User:Yaar Podshipnik/The Last Days

The following article is a /tg/ related story or fanfic. Should you continue, expect to find tl;dr and an occasional amount of awesome.

This is transcript of an Let's Play thread on RPG Codex. The thing is a choose-your-own-adventure styled, WH40k interactive story.

The author of this story is called root. This is a faithful copy of that which can be found on forums, mercifully sparing the readers from reading the usual drivel between quality posts.

I have preserved the ordering of the updates as posted, not as linked on the index page.

Prologue

The Emperor is dead. The Golden Throne is silent. The Astronomican has darkened. The Cadian Gate has been overrun by the Despoiler, and the entire sector has been lost. The Imperium has fallen.

Warp travel has been disrupted, and the Eldar have fled to their craftworlds, fearful that without the God-Emperor's shield the Devourer will soon find them. The galaxy is in uproar. Sector-to-Sector communication no longer works; The Administratum has been fragmented. The Adeptus Astra Telepathica have managed to sustain local network communication-and-guidance relays, but they are erratic and most ships that venture into the Warp are lost to it. The Imperial Guard no longer serves a purpose; they do not know what they are guarding.

The Imperium is at its knees, crippled, headless. The High Lords of Terra scurry around like ants without a queen. Many of the Astartes Chapters don't even know what is happening; their battlebarges too few, too far. The Inquisition itself has been dealt a deathly blow; without its information network, heresy runs rampant. The Tyrant Star has been sighted far from its sector of origin. The Techpriests in Mars have succumbed to holy fervor and now openly worship the Omnissiah as a separate entity from the Emperor, and say it lays in the bowels of their planet.

In the gloom of space, there is no hope. No shelter. There is only war. But it is a war without form, a war amongst shadows. No-one knows where the first blow will hit, from whose hand it will come. The scattered worlds of the Imperium stand in dread as they await their destiny, the corrupting influences of Chaos already manifested en masse.

Yet Chaos itself is weakened; something other than the Ruinous Powers roams the Immaterium, and the Traitor Legions have been battling a formless terror ever since the Emperor's demise. Not even the Gods themselves know what else lies in the coldest, deepest darkness of the dead stars that lie half in this world and half in the next.

In the grim darkness of the 42nd millenium, there is only horror.

Act I

You have chosen to lead a Space Marines Chapter into uncertain glory and uncertain doom onto Cadia. No calling is higher than that of the Adeptus Astartes, the Emperor's Chosen. May your deeds live on forever.

IT IS BETTER TO DIE FOR THE EMPEROR THAN TO LIVE FOR YOURSELF

Navigator Barenziah gazed once again at the cyclonic torpedo and viral bomb load counters; he was worried that he might be using them again soon. Word had already spread throughout the galaxy that this Chapter had ordered more Exterminatus than any other. The Navigator was none too pleased with the Chapter's split from the Black Templars, but he was the Navigator assigned to this battlebarge and a member of the Imperial Navy, and there wasn't much he could do. Not against the Astartes. Especially not against this Chapter of the Astartes. He glanced at the astropatic chorus at their cell. They were bound in chains engraved with holy sigils, and seemed to be always twitching in pain. Not a common practice in the Imperium.

He signaled the Adeptus Mechanicus to take over the navigation controls and surveyed the warp currents ahead with his third eye. They were unusually calm, and the path to the Cadian sector was clear. They would be there in days, perhaps hours. The Brother-Commander of the Chapter stood at his side, his brown-black armor without any insignias apart from the imperial eagle, looking idly at the dials and holoscreens that filled the ship's bridge. The navigator resumed his duties, wondering if the Inquisition was actually pursuing them. Sometimes they were just empty threats. But it payed to be on guard.

Barenziah thought about their mission. He knew the Gothic Fleet had assumed control of the skies over Cadia, but the Despoiler's armies were in complete control of the ground. The Brother-Commander had volunteered his chapter immediately to spearhead the counter-attack, counting with the orbital support of the Imperial Navy. Other Chapters signaled that they might be inclined to help, but not openly, because of their Chapter's current status. He doubted any chapter apart from the ultramarines would help. The Despoiler had amassed the greater part of all the Traitor Legions to help in his last crusade, and without a general mobilization of the Imperial Regiments even one or two chapters of Space Marines wouldn't make much difference. Still, they say doubt begets heresy, and heresy begets retribution. The Navigator shivered at the thought.

He was the first to feel the psychic blast, and rocked in his chair, grunting in pain. The astropaths started screeching and clawing at their chains, sores erupting over their skin and oozing. Their hollow eyesockets gleamed red, and the Brother-Commander, without a word, put a bolter round through each of their skulls. He looked at the Navigator, seizing in agony, and aimed his bolter. Barenziah croaked "The astronomican is dark..." before falling out of his chair, and meeting the end of the Brother-Commander's boot on his skull. A red mist was filling the bridge, and the entire ship seemed to be groaning, as if the metal itself was screaming in agony.

The Brother-Commander looked at the panicking techpriest, and barked:

"Why?"

"Sir I...I don't know. The Gellar Field is failing! The navigational systems are short-circuiting. Perhaps we've hit a warp storm but there's nothing on the sensors...I can feel the machine's pain, but I cannot soothe it, it screams, it is falling apart! We are doomed!"

The Brother-Commander collar-grabbed the techpriest and snarled at his face:

"What are the options, techpriest?"

"Sir, w-we can maintain course to the Cadian Sector...if the gellar field holds until then, we might be able to reach it, though I know not where we'll land, and I don't think the ship will hold...or we can disengage the warp drive and hope that we re-emerge somewhere safe!"

• Disengage the warp drive and pray that you end up somewhere suitable? One cannot fight heresy if one is wholly consumed by it! To travel in the warp with a faulty gellar field is more than a fool's errand, it is a suicide of body and soul. Let us live to fight another day!

• Do you stay on course, gellar field be damned! The Emperor shall spread his wings over us in our time of trial. Our zeal will get us through this. Our mission is to retake Cadia from the Despoiler, and if we fail at that, we might as well be dead. Onwards to Cadia and Victory!

IT IS BETTER TO DIE FOR THE EMPEROR THAN TO LIVE FOR YOURSELF PART DEUX

The Brother-Commander gave the order to the techpriest to maintain course. The techpriest intoned the credo of the omnissiah and issued the commands to the machine spirit, which responded badly. The ship started swerving madly from side to side, all its components creaking in unison. The red mist grew to a thick crimson fog, enveloping the insides of the ship entirely. The texture of the walls began to change appearance, becoming oily, wisps of crimson light sparkling from its surfaces.

The Navigator's corpse rose, its skull misshapen and one of its eyes hanging out of its socket, and started chanting something uncomprehensible. The brother-commander unloaded his entire bolter magazine on it, but the shredding of its tissues seemingly had no effect. The creature hung in the air, its various mangled parts maintained together by the pulsing crimson fog. It launched a bolt of purplish energy at the brother-commander, searing his face, and the brother-commander drew his chainsword and charged.

At this moment a squad of Battlebrothers stormed the room, bolters at the ready. The Brother-Commander ordered them to charge, and they complied gleefully. The burst of bolter rounds reduced the brother-commander's body to a smouldering pile of bloody organs. The squad immediately gathered around the thing that once was the navigator, and kneeled before him. Crimson sparks earthed themselves in their armors, while they took in the unholy blessings of the warp. They seemed unaware of the techpriest.

The techpriest, realizing now that the situation was hopeless, tried to disengage the warp drives, but to no avail. The machine spirit had been corrupted and was under the control of the Ruinous Powers. The techpriest now faced a dire choice: he could either detonate the ship entirely and let the abominations perish with it, although dooming the Chapter to roam the warp in their escape pods until the end of their days, or he could overloard the ship's warp drive and re-emerge from warp somewhere in the Cadian Sector at terminal velocity, probably with fatal results.

But the techpriest felt the call of the Voices, the alluring lullaby of Chaos...everything he wanted, he could have...If only he'd give in...The corrupted machine spirit beckoned to him, and he felt aroused as though he was still fully the man he once was, many ages ago, before the Mechanicus.

• Set the ship to self-destruct and doom the Chapter to wander around the Warp? It is a suicide mission, but there is nothing more glorious than battling evil at its very heart! For the Emperor and the Omnissiah!

• Do you overloard the warp core and hurl yourself at the Cadian Sector at relativistic speeds, without knowing where you will end up or if you will survive the journey? Fortune favours the brave. The entire Chapter will applaud you, if you succeed! And if you fail, they will never know.

• Do you give in to the Dark Powers? Sanity is for the weak! Imagine the power you could wield, with forbidden technology combined with your everlasting body! You could subjugate the Omnissiah to your will!

IT IS BETTER TO DIE FOR THE EMPEROR THAN TO LIVE FOR YOURSELF PART TROIKA

The techpriest acquired enough presence of mind for a moment before succumbing to heresy, engaging the core overload system. There was no sound for a long time, as the ship went beyond its physical limits and existed simultaneously in the materium and in the immaterium, both of them pulling it apart. And then there was light.

But not for long. The ship crashed into a gigantic stone structure, half a kilometre wide, one whole kilometre tall. And came to a rest. The foredecks were completely destroyed, as well as half of the crew quarters. The medical bay was severely damaged, and the armory apparently imploded with the force of the crash igniting the ammunitions depot. It was truly a miracle that even half the ship was still whole. Truly, the Emperor protects.

Reclusiarch Jeremiah, High Chaplain of the Chapter, stepped out of the wreckage and surveyed the scene. He ordered a death toll and thorough search of the ship. The bodies of the traitor squad were found, apparently alive but unconscious, and were divested of their power armors before being put to death. And here a curious thing happened: These men were weak and small compared to an average space marine. Their armor had apparently included complex mechanisms to allow them to operate the heavy bulk of the machinery through psychic links. All of them were branded with the Inquisition's seal, and bore the marks of sanctioned psykers.

"Spies. Sent by the unworthy to report on the activities of the worthy. It is just as well we have been declared Excommunicate Traitoris, Brothers, because the Imperium of late is run by villains no better than the Enemies of Man. No true Space Marine would have so easily succumbed to Chaos."

The assembled brother-captains agreed with the Reclusiarch, and spat on the bodies of the fallen before commiting them to the sword. Their morale was high. They had survived a daemonic incursion, the perils of the warp, and had came out alive, with the Emperor's Blessing. The entity that had possessed the Navigator was nowhere to be seen, and nothing remained of him but a pile of blood and ooze.

But such a state of affairs would not last long. When the scouting parties reached the Reclusiarch with the news of their findings, gloom fell upon the assembled Brothers. Over five companies were dead, including the First Company, formerly the Sword Brethren of the Black Templars, the only permitted to wear the hallowed Terminator suits. And their suits were destroyed with them. The Chapter had been reduced to half its standing force, a little over 500 men, in a single fell blow by the Ruinous Powers. The apothecaries did their best, but most of the gene-seeds were beyond retrieval. It would take centuries for the chapter to recover. And they had no home planet, no training ground. They had only their mission.

And they would carry it on, said the Reclusiarch, even if there had been only one Battle Brother left. The Brother-Captains cheered at this, their zeal renewed. This Chapter did not know the meaning of anguish. They had only righteousness.

