the group of nearly twenty pink horrors slushed around the room at a breakneck pace slaughtering indiscriminately as they danced around looking for the cause of the outburst. Metal could be heard twisting around the room as figures poured through the fog close to the ground. The astares captain counted. One. Three. Seven. He wasn't sure how many of the damned creatures had poured into the jungle of crates but he was sure they were outnumbered. His brothers propping up their maimed companion in a prone position to maintain fire shot sporadically into the fog; bolter flares illuminating dozens of shifting claws and dropping a creature with a shriek occasionally. 

Tei'syr ran towards an exit among several cultists. This place was a deathtrap and it was a mystery to no one. He paused his dash seeing limbs being torn from his associates as they ran for the main door. Spinning on his heel he ran towards a hanging service ladder leading to the overhead control room for the crane. As he pulled up the first rung the scene below was now a melee. 

No less than fourty genestealers darted around warring with the daemons while making mad grabs for the astares cutting them down from meters away. Hails of bolter rounds thudded angrily into the darting limbs of pink horrors and genestalers ripping into eachother. The daemons fought resiliently, but were losing number quickly. The pink horrors now down to only eleven in number without warning conjured a torrent of flame, torching nearly a dozen genestealers in an instant. The chorus of shrieks echoing through the facility rattled any mortal survivors to the bone. Still pockets of more genestealers found their way into the chamber.

The astares were waning, already having been unable to stop as a cluster of the creatures charged headfirst dragging away their wounded companion while shoving a pointed claw through the visor of another killing him instantly. The creatures cared not to die, and this was their strength. Still backed now against a wall, the remaining astares also knew no fear of death as the room blazed with blue fire and scores more of their assailants died in hellfire. 

Tei'syr made it to the door of the control room and struggled to open a heavy steel door refusing to budge as if the treads had rusted shut.  In tears, fearing for death he pushed and shoved trying to make the door budge when finally it gave way. Tei'syr didn't have time to scream seeing the massive silhouette of the being in front of him, Tei'syr knew. White hot eyes peered at him as a clawed limb moved like water towards his face. He didn't understand, he did everything right, why hadn't his master help him? Suddenly there was no thought as a fingered claw nearly ten inches in length sloughed through what was once his skull. The creature silently leaped down besides the warring astares and proceeded to eviscerate them through their now seemingly paper thin battle plate. The genestealers now fighting beside their brood lord erupted with renewed vigor cleaning the facility from the taint of chaos. 

Moving uninterestedly through the building the broodlord walked back towards the service holes the genestealers had come through to begin with. His children were fed, but still so hungry. 

Meanwhile far in the clouds overhead, a different scene transpired.

Turrtius turned from his wife and daughter finally meeting the gaze of one of his senior military advisors standing at attention near his dining hall entryway. Guard-Commander Brannon's facial expression betrayed his staunch, generally unshaken demeanor. He had been growing increasingly agitated with the dealings of nobles. It was true that their hive world was oft wrought with corruption, but the dealings and whispers escaping the highest temples and lowest sewers were now deafening to the city military forces, and it would have given Brannon no greater pleasure than to put Turrtius in his place.

As Turrtius' family withdrew from the hall, Brannon exchanged a knowing glance with Cybella, Turrtius' daughter. Cybella, though generally timid and soft-spoken had taken a liking to Brannon. She admired his sense of duty and justice, and envied his willingness to stand against her father where she would generally look at her feet and squelch her thoughts in defeat rather than engage in open confrontation. As she passed the guard's left and right hands she banished the thought of girlish admiration from her thoughts.

"My Liege" Brannon began, "I ha---". "Yes yes, what sort of scraps are the ingrates fighting over now? Each passing day, I would be less and less remiss to simply ignite the sub-city promethium lines" Turrtius interrupted off colored-ly. The guard-commander's brow furrowed. These types of comments had become more and more commonplace dealing with his master which rattled the part of Brannon's heart that felt anger every single time.

Shoveling his emotion into his gut, he found the purpose to his words again. "Sir, we're receiving partial-feeds of astropath communication from Brother-Captain Sullivan of the esteemed Grey Knights Contingent scheduled to arrive". "And?" replied Turrtius impatiently while waving his hand in a circular fashion demanding the Guard-Commander continue. Allowing a twinge of his frustration to become apparent with the nobles manners he replied "As I was saying sir, the communications are jarbled but from what our astro-scribes can discern the Grey Knights should be present within eight Terran Cycles."