The navmaps were completely fried, there was no way of ascertaining their position. But there was no need to. The Reclusiarch looked up at the Pylon that the ship had crashed into, and further up into the crimson sky streaked with purple lightning. He knew where they were. They were in Cadia. And Chaos was coming.

Please note, this choice is not what you will do, but rather, what will you focus most on doing while also doing the other alternatives.

• Focus on defense? Abbadon's forces could arrive at any moment. We must fortify ourselves and prepare for battle, to the last man! Let the exploring and foraging for later!

• Do you focus on exploration? Send out scouting parties, ascertain the situation, perhaps there are friendly forces around, though none may be seen currently. Defense is all very well, but without knowing what you are fighting, what's the use?

• Do you focus on foraging and rebuilding? Your supplies won't last for long. The drugs needed to sustain the Battle Brothers will soon start to run low. You have to repair the Medical Bay, and re-stock the armory. You cannot fire your bolters without rounds! Leave the scouting for later, for now it is better to focus on the practicalities.

And a second choice, this one obviously excludent:

• Hand over the command of the Chapter to the Reclusiarch? He is the oldest Battle Brother, and the most zealous. He is however strict and unforgiving, and tends to choose brutality over subtlety.

• Do you hand over the command to the Lore Keeper? He is the second oldest of the chapter, and the Keeper of all its secrets, its strategist, and former advisor to the Brother-Commander. He is guileful and wise, but many Battle Brothers consider him too much of a thinker for a true warrior.

• Do you hand over the command to one of the Brother-Captains? They are skilled in battle and used to command, and may strike an ideal balance between zealousness and skillfulness.

IT WAS A DARK AND STORMY NIGHT

Imperial thought of the day: An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

Lorekeeper Helfrich assumed control of the entire ground situation with remarkable swiftness and firmness. The Reclusiarch, as Reclusiarchs are wont to do, retired himself to his cell, to pray. Most of the Brother-Captains excused themselves to "pray", as well. None of them held the Lore Keeper in high regard; They had never seen him at the front of a battle, nor had they ever thought he was anything but a glorified librarian. The average Battle-Brother, however, regarded the Lore Keeper with a mixture of suspicion and awe; his unorthodox tactics had saved the Chapter more than once, and none was quicker than he to root out heresy with extreme prejudice when needed.

The Lorekeeper did not mind either of these factions, he never did. Things had a way of turning out to his designs. Reasoning that battles could not be won through zeal alone, he immediately ordered three companies of Battle-Brothers to scavenge the ship for supplies and production machinery. Apothecaries worked in tandem with Techmarines while they searched for the highly specialized equipment that would let them repair the Med Bay and resume production of the drugs essential to a Space Marine's continued living. Three hundred men worked tirelessly to prepare themselves for whatever might come. And in the very first day, a happy discovery: An intact dreadnought suit, although without an occupant. A very ancient dreadnought, by the looks of it, and absent even from the Lorekeeper's records. Something to investigate later, he thought.

On the battle front, the Lorekeeper was what some would call less than honourable: The Battlebarge is 8 kilometres long, and nearly half that in width. Defending its wreckage with five hundred men in entrenched positions would be idiotic. So the Lorekeeper set up small forward bases, each one composed of two devastator marine squads armed with heavy, long-range bolters. They were placed atop buildings and elevations, able to spot the enemy from afar, and offer some resistance before it came too close. Not that the Lorekeeper had any llusions; the battle would be decided by the swords of his Chapter, and by the Emperor's Grace. He knew they would win. He was just making, as some say, doubly sure. Jump Assault Marines were sent on patrolling routes between these forward bases, to maintain what could be loosely called a perimeter.

As for exploration, the Lorekeeper faced a dilemma: The Chapter, by virtue of its origin, was composed only of hardened veterans of the Templar Crusades. Thus, they had no neophytes nor Tenth Company scouts. Usually, Assault Marines were used as forward troops because of their high mobility, but now they were essential for defense. So in another unorthodox move, the Lorekeeper sent out the Chapter's three remaining Land Raiders, each carrying two full squads of tactical marines, as scouting parties, if such a term can be used for a vehicle that carries weaponry capable of felling even Terminators. They were ordered to scout roughly 25km in each cardinal direction, and report back immediatelly if engaged in hostile fire. The Lorekeeper made it clear he did not want the scouting parties engaged in direct confrontation. Sic vis bellum para bellum, he said.

After all preparations were done, the Lorekeeper sat amidst the wreckage and rested. Then something struck him: They had found no sign of the tech priest that had essentially saved half the chapter. He had no knowledge of his daemonic possession, so he regarded him as something of a hero, although still a lesser man than a Space Marine. He gathered a squad of tactical marines and went out to search for him personally inside the wreckage.

This is a branching decision, leading to several others on the same path, though all will happen simultaneously.

• Take control of the fighting companies? Maybe we'll finally get to grips with the Traitor Legions and deliver them back to their False Gods! For the Emperor! We'll shower them with steel!

• Do you take control of the exploration party? Three land raiders and six squads of tactical marines, it is practically an invasion force! Blasted Helfrich told us not to engage, but that doesn't mean we can't "defend" ourselves should we need to! And besides, what in Emperor's Name is going on? Where is everyone? Gear up and find out!

• Do you take control of Lorekeeper Helfrich and his squad of tactical marines in the pursuit of the missing techpriest? Who knows what awaits in the dark corners of the ship?

Bonus update: SPACE MARINES CHAPTER: EXTERMINATING ANGELS

CODEX ASTARTES: EXTERMINATING ANGELS 

FOUNDING: ROGUE, SPLIT OF THE BLACK TEMPLARS DURING GEONIDE CRUSADE 

CURRENT CHAPTER MASTER: UNKNOWN 

ORGANIZATION: CODEX ASTARTES STANDARDS - 10 COMPANIES - 1000 MEN 

BATTLE DOCTRINE: CLOSE-QUARTERS-COMBAT – ORBITAL BOMBARDMENT 

INSIGNIA: THE IMPERIAL EAGLE 

WAR CRY:  IMPERATOR VULT! 

FORTRESS-MONASTERY: THE BATTLEBARGE “WRATHBORN” 

EXTERMINATUS ORDERED: UNKNOWN 

CURRENT STATUS: 

UNRECOGNIZED BY THE HIGH LORDS OF TERRA 

+++ DECLARED EXCOMMUNICATE TRAITORIS BY THE ORDO HERETICUS +++ 

+++ DECLARED EXCOMMUNICATE TRAITORIS BY THE ORDO MALLEUS +++ 

+++ DECLARED EXCOMMUNICATE TRAITORIS BY THE ORDO XENOS +++ 

WANTED FOR WAR CRIMES BY THE ADEPTUS ARBITES 

WANTED FOR WAR CRIMES BY THE IMPERIAL GUARD AND PLANETARY DEFENSE FORCE OF FOLLOWING PLANETS +++ RECORDS DELETED – PLANETS NO LONGER EXIST +++ 


THREAT RATING: HERETICUS TERMINUS

BACKGROUND: After splitting from the Black Templar chapter for disagreements over the handling of the Geonide Crusade (the Exterminating Angels called them “too merciful”), the chapter comandeered the battlebarge Wrathborn and went on a crusade of its own. believing the Inquisition corrupt and inefficient to purge heresy, they took it upon themselves to do it. With extreme prejudice.

While in the calixis sector looking for a chaos cult connected with the Tyrant Star, they encountered a planet on the malfian sub-sector overrun by heretical cultists and tech-heretics. further investigation revealed that this situation was engendered by a cabal of istvaanian inquisitors seeking to “strenghten the imperium” by creating conflict within it. To the chapter, the willful creation of heresy was anathema. An Exterminatus was ordered, and the planet was purged of all life, along with the inquisitors and their retinues. Shortly after, all three Ordos emitted an Excommunicate Traitoris notice against the Chapter.

When the Thirteenth Black Crusade began, the Chapter immediately set course to Cadia, hoping to break the Despoiler's hold on the surface of the planet.

The Exterminating Angels' Armour and Colors:

DEPTHS OF DEPRAVITY

Imperial thought of the day: A mind without purpose will wander in dark places.

Lorekeeper Helfrich ordered the Tac Squad to carry only flamers and powerfists. He wasn't willing to turn what was left of the battlebarge into even more wreckage. He himself carried his customary Inferno Pistol and Blessed Sword, though he was confident he would be cautious with their use. This was his first mistake.

His second mistake was to underestimate the Ruinous Powers. A more experienced and zealous Battle-Brother like the Reclusiarch would have gone in heavy if they were to search a ship so recently taken by the Warp. He would not trust a small, tactical force: He knew that sometimes you must destroy much to save even more. The Lorekeeper naturally did not share this view. He wanted a quick in-and-out operation, avoiding any possible damage to the ship's interiors. He scarcely believed there was any danger; after all, he was a man of reason: They had arrived at Cadia, a battleground, and the salvaging operation had not yet encountered anything out of the ordinary. But the imminent danger of a Chaos attack from the outside was much more real in his mind.

Reason is no substitute for faith. The tactical squad headed for the recently destroyed foredecks, the last known location of the techpriest. They had already been searched by the Chapter on arrival, resulting in the discovery of the infiltrated Psyker squad. But the Lorekeeper was nothing if not thorough. He scanned the foredecks from top to bottom, searching every crevice for signs of residual warp manifestations or the Mechanicus. He found neither, though he did find some rather...unusual blemishes on the walls. The metal had darkened here and there with a sickly green color, and seemed to have acquired an oily texture. The lorekeeper took samples, and carried on.

The squad headed for mid-decks, which was where their mission should end. The rear half of the ship, still mostly intact, was being worked on by the three companies in the salvaging operation, so the Lorekeeper restricted himself to those parts of the ship that were utterly ruined and unsalveageable, the parts most affected when the Gellar field collapsed, and the parts most likely to hold an infestation. The Lorekeeper could scarcely believe the scale of it when he found it: The Machinarius Sanctum, the housing of the ship's entire propulsion and refuelling system, had become a living abomination.

Tentacles of steel coiled around promethium furnaces, giving off sparks of purplish energy that earthed themselves on the floor. Conveyor belts twisted and turned in unnatural shapes, blurring the eye as they entwined around one another and seemed to end where they begun, much like an optical illusion. The entire room was covered in the sickly green color that the squad had found previously, and every part of the thing glistened. At the center of a twitching mass of cables and plasteel tendrils lay a mound of servitors, all apparently fused together, an unholy mass of flesh and metal that gave off poisonous fumes from what could be perhaps called its mouths. At the very top of it, lay the techpriest, or what he had once been. His bulk had increased immensely; He apparently added bits and pieces of power armor to his body, and what little flesh could be seen seemed covered in sores and eyes with vertical slits.

The lorekeeper realized immediately the mistake he had made. By being overtly cautious, he could not hope to harm this thing in any way whatsoever. And yet it had already noticed their presence, even now its glistening plasteel tentacles were heading towards them. What could he do, here, in the bowels of the ship? And what would the techpriest do to the rest of the ship, now that it knew the Battle-Brothers were still alive and inside it? The comm-beads were silent. There was no help coming.

• Perform a fighting retreat? Perhaps you can slow the thing down somehow, attract its attention, hope it does not concentrate on the rest of the ship. Hold off the attack as much as possible, but return slowly and surely to the outside, and immediately order a Devastator Attack Squad to destroy this abomination? Assuming, that is, you can get out alive.

• Do you flee for your life as quick as you can? To waste any time here, any time at all, is foolish! As soon as you reach the surface, you can send as many attack squads as you like, and rid the battlebarge of this daemon! And if it extends its influence over the ship even further, then the glory shall be even greater for destroying it!

• Do you attack the creature and try to find a way to destroy it? If you can get close enough to the Promethium furnaces, you might be able to overheat them with the squad's flamers enough to cause a blast. You would die, and even more of the ship would be lost, but the creature would be sent back to the warp in the fires of purgation.

• Do you try to reason with the creature? Although it is obviously tainted with Chaos, tech-priests are naturally more resilient to its lure, and perhaps there is some of the Adeptus mind still left inside. You are, after all, the Chapter's voice in all maters arcane. Perhaps there is a way to stall it, until you can figure what is the best course of action?

HE WHO FIGHTS MONSTERS

Imperial thought for the day: Analysis is the bane of conviction.

“Good evening, Enginseer Malachi.”

The creature looks at you indifferently, its animated tentacles still heading towards your squad.

“No doubt you are aware of who I am. And we seem to have a situation here, have we not? I would very much like to have the Wrathborn cleansed from the taint you have cast upon it. And you, I assume, would like to extend it further.”

The techpriest remains silent.

“But, you see, here is what will happen if you do that: Three companies of Adeptus Astartes, the finest warriors in the Galaxy, will destroy you utterly. I’m sure right now there’s nothing you’d like better than to kill a few of us and be killed in turn, returning to the warp to bask in its unholy pleasures.”

The techpriest emits a hollow laugh, and one of its bladed tentacles strikes against the Lorekeeper, who catches it in his powered glove and crushes it effortlessly.

“Now now, we are having a civilized conversation, Enginseer. Where was I? Oh yes. You see, that will not happen. You will not return to the warp. We will not kill you. Oh, no. Even if you destroy what’s left of the Wrathborn and kill many of our Battle-Brothers, we will not kill you.”

The plasteel tentacles stop slithering towards the squad and the techpriest emits what could pass as a perplexed grunt.

“Do you remember the manacles our Astropathic Chorus wore when they were still alive? I’m sure you do, you looked at them constantly. Those manacles are engraved with holy sigils etched with the God-Emperor’s tears, the tears he cried when he killed his favoured son, whom you now favor. And these manacles have a very particular function: They cause pain to all that which is linked to the warp. You heard the astropaths’ whimpering, did you not?”

The mass of fused servitors beneath the techpriest starts to rumble, while the techpriest himself remains immobile.

“I’m sure you did, Enginseer. Now, do you have any idea what those manacles would do if they were clasped upon a creature tainted by the warp? They would inflict a pain so great it would sear your very soul, or whatever is left of it. And they could never be removed, for they are daemon’s shackles, blessed by the God-Emperor Himself. Now, here is what will happen to you should you try to disrupt any more of this ship’s systems: We shall drag you out of this monstrosity you have…built, and we shall imprison you in those manacles. And after that, we shall administer rejuvenat drugs to you, so that you may live a long time, perhaps even forever. And then we shall put you inside the Hexagrammatic Chamber, where you will be unable to hear Chaos’ soothing music. You shall live a life of endless torment, forever alone and unheard by your new masters. And I swear this to you: Until every last one of us is dead – And that is not something you can accomplish, ah-ha – You will remain like this. There will be no respite. For you, Enginseer Malachi, there will be only agony.”

The techpriest slowly started moving, waving its many mechanical appendices as if trying to control all the mechanical devices in the room at the same time. All the tentacles and servitor implants stirred. Most of them had blades, crude, but imbued with the power of the Warp.

“I have always taken you for a man of reason, Enginseer. A man – Ah-ha - after my own heart. You can see now that even if you attack us, and kill myself and my squad, and take control of the rest of the ship, that still will bring you no victory. In the end, I will see you chained, even if I must rise from the dead to do it. And I pray you will live forever bathed in the Emperor’s Light.”

The techpriest groaned and spoke, his voice hollow and metallic, with a shrill buzzing echo:

“What would you have me do?”

“I am a reasonable man, Malachi. Release the ship from your influence. Cast out the possessed machine spirit. You are the only one who can. If you do this, perhaps there is still hope for you. Perhaps the Omnissiah’s Grace will shine upon you, and you may yet be saved.”

The biomechanical abomination crumbled in an instant. The servitors melted and oozed through the floors, now just a puddle of bodily fluids and metal. The crimson mist that had filled the room lifted. The machines seemed inert once again. The techpriest, his appearance still warped, climbed down from his macabre altar.

“Mercy?” He asked.

Lorekeeper Helfrich took off his head with one blow of his sword, and threw the body into one of the furnaces.

“Suffer not the mutant.” The Lorekeeper replied.

• Resume patrolling the ship’s dark holds? You now have definite proof that Chaos manifested in the ship. What if it is still here? Although you have been tasked with the command of the chapter, you cannot trust the Battle-Brothers with such a delicate task! You yourself are the only one who holds enough knowledge to deal with these abominations without compromising the entire Battlebarge. This task is vital, the Chapter will understand if you are delayed.

• Do you exit the ship and resume your duty as Acting Commander? You have vanquished the abomination, and if there are any more, you can delegate the search to one of the Brother-Captains. You have lost track of time while you were here, but it has been at least a day. Who knows what could have happened outside without your guidance? Time is of the essence, you are the spearhead of Cadia’s reconquest. You have been given command of the Chapter, so command!

NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT

Imperial thought for the day: No man died in the Emperor's service that died in vain.

Helfrich tapped the comm-bead once more, hoping to get anything out of it that wasn't screeching static. And once more, he had no luck. They were now below the Machinarius Sanctum, and close to the Warp Core itself. A long rotating corridor with a small catwalk crossing it was all that separated the ship from its most dangerous component. The rotating corridor was long and cylindrical, its surfaces composed of overlapping plates of pure magnetic iron engraved with a plethora of arcane Mechanicus symbols. The techpriests claimed this was to "soothe" the machine spirit, but they knew no more than that. This technology was ancient, far predating the Emperor's Golden Rule over mankind. The understanding of its workings had been lost long ago.

Every other part of the ship had been searched. This was the last of it. The Lorekeeper had never thought of searching here because this place should not exist: The techpriest had overloaded the warp core. There should be a smouldering crater. Yet it stood unharmed. The entire squad offered a prayer to the Emperor asking for protection and guidance, and stepped inside the Warp Core chamber, a spherical room with a diameter of about 25 meters.

And the Lorekeeper was mildly suprised that there was nothing there. The warp core had indeed vanished, although apparently without any damage to the surround area. The room was entirely normal, not a sign of infestation, not even the sulphurous stench that was characteristic of a daemonic incursion. Helfrich was baffled; the Warp Core was a massive sphere of hyperdense matter suspended in the air by ancient tech-magicks. It weighed more than the entire ship. Where in the Warp was it?

"Where in the Warp indeed, Lore Keeper" Answered a voice from thin air, reading the question out of the Astartes' mind.

"That is something we too would very much like to know. But alas, I suspsect I cannot help you there. Allow me to introduce myself."

There was no show of lightning, no crackle of ominous thunder. The creature was just there, towering over the squad. It was vaguely humanoid, though its head and legs were both avian in nature. Multicolored wings spread from its back, glittering like the inside of Holy Terra's gem-encrusted cathedrals, and it wore gaudy robes with gold stitchings and markings. Its skin was...changing. Sometimes it appeared to be composed of scales, and in the blink of an eye, of feathers.

"I am a Daemon of wealth and taste."

The Lorekeeper went to his knees with the psychic blow, and so did the rest of the squad. This was no chaos abomination contrived out of rivets and flesh. They were facing a Lord of Change, the Changer of Ways' Greater Daemon. They were lost.

"It seems I have become a rather unwilling passenger of your ship, Astartes. But whom am I to question Lord Tzeentch's designs? Now, I shall take your souls. This is nothing personal."

The squad immediately opened fired, but flamers had no effect on the Daemon's metamorphic skin. The Lorekeeper's Inferno rounds did pierce it, but seemed to annoy it more than anything else. A mind blast sent Brother Helfrich reeling into unconsciousness, and though the rest of his squad put up a valiant defense, they were no match for a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch. Blasts of Chaosfire erupted from the tips of its clawed hands, reducing the Battle-Brothers to ash.

The Lorekeeper regained consciousness and, casting aside his Inferno Pistol, took his Blessed Powersword firmly in both hands. There would come a time, he remembered the High Marshall saying long ago, where you would face damnation or death. And the High Marshall had said, "It is better to die for the Emperor than to live for yourself.". Battlebrother Helfrich stood up, the joints of his Terminator armour creaking as he did so.

"Your false emperor is dead, and the Imperium along with him. That is why your gellar field collapsed, that is why I was able to manifest on your ship. The golden throne is vacant. But you thirst for knowledge. Why die for something that no longer exists? Lord Tzeentch could offer you so much more. Will you take His blessings?"

• Fight to the last breath? Your armor is contempt. Your shield is disgust. Your sword is hatred. Faith is the blade of war! You fear no evil, for you are fear incarnate. In the emperor's name, this daemon will not survive!

• Do you accept the blessing of Tzeentch and become a Chaos Sorcerer? The false emperor is dead, and now you have the chance to serve a Higher Power! Wield the fires of creation; walk like a god among mere mortals. Knowledge is power!

TOMBSTONE

Imperial thought for the day: Only in death does duty end.

Reclusiarch Jeremiah looked on as Assault Squad Alpha brought back Helfrich's shattered body, his sword scabbard empty. The High Chaplain wondered, not for the first time, why did the Lorekeeper insisted so much on throwing himself at harm's way. Jeremiah soon banished these thoughts from his mind because he was a stern man who did not dwell in trivialities. The Lorekeeper's tomb was already prepared for him: The Ancient Dreadnought they had found in the ship had been opened and was awaiting its new occupant, its new soul.

The assembled brother-captains carried the lorekeepers barely living body in reverential awe; he had banished a Lord of Change with only a sword and his faith, and had survived. Survived, yes. But not lived. He was now doomed to forever serve the Emperor inside a tomb of steel. Still, the Reclusiarch pondered, there were worse fates.

Three full days had passed since Helfrich had commenced his search, and things were no different. The scouting teams reported back continuously, even changing their routes and eventually doing a full 50 kilometer sweep of the whole area, in every direction. Their reports were all similar: They had found nothing but ruined buildings and shell casings. There were no bodies, dead or alive, anywhere in a 50 kilometre circle around the Battlebarge. An enterpreneuring Assault Team, after finishing their daily patrol between the forward bases, made a quick jump to what they believed was the nearest city, some 75 kilometers away from the Battlebarge. The lorekeeper would be livid at this, this was a clear violation of his orders. But he was not there to stop them.