"Excellent Brannon, if there's nothing else please excuse yourself. I grow weary and must seek the apothecary". said Turrtius in the haggard voice of someone decades older. Brannon's retainers uncomfortably followed their senior officer as he turned on a heel without another word and stormed out to the barracks.

[Deleted]

945.M41

Hephaestus drifted ever in it's purpose. The ships, Eucleia, Euthenia, Ultimus, Primaris, Cabeiri, Erichthonius, and Palici had become bloated having gorged theselves intermittently on tiny prey worlds as they pushed in near hibernation ever northwest in the galactic plane.

The vessels had been joined by dozens of smaller bio-freighters that drifted between the larger creatures, occasionally attaching to them and skittering across chitin and flesh before disappearing momentarily in orifices of the leviathans. Like lightening rods, electricity fired between neuro-receptors instructing the peculiar gaunt variants sloughing through fleshy sphincters within the ships as they tirelessly zipped between different organs. A gaunt with elongated tube like arms, similar to a spike rifle, circled an ooze coated inflated sac rife with internal motion while periodically stopping to belch a slimy substance onto the organ. Tongue-like appendages slid out of the tips of it's arms and smoothed out the coat of protective resin as the blob began to become hard and callused. Immediately the gaunt hurried to it's next task disappearing into the darkness of the giant. Minutes later, gaunts similar to the first would break out of their birth sac and without hesitation tend to maintenance of their brood mother.

Hephaestus was beginning to grow, and it was now understood that after a string of costly campaigns and successful growth the time had arrived to alter their investment strategy. The fleet would split to procure a broader spectrum of gene-material while reducing the risk of extinction. This was information billions of organisms housed across the ships were privy to though the information was for the most part noise to the menial organisms.

Eucleia, Euthenia, and Ultimus would venture on course to the galactic northwest while Primaris, Cabeiri, Erichthonius, and Palici ventured largely in the same direction with a divergent course of approximately 20 degrees closer to north. Each boasted no less than fifty smaller bio-vessels both for maintenance and defense but committed to their course understanding that they would shoot vessels into the void in the general direction of the other periodically in an effort to keep their respective gene-pools comparable.


Far away, a smaller Grey Knight war frigate began it's entry into their destination system.

Back in the upper levels of the hive city, the click-clack of boots tipped with a ferrous-alloy rang down one of the servant corridors. "Absolved One!" echoed a raspy voice rife with years of entitlement. Rhicius removed himself from troop dossiers and poultices he had been working on the bulk of the day. Turrtius was remiss to admit it, feeling weak thinking of the implications, but Rhicius now had the final authority on all city guard movements. Turning, he put on an air of positivity- all the while in his own head being careful not to allow his true intentions come to light.

"My lord! What brings you to my lab on this fine eve? I have been working on your serums and troop rotations in your absence." With color returning to his haggard face, a grin returned to Turrtius' face. "Rhicius, these last few months have been....truly blessed. My family has taken its rightful space in the council at the head and even the Officers now grant me the respect I deserve. Even my health....these poultices have me feeling young again."

"It pleases me that you should say so Lord Turrtius," responded Rhicius "I am confident this new batch shall bring you all the vigor of new life." Guiding the Council-regent to his worktable, Rhicius proceeded to present a small vial of what appeared to be blood and mixed it into a goblet of oxidized nickel. Immediately the surface shimmered with a glassy oil-like residue and with the care of an exploside expert he handed the chalice to his liege.

With a child-like excitement, Turrtius brought the glass rim to his lips and partook greedily. Immediately, he grasped at his throat scratching at his throat for a single breath while his veins burned with fire. Rhicius smiled expectantly as he watched Turrtius' veins glow neon blue through his flesh while muscles spasm'd and his liege fell to one knee. Extending a hand, Rhicius helped his lord back to his feet not only seeing his new strength but sensing the warp energies of the void spawn clutching to Turrtius' life force like a parasite.

This husk of a man was nothing more than a tool to Rhicius, and he and his family would be the planet's downfall. Regardless, feigning concern he queried "How does it feel?". Even servants down the hall could hear Turrtius bellow like an enraged bear. "I feel reborn, forged of ceramite Rhicius. Truly you outdo yourself with your magiks warp witch." The familiarity in his remark made Rhicius glad the man would soon be dead.

With his physical form returning to passibly normal, the two sat and began covering the specifics of their latest plan to secure their vice on the political hierarchy and ascend Turrtius to the status of a god-king.

[royalecheez]

Good read