And yet, nothing came out of it. The city was deserted as well. The Reclusiarch ordered the disobedient squad to search for the missing Lorekeeper, adding that if they should find their deaths in the bowels of the ship, they were well deservant of it, for discipline was paramount. These rebellious Assault Marines were the ones who brought Helfrich's body back.

In the battle front...Well, it could no longer be called a battle front. The forward bases reported no activity, no movement, nothing. Where there should be the bulk of the Despoiler's forces, some 5000 thousand Traitor Marines along with countless Legions of the Damned, there was only the occasional Cadian scarab. And this was another thing the forward bases noticed, for lack of anything better to do: Even animal life seemed to have vanished. It was as if someone had ordered an Exterminatus on the planet, and left. It made no sense. Holding Cadia was the key to invading the whole Segmentum Obscurus, and from there to Holy Terra.

The skies were also clear. There was no sign of the Gothic Fleet, and the techmarines could not pick up any electronic transmissions. Throughout the entire planet, it seemed, all was silent. Except for the Pylons.

The Cadian Pylons were ancient monolithical structures, extending one kilometre to the sky and another down inside the earth, with half a kilometre width. They were covered in cyclopean engravings, their purpose and origins unknown, and filled with many small openings and passageways from whom nobody who ventured inside returned. Countless servitors had been lost this way, trying to map the internal structure of the Pylons.

On the day of the Lorekeeper's return, the Pylons lit up. Their markings shone a bright, eerie green, and from their tips actinic columns of green light erupted. The Reclusiarch watched all this impassively. He was at a loss. Shortly before being interred in the Dreadnought, the Lorekeeper had whispered to him, told him that the Emperor was dead. He said the creature had told him this, but he did not believe the creature until he had slain it. Then, he said, he could see into its very soul and divine the truth of its words. The Emperor was dead, the Lorekeeper kept repeating, in a sedated tone. He seemed to be crying softly. The Reclusiarch did not know what to make of this, either. An encounter with a Lord of Change is certainly enough to shatter a lesser man's mind, but a Space Marine...

Jeremiah shrugged. Pylons or no Pylons, Emperor or no Emperor, there were things to be done. The salvaging team had completed its operation and presented its report. There were some choices that needed to be made. The medbay had been repaired, but the armory was truly lost. Perhaps only a tenth of the ammunition stock survived, and most of the weapons were ruined. The Chapter would need a Forgeworld or at least a techpriest team with access to engineering machinery to re-stock their armory.

• Establish a permanent base in Cadia? There is enough material to build a Fortress-Monastery if you disassemble the entire battlebarge. It will take time, but it will mean your position will be much more secure.

• Do you establish a temporary base, building only the necessary structures, and let the rest of the battlebarge to lie where it already is? This would be quicker, but more vulnerable.

• Do you forsake the idea of establishing any base at all and instead deploy the troops and order them to march? Surely there are places in Cadia with a far better infrastructure than a ruined battlebarge, it is a fortress planet after all. You would use the scavenged materials to build as many vehicles as necessary to carry the troops, along with a mobile medbay. What exactly would happen should you choose this is uncertain.

Bonus fluff: Brother-Commander's Journal, 998.M41

I feel fully justified, now more than ever, in my decision of leaving the Black Templars. During the Geonide Crusade, as a Sword-Brother, I was ordered to land on the planet to retrieve what the Ordo Hereticus termed "Valuable Personnel and Materiel" before commiting Exterminatus. This decision was accepted by the Chapter despite clear evidence that the planet had been irrevocably tainted with Chaos, and nothing could possibly come out of it pure. I carried out my orders to the letter, only to later discover that the things I was sent to recover were in fact heretical research documents and members of the Machine Cult closely aligned with what had once been called the Logician Heresy. This, to me, was unnaceptable. But there was little I could do: A sworn brother of the Astartes is only relieved of duty in death. I took my findings to the High Marshall, who dismissed them, saying that it was not our place to question the inner workings of the Holy Ordos. He said we had purged heresy, and that was enough.

I do not believe that was enough. For a long time I had been discontent with the Black Templars' methods: Though we battled Chaos at every step, we achieved little headway. New heresies sprung daily, and as we took out one of its heads, three more took its place. The Holy Ordos, meanwhile, did nothing. They say they have eyes everywhere, and that its reach extends even beyond the Imperium. I could not possibly believe that: To me the only one who is Omniscient is the God-Emperor himself, and these posturing bureaucrats deigned to take His place as protectors of Mankind? Blasphemy! And what I later uncovered confirmed my belief. The Geonide Incident (as it is now called, if it is called at all, for the Inquisition is a tool of silence) was in fact engineered by a rogue conclave of Inquisitors called the Xanthites. To them, the best way to deal with Chaos is to use it. They employ daemonhosts and other abominations in furtherance of their own heretical beliefs. I can scarcely believe, even now, that at the very heart of the Imperium lay the biggest Chaos Cult of all, the Ordos itself.

This was not something I would stand for. My sworn duty was to the Emperor and none other. If my Battlebrothers were being led astray, then the fault lied in them, for listening to blasphemy and calling it divine will. I could not call them brothers. The only ones I could trust were the Fighting Companies given to me to lead as Castellan after the Geonide Crusade. I had shared my views with them, and they agreed in full. The Chaplain, Jeremiah, was especially fiery in his zeal. He was the one that suggested we commandeer a battlebarge and strike at the Ordos, revealing their rottenness. But his zeal was tempered by the First Company's Brother-Captain, Sword-Brother Helfrich. He agreed with the plan of commandeering a battlebarge, but said that to strike so openly and so soon after a clear act of mutiny would bring down the entire wrath of the Imperium upon us, and would make enemies of those we could call friends, for there were still many good men in the Imperium. He suggested we instead took a partial approach: To form our own chapter, using the Codex Astartes Standards, which the Black Templars did not adhere to. This, he said, would please most of the other Astartes, and perhaps even the Inquisition. They would be none the wiser while we gathered information against them, and prepared for the final blow.

I was not fond of this politicking, but Helfrich had a point. To make too radical a break would kill our movement at its start. So we did as Helfrich suggested. The Black Templars consider us traitors and deserters, and have sworn a vow to hunt us down to the last man. It is fortunate, perhaps, that they are engaged elsewhere, fighting the true enemies of man, even if at the behest of masters who are not much better.

And now we head towards the Malfian Sub-Sector, where we believe a Chaos Cult deeply linked with the Inquisition is located. Perhaps this will uncover all the evidence we need to lay waste to these corrupt snakes once and for all. I can only pray for guidance through the Emperor's Light. I do this only for Him, and to protect the Golden Throne in Holy Terra.

IMPERIAL MARCH

Imperial thought for the day: The burden of failure is the most terrible punishment of all

When the Reclusiarch ordered a general mobilization, most of the chapter was perplexed. What had they spent doing in the last three days if not foraging for supplies so that they could survive where they were? If they were going to move anyway, why even bother searching the ship for anything? It was well known that Cadia had hundreds of Kasrs lying everywhere, most of them probably stocked to the brim with weapons and ammo. If they were going on the march, why didn't they concentrate their efforts on exploration in the first place?

The Reclusiarch heard the whispering, but could do little about it. To publicly disavow the policy of his predecessor would be worse than demoralizing: it would be dishounorable. He shared the same doubts. Nevertheless, he marched, and with him, did the chapter. Their morale was not very high, nor was their disposition. Rumours of the Lorekeeper's last words spread throughout the chapter and soon the situation would have to be quelled. Soon, thought the Reclusiarch, but not now. Now we march.

When he saw what they were marching with, however, he resisted an impulse to curse loudly and kick the nearest techmarine. The...thing that they had built, the transport coupled with a medbay and a small armory, looked orcish in design. It was a gruesome thing to behold, metal jutting out at all angles, the walls misshapen, the tracks apparently very brittle. The techmarines said they did the best they could, and the Reclusiarch believed them. They were Battlebrothers whose duty was minor repairs to vehicles and armor during the heat of combat, not bloody transport enginseering. But still, the thing looked...ominous, to say the least. First Techmarine Gaius had hung his head in despair when he had seen the end result of their efforts. He had tried to reassure the Reclusiarch the vehicle would hold, but he seemed less convinced of that himself.

Less stern chapters would laugh about it. The Exterminating Angels set their jaws in grim determination and boarded what the youngest battlebrothers were calling the Land Hulk. The three remaining Land Raider Crusaders, things of beauty if not grace, would escort the thing with two squads of Devastator Marines inside, one vehicle at its back and one at each side. The front of the Land Hulk had been equipped with twin-linked storm bolters and what looked suspiciously similar to an Imperator's Titan Hellstorm Cannon, but was in fact one of the exhaust vents of the Battlebarge. Still, plasma is plasma, said the techmarines. The Reclusiarch sighed. The vehicle held one company of Battlebrothers, including all of the techmarines and apothecaries, as well as the Lorekeeper's still inactive dreadnought and all of the supplies they could scavenge from the ship. The other four companies would march alongside it.

Before leaving, the Reclusiarch gave the order to the techmarines for the remaining cyclonic torpedos onboard the ship to go live. In about 12 hours, the entire 50 kilometer perimeter that had been so thoroughly scouted would be reduced to molten glass, along with the battlebarge and hopefully the damned Pylon they had crashed into. The Reclusiarch was not taking any chances. If Chaos was still inside the ship, it would be no more. If it was outside and chanced to find the ship, well, he'd make sure they wouldn't be able to use it.

Reclusiarch Jeremiah sat atop the Land Hulk, surrounded by Assault Squad Alpha, and asked them were they should be heading, since he himself had no idea. First Techmarine Gaius surveyed the land ahead, his hands on his chin, apparently thinking deeply about something. They were in a vast open tundra, one of Cadia's scenery idiosyncrasies: Half of the land mass was frozen tundra and dense pine trees, the other half fortified urban areas.

• Head towards the already scouted Kasrs 75 kilometers to the north-east? The Assault Squad reported it deserted, but did no more exploring than that. Weapons, armor, fuel and supplies could still be there.

• Do choose a direction randomly? It's good a decision as any other. You don't have any maps. Let the Emperor's Light guide you.

• Do you head to the nearest Pylon? They seem to be inert once again, and perhaps there are some near the urban areas? Besides, you could always try exploring one, one of them had withstood a battlebarge crashing at them in full speed, it seems very safe to assume that it could withstand far more than that, should battle ever come to you.

ENEMY AT THE GATES

Imperial thought for the day: He who fights with me shall be my brother.

"We will proceed to the Kasr encountered by Assault Squad Alpha. Give the coordinates to Gaius."

Reclusiarch Jeremiah sat down on his makeshift chair atop the Land Hulk and watched as Techmarine Gaius shouted a string of instructions to the pilots below. The thing started rumbling and moving at an incredibly slow speed, every part of it creaking and fuming, and the Reclusiarch felt like a fool. The three Land Raider Crusaders kept pace with them, occasionally shouting encouraging little phrases and prayers for the Emperor, while the four marching companies remained silent and walked on.

After about three hours of this pantomime, the High Chaplain climbed down the thing and started marching ahead of it, along with the four companies. This was received by a chorus of cheers from the Astartes, and a frown from Techmarine Gaius, who felt was being slighted. Regardless, Jeremiah took the front and continued on to the Kasr. They reached the gates by sunset, and things were certainly not as the Assault Squad had reported.

The structure was roughly a pile of rectangular blocks, all made of some sort of amalgam between plasteel and rock. Its base was wider than its tip, giving the impression of a very roughly hewn pyramid. It must have been three kilometers wide on the front, and the gate at the center of it spanned almost half that length. That was a peculiar trait of architecture, but the Reclusiarch reasoned it allowed for the quick deployment of a large file of vehicles side-by-side, and vehicles were one of the Imperial's Guards favourite weapons. This thing would not withstand a siege by heavy weaponry in any case, it looked more like a tribal villa than a proper fortress.

But this impression was quickly dispelled by the stunning array of weaponry displayed on the top of the walls. Multimeltas, Heavy Bolters, Quadruple Longlas Cannons, and the Reclusiarch was sure he could see something that looked very much like a Mega Battle Cannon mounted alongside a coaxial Autocannon, a feature of the fabled Baneblade Super Heavy Tank. This did not worry him, because he had faith. But it made him thoughtful.

A solitary figure was mounted atop the front gate, smoking a cigar with a a longlas strapped across his back. He seemed to be wearing the uniform of the Cadian Shock Troopers, but it was difficult to tell at this distance. After a while, he shouted down:

"Ahoy there. We was gonna fire all the guns, because we's thought you was all orks, what with the big bloody spiked thing you boys lugging are around. But I's can see you ain't orks now, and you sure ain't Chaos boys. So what are yer? I knows a space marine when I see one, and you don't look like it. No insignias, no badges, no standards, and that big bloody orc tank."

"Open the gates, in the Emperor's name!" Shouted the Reclusiarch, nonplussed by the man's speech mannerisms.

"Now, why would I do a thing like that? The way I see it, you must be some kind of renegade chapter or something. Now, I know we Troopers and you Spacers should be pals, but you hear stories, Kronus comes to mind - Blood Ravens my bum, more like Bloody Vultures - wouldn't be the first time you lot turned against us in the Emperor's name, as you say. So, i'm reckoning what you wants is to loot this here Kasr and carry on to whatever it was you were going, I'll be damned if I know. And I can't let that happen, see."

"We are the Exterminating Angels Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes, we have no intention of firing against friendly troops or looting anything. Our Battlebarge has crash-landed here and we are seeking shelter and information." The Reclusiarch responded, mindful that he should be somewhat polite. But his temper was already rising.

"You crashed a battlebarge? Now, that's a thing I'd like to see. How d'you do that, then? Gave your Navigator a poke in its third eye? Anyhow, you boys are late to the fightin'. The Despoiler's troops upped and legged it when the Pylons fired. So what are you seeking shelter against, eh?"

"OPEN THESE GATES OR WE WILL OPEN FIRE, YOU RAMBLING IDIOT!"

"Well, you could do that, you could, but see here, your little metal Squiggoth is standing atop a load of meltabombs we prepared for this very occasion. And all atop these walls the finest of the 8th Cadian Shock Troopers Regiment are aiming their guns at your general direction. Now, me, I don't reckon we could take on an Astartes fighting company, pride's for them who wear badges of office and whatnot. But I'm damn sure I can give you a roughing, and you say you're looking for shelter, so I ain't too sure you would risk that. It seems we are at an impasse."

"So it seems" Nodded Jeremiah, in a graveyard tone. He turned and looked at Assault Squad Alpha, that had reported the town deserted. "You are now the First Fighting Company's Forlorn Hope." He barked, in a voice seething with righteous fury. He turned again to face the enemy at the gates, and considered his options.

• Open fire? These man may be Cadian Shock Troopers but they are lunatics and idiots, and they seek to impede us in our way. No doubt they are corrupted by the Ruinous Powers and are stalling us while a Chaos Strike Force heads towards us this very moment! If we suffer losses, so be it. The surviving shall share even more glory. In the Emperor's name, let none survive!

• Do you order a retreat? These men are right to be suspicious. From all you've seen so far, whatever happened to this planet...Something is not right. And it is true you wear no bades or insignias, because in your Chapter this is considered needlessly vain. You cannot afford to lose your transport or any more troops. Live to fight another day, and march on.

• Do you try to reason with the man at the gates? He seems simple-minded if sharp, and can perhaps be convinced with the right tone. Sometimes a corkscrew is more efficent than a hammer. And Lorekeeper Helfrich seems to be awake now, although he is still...In shock. You could, of course, try to send one of the Brother-Captains or even Techmarine Gaius to reason with this man. (Helfrich was sent)

• Do you order a feigned retreat and set yourself in strategic positions, waiting for nightfall to strike a multilateral sneak attack? It would be less risky than a frontal siege, and you could still save your transport. It is not likely these men would be missed or deservant of an honourable death, anyway, since they clearly can't recognize the superiority of the Adeptus Astartes. Of course, if these men are indeed just the spearhead of a Chaos ambush, you risk spreading yourself too thin and falling into their trap.

Please note that if you choose option C, also choose whom you want to try and reason with the soldier. Options include the reclusiarch (again), one of the brother-captains, Helfrich, techmarine Gaius, and Assault Squad Alpha Leader Hauser.

EXTREME MEASURES

Imperial thought for the day: Better crippled in body than corrupt in mind.

“I command you once again: In the Emperor’s name, open these gates!” Shouted the Reclusiarch once more. He was not a very imaginative man.

“The emperor is dead.” Boomed a low, emotionless voice. “Open these gates, or you’ll meet him soon.” Said the dreadnought, walking out from the Land Hulk. The lack of capitalization in His holy name was almost audible; whatever zeal the lorekeeper had possessed in life was gone.

“What? What?” Asked the man at the gates, perplexed by this sudden apparition.

“Do you find it hard to understand me? Are you deaf?” The dreadnought started walking towards the gates, a full six metres tall, covered in ornate engravings of skulls and imperial eagles and sigils of purity and faith and scribbled records of long-forgotten battles, one arm composed of twin-linked multimeltas and the other of a massive Powerfist with an underslung Stormbolter.

“Am I not speaking loud enough? You see this man standing beside me? He is the most faithful Astartes in the entire galaxy. His name is Heiliges Jeremiah, or so he told me. He was Reclusiarch of the Chapter during my life, a holy man dedicated to the Emperor’s service. Now he is but a man.”

The Reclusiarch looked at the Dreadnought in disbelief; this was utmost heresy!

“But I am no man. I care not for how many of you die, or how many of my former brothers die, should I need to breach these gates. I say former brothers, you see, because we were all united as siblings under our father, the emperor. But he is no more, and as siblings are wont to do without a guiding hand, they fight. Like you propose to fight us, Colour Sargeant.”

The Cadian Sargeant was bewildered, he had no idea what was going on now. Just a few moments before he was trying to stop a bunch of rogue astartes from taking away their scant few supplies, and now he was dealing with a heretical dreadnought! He responded the only way he knew how:

“Emperor’s Bowels! What in the warp is going on?!”

“I am Acting Chapter Master Ignatius Helfrich of the Exterminating Angels Adeptus Astartes Chapter. I have slain countless enemies of the Imperium. I have been on seventeen crusades against chaos. I was once a Brother-Captain of the Black Templar’s first company, the Sword-Brethren. I crushed men’s skulls in my Terminator suit’s fists without pity or remose, for they were my enemies and I served the Emperor. In life, I served. In death, I serve no longer. I am assuming command of your fortress. Surrender.”

“Or what?”

“I do not believe I gave you an alternative.” Answered the Dreadnought, aiming his twin-linked Multimelta at the Cadian Sargeant.

“I-I…I shall fetch the Lord Castellan, shall I?” Said the Sargeant, melting away inside the Kasr.

The assembled Battle-Brothers trained their weapons on the Dreadnought; he was clearly possessed. Perhaps he had never slain the Lord of Change, he must surely have been corrupted to speak such blasphemy! And to think they gave him the honour of wearing a Venerable Dreadnought suit…

“You would turn against your Commander?” Boomed the dreadnought, his scanning sensor array warning him to all the guns pointed at his back.

“How can you say such blasphemous things, Helfrich! You are insane! The Emperor is not dead, he cannot be! We would all know it! Are you mad?! Possessed! There would no longer be an Imperium!” Cried Techmarine Gaius, since the Reclusiarch was apparently too shocked with such heresy to say anything.

“There no longer is.”

The large clock installed at the center of the Kasr, a relic of a more peaceful age, struck midnight with a sound like the tolling of some great bell, marking the end of the last day of the year. It was the dawn of the Forty Second Millenium.

You are Hauser, Sargeant of Assault Squad Alpha. It was you who found the Lorekeeper’s shattered body inside the ship, you who stared into the warp rift created by the Lord of Change’s demise, heard its imprecations, and you saw what the Lorekeeper had seen. You too know that the Emperor is dead and mankind is lost. But you have a choice.

• Support the Lorekeeper and speak up? Tell the Chapter what you saw. Tell them that you have the Black Box recording of Navigator Barenziah’s voice croaking that the Astronomican was no longer lit, found in possession of the daemon. This would demoralize the chapter entirely. But it is the truth. Do they not deserve it? You have fought long and hard. What comes next? Perhaps you must still fight. But to fight for a cause that is untrue is no different from what the Inquisition did with you and your Chapter, and what your entire Chapter abhorred so much as to split from the Black Templars and be declared Excommunicate Traitoris! If you remain silent now, then what you fought for will have been as dust.

• Do you stay silent and let the Chapter do what they will until the Lord Castellan arrives? To utterly destroy the Chapter’s hope of victory, of any victory forevermore, would be cruel and cowardly. Even if you alone know the truth, you can keep it to yourself. The Enemies of Man still exist. There is still a need to fight them, even without His Light. And perhaps the others can convince the Lorekeeper to see this, can turn him to reason. Perhaps later, in private, you can argue with him. All Battlebrothers know that there is a need for guidance. To throw it away would be disastrous!

• Do you speak up against the Lorekeeper? Lie! It is the only way to maintain the Chapter whole! They must never know the truth, never know that what they utterly believed in is no more. And the Lorekeeper must be made an example of, lest their faith falter! He must be utterly discredited if you hope to survive and bring your brothers to victory against the Ruinous Powers! And here, under the Eye of Terror’s unholy light, the Chapter needs its faith more than ever before!

THE RIGHT CHOICE

Imperial thought for the day: The Emperor asks only that you hate.

"The Lorekeeper speaks true! I saw it, when he banished the daemon! And I have a Vox Recording of Navigator Barenziah, he-"

The Inferno round made a silken sound as it exited Sargeant Hauser's skull. The body fell limply off the Land Hulk and at the Lorekeeper's feet.

"No." - Said Reclusiarch Jeremiah, sheating his Inferno Pistol - "I will not have you poison this chapter with any more of your lies, daemonspawn. Even if the Emperor had died, and may He live ten thousand years, the Lorekeeper I knew would never announce this at such a moment. We are the at the enemy's gates, and you would seek to demoralize us? To turn brother against brother? Here? In the hallowed ground of Cadia, that has withstood Thirteen black crusades and still stands firm as the the Imperium's bulwark against the Dark Gods? You are not Helfrich. The Helfrich knew that knowledge is power, and to hide it well. You are an abomination. And you shall die."

The Chaplain drew his Crozius Arcanum, and held it with both hands as Techmarine Gaius rushed to Hauser's aid. "Apothecaries! To me!" Cried Gaius. The chapter's apothecaries did not move. No brother drew breath as they looked upon the scene of the Reclusiarch and the Lorekeeper squaring off. "What have you done, Jeremiah?! Have you gone insane as well? He was a Battle-Brother, like you, like me!" The techmarine frantically tried to stem the bleeding, but the round, smouldering hole in Hauser's forehead was proof enough of death. Brother against brother, the Reclusiarch said...A Vox recording? Gaius started searching the fallen marine's armor.

"He had been corrupted by this heretic's words. He was impure. The Emperor lives, brothers! This is but a trick of the Changer of Ways, an attempt to sway us from the True Path! This creature is not Helfrich! It is a daemon! Attack him!"

The Dreadnought stood immobile and silent. It was impossible to tell at what he was looking, but his body seemed slightly angled towards the corpse of Sargeant Hauser. And then a croaking, buzzing sound emerged from the fallen Astartes. It sounded like screams, perhaps, and then a voice full of terror spoke "The Astronomican is dark..." A thud, and a loud metallic groan on the background. Another voice spoke, this one harsh and imperious "Why?" and a panicking, mechanical voice replied "Sir I...I don't know. The Gellar Field is failing! The navigational systems are short-circuiting. Perhaps we've hit a warp storm but there's nothing on the sensors...". The recording started again. "The astronomican is dark..."Croaked Navigator Barenziah with his last breath.

Techmarine Gaius stood up, the Vox recording in his armored fists. He looked at the dreadnought, and stepped away, his head hung low. The entire Chapter watched him walk away, the recording playing again and again, "The astronomican is dark...". Not a single Battlebrother drew breath.

"Lies. There was no sign of this in the battlebarge's bridge! It was planted there by the daemon! How did Hauser find this? Tell me that! It is all lies! The Emperor lives, and I am his sword! Can you not see the corruption this monster has brought upon us?! Look at yourselves! You are like little boys! You stand and do nothing as Chaos consumes your minds! I will not stand for this! I WILL NOT SEE THIS CHAPTER FALL TO THE RUINOUS POWERS!" The Reclusiarch stopped to draw breath, and continued in a low voice, with such complete devotion that it would be enough to send a thousand squads into battle. But not his.

"My armor is contempt. My shield is disgust. My sword is hatred. I fight for the Golden Throne in Holy Terra and the Father of all mankind. By my hand, you shall die."

The Reclusiarch charged at the dreadnought, his Crozius Arcanum meeting the Lorekeeper's powerfist in a shower of white sparks. And the looping Vox recording continued, held by Techmarine Gaius, who was at his knees with his head bent in despair.

"The astronomican is dark..."

• Stand by and do nothing? Let them kill each other. The God-Emperor will know his own, and the victor will be the bearer of truth.

• Do you engage in battle against this daemonspawn? What Jeremiah says is true! The true lorekeeper would have never sought to shatter your faith here, in this place, at this time! It is an abomination of Chaos seeking to undermine your faith and divide the chapter as it stands on the edge of oblivion!

• Do you engage in battle against the Reclusiarch? He has clearly gone insane with blind zealousness and is no longer capable of reason. The Vox Recording is proof! The Lorekeeper sought to tell you this before you engaged in any further acts of atrocity against your fellow men! If you do not fight for the emperor, you still fight for mankind!

DEATHLESS LEGIONS

Imperial thought for the day: All mortal life is folly that does not feed the spirit. The Lord Castellan stood atop the walls, watching the scene below. To him, the outcome mattered little. He could only watch in awe at the fighting prowess of the duelists; If he were a less compassionate man, he would have traded a hundred of his troops for a single Astartes. But Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed, Commander of the entire Imperial Guard in Cadian ground, was a decent and loyal man. He had no doubt now they were true Space Marines. But it seemed that they had business of their own to resolve.

The Chaplain whirled time and time again, always striking true with his Crozius. And time and time again, the Dreadnought shrugged off his blows. The Lorekeeper was too slow to connect a punch, though he had seared the Reclusiarch's right side with the Pyrum-Petrol mixture of his multimelta. This was not a battle to be recorded in tales, to be sung in songs: Man against machine, neither of them sure how to fell the other. It was more a theatre than anything else.

As Jeremiah ducked under yet another strike of the Lorekeeper's powerfist, he realized how futile it was to engage this creature in direct combat. He was a slow and stolid man, but a fine warrior still. It took time for him to form anything in his mind other than the furious zeal with which he had laid low countless Enemies of Man. He finally realized that now, this would not work.

The Reclusiarch backed away from the Lorekeeper, and struck a pose with his Crozius dug deep into the ground.

"I would not expect a daemonspawn to be so slow and inept. Perhaps you truly are the Lorekeeper, and has just gone mad? I wonder if you were ever sane, Ignatius. I remember well when the Brother-Commander -"

The Reclusiarch miscalculated badly. His attempt at a taunt was, to the lorekeeper, idle chatter. Another blast of the Multimelta hit him squarely in the face, although he was able to dodge the worst of it. His skull-shaped helmet had been lost to the flames. And finally the Reclusiarch threw away all caution, all tactics. He was a Battlebrother first and foremost, and to the warp with anything else. Hatred was the Emperor's gift to mankind. Jeremiah charged.

And died. Not by the lorekeeper's hand, because it was obvious to the watching battle-brothers that the Lorekeeper had been doing nothing more than dodging his blows and doing slight counter-attacks, perhaps expecting him to come to his senses. No, the blade that felled the Reclusiarch was the blade the entire Chapter feared, and with reason.

Brother-Captain Ezekiel Hex stood up, after offering a short prayer for the Reclusiarch's soul, and slung his strange scythe over his back. He looked at the Lorekeeper, and at the assembled battle-brothers, and said:

"I care not for your rivalries. Vanity does make fools of you both. If the Emperor is dead, as the recording suggests, then we shall fight on. If he is not, we shall fight on regardless. The Reclusiarch had become too blind to tell truth apart from fantasy; even if the Emperor himself had appeared before him, he would have not believed it."

Ezekiel gently rolled over the Reclusiarch's body, and he resumed his hollow monotone, looking straight at the Dreadnought:

"You may fight and die for whatever you believe in. But you will not drag the chapter into this. You will not. Had Gaius not replayed that recording again and again, the Chapter would have taken sides. And from half, it would become a quarter. Lorekeeper Helfrich, your duty is to serve and protect man from its enemies. The Reclusiarch was no longer fit to do it, and perhaps neither are you. So I ask you: Will you serve? If you will not, then I shall slay you myself, abomination or not, and I shall carry on the Chapter's mission."

The Battle-Brothers regarded with respectul silence the Adeptus Astartes nicknamed "Grim Reaper". And the Dreadnought slowly turned to face him.

"You have killed your Chaplain."

"I will execute all those who stand against mankind's salvation."

"Even if the Emperor can no longer protect it?"

"I will do my duty even if I have no master to decree it."

The Battlebrothers let out a long sigh. This was not what they expected. This was not honourable. This was treachery. But there seemed to be no other way.

"Brother-Captain Ezekiel is right. We are the last of the true. There is nothing left but us." Said Gaius, rising from his sorrow. The Chapter took a small measure of comfort from his words, though still shocked by the Grim Reaper's ruthlessness.

The dreadnought turned away from Ezekiel, and added, in a grieving tone:

"It seems that even in death I still serve." He walked towards the gates of the Kasr, and banged on the walls.

"Let us in. There is no enmity between us. We must stand united. The Emperor is dead."

"Yes. I know." Replied Lord Castellan Creed, opening the gates of the Kasr. "But they are not."

The Battlebrothers turned and saw the tide of green and gray coming towards them. Countless skeletal silhouettes lined the horizon, arches of green fire erupting from the tips of their Gauss-Flayers. Cadia was a Tombworld once more.

• Fortify inside the Kasr and coordinate your defense alongside the Imperial Shock troopers?

• Do you remain outside and organize an attack following your Chapter's battle doctrines?

• Give command of the troops to the Lorekeeper?

• Do you grant command of the troops to one of the brother-captains? Any of them would accept, apart from Brother-Captain Hex.

FIRST TO FIGHT THE XENOS

Imperial thought for the day: Success is commemorated. Failure merely remembered.

The battlebrothers were perplexed and furious; after conferring with the Lord Castellan, Brother-Captain Hawke had ordered them to stay put and assume firing positions inside the Kasr. Firing positions? Stay put? They were a Meelee Chapter, the Emperor's finest blades! What was this idiot thinking? After hearing of the Emperor's death and being commanded to hide like cowards inside a toy fortress that would not withstand the first artillery barrage, the Chapter's morale was at an all time low. Battlebrothers assumed their positions with bad grace, grim and silent. The Lorekeeper stood idly against one of the interior walls of the Kasr, immobile, as if dead.

The Land Hulk had been brought inside the Kasr, as well as all the Land Raider Crusaders. They were turned around and faced the enemy to provide artillery support, while the Lord Castellan rolled out his remaining Basilisks for the same function. The Cadian Shock Troopers inside the Kasr numbered at around 10 thousand men, and if stories were to be believed, the finest fighting force in the Imperial Guard, second only to the Astartes themselves in martial prowess.

Lord Castellan Creed naturally favoured a defensive position and a long-range approach: His troops were not equipped with Power Armor to withstand close combat with the Necrons, nor could they hope to break their lines with a charge. He was thus also puzzled by the Brother-Captain's bizarre decision of letting the Astartes reinforce the shock-troopers at the Kasr, instead of spearheading the assault after the first artillery salvo. After all he had seen of this Chapter, his impression grew worse and worse. But they were allies, in a fashion.

The Necron lines stood some 5 kilometres away from the Kasr, and were apparently composed only of standard troops. No monoliths, vehicles or any kind of artillery could be seen. Creed ordered the artillery positions to open fire, and sustain fire until the approaching forces were close enough to be encroached by their Leman Russ Tanks and their two Baneblades, already stationed outside the Kasr. He hoped this flanking maneuver would render the necrons a fair enough target for all the short-range infantry that was stationed at the Kasr, and hoped that at this time the Brother-Captain would come to his senses and damn well order a close assault.

But the Lord Castellan's careful preparations were disrupted by a combination of arrogance, low morale and misguided zeal. The Brother-Captain, growing more and more impatient as the necrons slowly approached, broke formation and ordered a jump assault. A full company followed him, demoralized as they were, they saw this as their chance at glory. The other four companies stood their ground; they had their orders, stupid as they may be.

Lord Castellan Creed was forced to interrupt the artillery barrage out of friendly fire danger, and shouted at the Brother-Captain to retreat.

"Get back here you damn fool! If you want to engage them at close range, let them reach our sights first! What are you doing?!"

The Brother-Captain and the Assault Marines that followed him paid Creed no mind. They were imbued with holy fervor, or perhaps holy fear. It was hard to distinguish at this point what was their motivation. Nevertheless, they made short work of the Necron Warriors. Although they were heavily damaged in the fight, their superior armor and close-combat capacity proved to be a winning combination. The initial strike after the landing was the key to victory: the necrons, though not subject to the effects of low morale, were immediately forced to break formation and engage hulking superhumans at short range. In this, they proved most inefficient.

Afterwards, Most battle-brothers were worn out, exhausted, their suits cracked and their weapons malfunctioning. But they hadn't suffered a single casualty. The Brother-Captain stood exultant over the bodies of his enemies, helding high over his head a standard with the Imperial Eagle. The Battlebrothers back at the Kasr cheered, but the Cadian Shock Troopers watched in horrified silence.

"PULL BLACK YOU BLOODY IDIOTS! YOU'VE NEVER FOUGHT NECRONS, YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE LIKE! JUMP BACK!"

The Brother-Captain could scarcely hear him over the sound of his squad's triumphant praises to this fine assault. He did not hear the slight buzzing that filled the field around them. He did not see the greenish light that covered the corpses of their 'dead' enemies. He did not notice the approach of a much taller, better proportioned-figure wearing a ragged cloak and a scepter tingling with green lightning. The Necron Warriors made no sound as they rose. They were the silent legions. All around the victorious assault squads, their slain enemies rose from the ground and charged. And this time, the fighting company did not have a prayer.

All the men at the Kasr watched in horror as the squad was slaughtered in seconds. And from the necrons came no cheer of victory, no war cry. They simply left the corpses of their slain enemies at the ground, and resumed marching towards the Kasr. As ever, in silence.

Through all this, the Lorekeeper remained still.

• Do nothing? Your morale has hit rock botom. You would be worthless in combat. Let the Imperial Guard handle this. You suffered enough losses for today. Perhaps it is right that you should be so soundly beaten. The Emperor is dead; now is a time for grieving.

• Do you comply with the Lord Castellan's original plan to order a close assault as soon as the necrons are flanked by the the Imperial Vehicles? You cannot be sure the Lord Castellan would agree with it, however, since he no longer trusts your Chapter to follow orders. Brother-Captain Ezekiel would lead this assault as he is the only one with any morale left to lead. However, he tends to be reckless with his men's lives.

• Do you pray for the God of Battle to aid you in your darkest hour? The Emperor is dead, but another may guide us to victory. Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB

Imperial thought for the day: Abhor the Night, it is the Light that Endures!

"I would have a word with you, Lord Castellan."

"I'm sure you would, Brother-Captain Ezekiel, but I can't spare the time for you. We are in the midst of battle."

"Indeed. And I intend to rejoin it."

"No. I cannot trust your men to perform as they are expected to."

"Nor can I. Nevertheless, I must insist. We shall assault the xenos forces as soon as your vehicles move into position."

"No, you shall not, Space Marine. I cannot trust the life of my men to four hundred madmen who are catatonic in despair as their God has vanished from their lives."

"We do not consider Him a god, Lord Castellan. But I believe you have no alternative. The only troops at the gates are my chapter's three land raiders and the Land Hulk, all of which have been entrenched as artillery positions. You cannot use them to repel the xenos' attack when they come close, and your short-range infantry will not do enough damage to stop them before they overtake the gates. Even if my men fight unwell, and I assure you that they will, they would still serve a purpose: a meatshield, if you would, between the aliens and the Kasr. This will give you enough time to lock the Baneblades' weapons systems into a more advantageous position, hopefully obliterating the enemy."

"You would sacrifice your men for a chance at victory?"

"Yes. If you would not, then you are a poor commander. I will lead the attack. If my men fall, I die with them."

The Lord Castellan nodded, his face expressionless. And with the booming of the long-range cannons at the background, he waited for the enemy to close in.

Brother-Captain Ezekiel assembled the dispirited Battlebrothers, and told them of what was to happen. They acquiesced with little conviction, and prepared themselves for battle. Ezekiel approached the Dreadnought, and said "Do your duty."

The necrons reached the intended position a scant few minutes before sunrise: their leader was at the back of the army, his staff still crackling with the green lightning that had brought them all back from the dead. The Cadian Shock Troopers fired from their positions with their heavier, short-range artillery: mostly multimeltas and stormbolters. This inflicted a significant number of casualties, though not significant enough to stop the necron tide in any way. Then the infantry fire stopped, and Brother-Captain Ezekiel led the Exterminating Angels into the charge.

They fought badly, as he knew they would. Though he did not see a single one fall, most of their attacks were disjointed, their ranks barely holding formation. The only one making headway was Ezekiel himself, going directly for the Necron Lord, the swipes of his Warscythe and Shortsword cutting through the necron's armor with ease. His Warscythe emitted the same bright green glow of the necron's weapons along its surface. The Lorekeeper was alongside the battlebrothers, firing his multimeltas left and right and crushing his opponets with his powered fist.

The charge was short lived, however. As the first rays of sunlight had lit the combatants, the cyclonic torpedoes set to detonate inside the battlebarge went off. With a blast radius of fifty kilometers, it was hard to miss. The shockwave knocked the battlebrothers off their feet, and the excruciating silver light of the explosion made them all blind for a moment. When they recovered, the Necrons were gone. There were none of their fallen, left, either. They had simply phased out of existence.

Something else was missing, along with the remnants of the Battlebarge: The Cadian Pylon they had crashed into was gone, vaporized.

It was a strange victory, if a victory at all. The enemy had been vanquished, but not defeated.Afterwards, the Battlebrothers remained in silent puzzlement, still unsure of what to do, how to proceed from here. Most of them excused themselves to pray. The Lord Castellan asked that both Helfrich and Ezekiel attend him at his study. He said there were things to discuss.

Meanwhile, Techmarine Gaius was conferring with the cabal of Adeptus Mechanics that was attending to the 8th Cadian, and they offered him a proposal.

• Accept the Mechanicus offer to turn your Land Hulk into a decent vehicle? It would be a reliable, massive troop-transport, capable of carrying 4 companies along with its own medicae center and armory, and even a small Manufactorium for reprovisioning. Essentially, a Land Battlebarge, although much smaller, less armored, and less well-armed. It would take, however, some time, and the three land raider crusaders would have to be dismounted for parts.

• Do you reject the offer? The Land Raiders are invaluable vehicles in battle, and a month? You might have to be ready at a moment's notice to move out of this Kasr! This could cripple your chapter.

SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE IMPERIUM OF MAN

Imperial thought for the day: The traitorʹs hand lies closer than you think.

"You have both fought well, but I'm afraid I cannot say the same of your battlebrothers. Dire times indeed when those who are the vanguard's of the Emperor's wrath do nothing when the enemy is at the gates."

"They know no life that is not in His name. And you, Lord Castellan, seem to amuse yourself trying to provoke me. What is you wanted to talk to us about?"

"To talk facts, of course. I assume you have noticed the planet is barren. That is because of those xenos and their unholy machines. They drain all life, leave nothing, not even grass. They attacked our Kasrs at first, but they took no supplies, destroyed nothing. They were only intent on killing. They always headed for the Kasrs who showed sign of activity, so I reasoned if we camped out in the open, stayed hidden, in a way, we could avoid them for a while. This was going well until a squad of you assault marines arrived here, exploring. The few sentries I had left reported back to me: Naturally, I assume it was one of Abaddon's forward teams. I do not know if I am to be thankful for that mistake. We came to the Kasr, and fortified, prepared ourselves for battle. And then you came."

"Keep the mocking tone out of your tongue or I shall see to it that you have none" Interjected the Lorekeeper for the first time in the conversation. Brother Ezekiel gazed at him sternly, and shrugged.

"You must forgive my learned brother Helfrich, Lord Castellan. He has been something of a wreck since he learned the news of the Emperor's demise. Which in fact brings me to my point: How is that you too know he's dead?"

"We have navigators and many astropaths among us. All of them report the same thing. His presence is no longer in the warp. The astronomican is dark. What conclusion am I to draw from that? But you see, I am a practical man, Brother-Captain. For me, the Emperor is not a God, not a guiding figure: He is merely the foundation for our security. With him gone, I can but try to hold on a little longer. The men were not too shocked, either. They have seen Black Crusades come and go, daemons aplenty. What is one Emperor that sits hundreds of millions of miles away to them? These are my finest men. They fight and die for Cadia, and nothing else."

"The Holy Ordos would hardly be content with that state of affairs."

"The Inquisition does not dare touch us, Captain. When Chaos launches its raids, we are the first to fight. We have always been. Without us, the Imperium would be breached."

"Very well. Now tell me of the events that happened before we arrived. Were is the Imperial Navy? And the Traitor Legions? Where did those xenos come from?"

"The Pylons fired. That is all there is to it. The sky flashed green, and all the space and air vessels were struck down. Most of them were vaporized on the spot; the largest crashed on the surface. Some of the crew survived, but not many. I was able to rescue some. Ships who were farther away tried to warp out of orbit. We have not heard from them since. The astropaths report the same happening on every other world with Pylons. The little they can gleam from the screams and cries of mercy, it appears most other worlds have been as fortunate as us. As we speak, the Necrons carry on their dark harvest. I would be surprised if there is any man left alive at this point, anywhere else in the sector."

"And the Chaos Forces? Where are they?"

"As soon as the Pylons fired they faltered; many of their squads broke formation and started firing without direction or running away. Soon they all withdrew. The Pylons have an effect on them...That is all I know. And the Necrons, they come from inside the Pylons. That one you destroyed with your little pyrotechnics stunt was the nearest one to this Kasr; The next nearest one is more than a thousand miles away. I assume we are safe, for the moment. They march very slowly, and they seem very methodical. I don't think they are in any hurry to exact revenge, if they even understand what that means. It was your arrival that attracted them here. And ironically, your arrival that vanquished them as well."

"So, what do we do now?"

"We should destroy the Pylons" Said the Lorekeeper in his tombstone voice. "This would bury the xenos once and for all."

"And bring Chaos back. Besides, the Pylons are incredibly resilient. Nothing short of another cylonic torpedo would bring them down."

"Then we shall procure more of those. And I am not so sure Chaos would come back; The Pylons maintain an area of stable warp space between here and the Eye of Terror that is called the Cadian Gate. Without it, Chaos ships cannot reliably enter or leave the sector through warp travel."

"Disrupting the Cadian gate would leave us stranded forever in this place. All warp travel in the entire subsector would be disrupted as well; we may as well commit suicide right now, because if we do that, than the Imperium of Man would be gone from the Cadian Subsector." Said the Lord Castellan.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. Warp travel seems to be already disrupted. Perhaps we can organize small pockets of survivors until something else comes along. And perhaps not. If nothing else, we would strand the necrons as well, if they use warp travel. And we would make sure that the bridge between the Eye of Terror and the rest of the Imperium would be destroyed forever. There would never again be another Black Crusade."

"Hmm. I must reflect about this" Said Brother-Captain Ezekiel, resting his hands on the Lord Castellan's ornate marble table, and looking out of the window into the spiralling cloud of smoke that emerged from the cyclonic torpedoes' blast site.

No choices this time, this thing is freeform. I won't reproduce the discussion that leads to next update, for brevity's sake.

What shall you do now? This is an exercise that the Barbarian attempted before without much success, but I think, since this story is a lot less open-ended and very much more focused in a small force of man instead of a major galactic empire, it might work. What you have to do is this: Write, or at least agree on a paragraph on what will be your objectives from now on and how do you propose to go about them.

Additionally, if you want, you may also writer another paragraph about how you wish your Chapter to deal with the Emperor's demise. This is not necessary but would make it better for you as players when facing...demoralizing decisions.

Bonus fluff: THE RED CYCLOPS

Inside the Eye of Terror, on the surface of the planet of sorcerers, home of the Thousand Sons traitor legion, a curious exchange took place.

"You have failed us yet again, Abaddon. Thirteen black crusades, and nary a victory. We have endured your ineptitude for ten thousand years. You are the clone-progeny of Horus himself...And you are a weak, pathetic fool whose only reedeming quality is the capacity of commanding the loyalty of all the traitor legions. Well, this has changed. The Word Bearers no longer recognize your rule. The World Eaters grow bored with your bloodless tactics. And I myself find your lack of any foresight disturbing. It was foretold by the Changer of Ways that your incursion into Cadia would fail as the Emperor's soul returned to the warp, for they would waken once again. By ignoring Lord Tzeentch's infinite wisdom, you doomed another invasion of the Imperium. What say you?"

"I owe you nothing, daemon. With or without the Thousand Sons, the Imperium will fall."

"Really? I think not. I think that the Imperium has fallen already. I think we no longer have any need of you, nor of this "Chaos Undivided" nonsense you bandy about. As heresy and despair grows, so too grows my master's power, for is it not said all souls hope for salvation? And to Lord Tzeentch, hope is the sweetest of delights. All across the galaxy, people filled with dread turn to witches and psykers to guide them. They turn to long-forgotten rituals and superstition. Sorcery is on the rise once again. The other Ruinous Powers cannot hope to defy my Master's will, now. And with your death, they will know the true ruler of the Immaterium."

"My death, Primarch? Not even you can stand against me in battle. You bore me with your prattle. Redeem yourself in the eyes of Chaos by pledging allegiance to me, or I shall do what Leman Russ could not and slay you where you stand."

Both the Thousand Sons and the Black Legion prepared themselves for battle. There did not seem to be a peaceful way out of this. Magnus the Red, Daemon-Prince of Caliban and Primarch of the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion, let out a long sigh. Bolts of Chaos Fire erupted from the tips of his fingers and struck Abbadon, who caught them in the blade of his daemonsword and remained unscathed.

"So be it, Primarch."

THE BLACK SHIPS

"Well Lord Castellan, you have told us all about what is happening on the planet, but you neglected one particular point: What do you intend to do about it? Run and hide until you die?"

"That is not something I propose to tell you."

"We are allies, Lord Creed."

"I'd be a damn fool if I'd have a pariah for an ally, captain" spat Lord Castellan, eyeing the Astartes' weapons "The psykers told me all about you, aye, they did. They can't bear the sight of you. They say you and those necrons out there are very much alike."

"Lord Castellan Creed" Intoned the Dreadnought in his leaden voice "Whatever else Ezekiel may be, he is an Adeptus Astartes first and foremost. You have shown us nothing but contempt so far but I assure you, we are not as broken as you assume. We have saved the Imperium countless times, as have your Regiments. If you deny us friendship, then at least accord us due respect as warriors."

The Lord Castellan's face stayed emotionless, his eyes darting from the pariah to the dreadnought. A pair so absurd as to be almost heretical, he thought. And here they were, fighting the same enemy.

"Very well. Though if I may suggest, Lorekeeper Helfrich, if you wish us to maintain that respect you would do well to have your chapter provide a better showing when battle next comes. What I propose to do is simple: Survive and wait."

"Wait for what?"

"As soon as...All this began, we sent out distress signals to all nearby sectors. We asked for assistance and instructed the ships to warp far out of orbit so as to avoid the Pylon fire, and immediately start orbital bombardment on the Pylons. I figured that might give any ship a chance to land and provide assistance against that xenos. However, at the time, I was unaware that warp travel had been disrupted. We received no messages back, apart from one. It was in the Calixis Sector, from one of the Holy Ordos' Black Ships."

Brother-Captain Ezekiel raised an eyebrow in amused contempt. The dreadnought let out a litany of curses that would give pause to even the most zealous torturer.

"Are you proposing to tell me - to tell us - that the Inquisition is on its way here?" Growled the Lorekeeper, his powered fist clenching and unclenching as if something was wrong with the machine spirit.

"Aye, that's about it. Though there's more, of course. This Inquisitor, he presented himself as...Let's see here...Aye, Silas Marr, of the Ordos..." The Lord Castellan raised an eyebrow in puzzlement "Unspecified? Well, far be it from me to question the workings of the holy Inquisition. Anyhow, this chap Silas Marr, and I say chap with utmost respect" Said the Lord Castellan with a sardonic smile "Said he still had means of communicating and navigating through the warp. Said he had "unusual" assets at his disposal, and as soon as I told him about our situation with the necrons, he said he was setting course to Cadia. Bringing along two full companies of Deathwatch marines, he said, along with his 'unusual assets', whatever those may be. I sent him the coordinates of one of our spaceports, the one least surrounded by pylons. He shoud be here in, oh, two or three months. Course, now the spaceport has been overrun by the necrons, but I reckon we can take it back."

"So we are waiting for the Inquisition to come."

"That's about right, yes. Say, Captain, "Exterminating Angels"...I've never heard that name before. What founding are you?"

"That is just an alias, not a name we chose for ourselves. We are defectors from the Black Templars." Answered the Lorekeeper, who had never liked the moniker in the first place.

"Oh." Creed considered this for a moment "I'm guessing the Ordos will be none too pleased about seeing you fellows here, then."

"Indeed."

UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES

Imperial thought for the day: A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy.

It should not, by any means, be an unusual alliance. The Imperial Guard was the backbone of the Imperium, and the Astartes Chapters were its sword and shield. But Lord Castellan Creed mistrusted the Lorekeeper, who mistrusted him in turn, and Brother-Captain Ezekiel mistrusted everybody else. So this joint cooperation effort was fragile at best.

It was agreed that the Imperial Guard would hand over one hundred of their finest gene-seed compatible whiteshields for initiation into the chapter. In exchange, the chapter would offer full assistance in case of any battle against the necrons or other marauding forces. The first show of cooperation, the Lord Castellan had said, was the securing of the spaceport in which Silas Marr and his retinue would be landing. The Lorekeeper clenched his teeth at this, but Ezekiel merely shrugged. He knew Silas Marr, had known him as a boy long ago, when he was recruited by him to serve the Holy Ordos, albeit unwittingly.

The techmarines and the techpriests finally stopped shouting at one another and throwing wrenches around, and started cooperating. The Land Hulk was finished within a month, and now it seemed something worthy of an Astartes Chapter. It was essentialy a miniature-sized version of a Battlebarge, but with tracks instead of turbines. It possessed formidable short-range weaponry scavenged from the Land Raiders, although its long-range artillery was somewhat lacking. The vehicle was 800 meters in length, and at its highest point reached 150 meters in height, dwarfing the Kasr. However, this high point was only an accelerator tower for Drop Pods, giving this vehicle the ability to deploy deep-strike squads without being in orbit. Of course, the deep-striking range was severely diminished, and the structure was the most vulnerable part of the Land Hulk, but this suited the Chapter fine: Deep Striking was their preferred method of combat.

Excepting the Accelerator Tower, the rest of the vehicle was about 30 meters in height, and capable of supporting up to six full companies of Astartes. It had a medicae center, an amory and a small manufactorium, though none of them were fully stocked. The vehicle was however very slow. The enginseers said they did their best; this was already a heretical design since it was not an approved Standard Template Construct, but they did not seem to care much, actually rejoicing in finally being able to use their creativity instead of endless replicating the same designs.

Techmarine Gaius decided to take the thing for a ride while the newly-recruited scout company was still inside, receiving the apothecaries' ministrations and initial gene-seed implants. They wore a slightly modified version of Imperial Carapace Armor, with the chapter's colors and a thinner plating, to integrate the scout's targeting and infiltration systems. This was techmarine Gaius' great pride: He had managed to create a scout armor of sorts with only a handful of materials he had at hand.

Techmarine Gaius' decision riding out of the Kasr in the Land Hulk was both to test its systems and its current residents: No Astartes Chapters allows entry to their ranks to anyone, regardless of origin or previous training, without first undergoing a trial by combat. The Land Hulk's sensor arrays detected a small foraging party of necrons, 200 in number, some fifty kilometers away from the Kasr. They were not heading towards it, but this would be the trial the new recruits would face.

They were awakened by the apothecaries, handed an assortment of weapons (ironically, most of them were from the Lord Castellan's stockpiles), and warned they would be facing their first enemy as Astartes. Brother-Captain Ezekiel had been assigned as Acting Scout Captain, much to his amusement, and was to lead the neophytes into battle. This would be the first test of the Accelerator Tower: Gaius calculated its range to be about fifty kilometres, and aimed the drop pods directly inside the necron formation.

The entire structure shook as the Accelerator Tower launched its drop pods, one after the other, ten times total. Shook, but hold. The precision was not very high: many of the pods landed at least half a kilometre away from the xenos, and the pod containing Ezekiel miscalculated drastically and crashed into a a nearby mountain range five kilometres away from the necrons. Techmarine gaius took notes and made adjusments, all the while watching the battle.

The recruits performed admirably: Though they were all sixteen years old, they had been drilled to near-perfection by Cadian Commissars and their planet's uncessant wars. They were survivors of the Thirteenth Black Crusade, no pale-skinned, green recruits from some backwater feudal planet. They kept formation, never breaking rank, and lashed out at the Necrons in a thoroughly disciplined fashion. None of them fell, though the battle dragged on for a while. When Brother-Captain Ezekiel arrived with the ten-men squad under his command, the fighting was all but over. He smiled without much humour, and congratulated the neophytes on their first victory. The neophytes answered that it was not over yet.

A Necron Lord was arriving in the distance, followed by two squads of the necrons' most fearsome infantry: Pariahs, humans with no presence in the warp who had been assimilated into the Necron army and covered with their living metal, wielding fractal blades called "Warscythes", capable of cutting through even a Land Raider's armor. As the Lord drew closer, holding high his Staff of Light, the felled necrons warriors around the neophytes started to stir and rebuild.

• Let the neophytes and brother-captain Ezekiel face this threat only with the support of the Land Hulk's underperforming long-range weaponry? This was more than they asked for, and perhaps more than they could handle, but it was truly a trial by combat. If they succeeded, both the Chapter and the Imperial Guard's morale would be raised; it would prove that the decision to cooperate had been the right one, and it would be a vote of confidence on the neophyte's abilities, one that would not go unnoticed by the Imperial Guard or the neophytes. Let them taste the steel of the Emperor's Blades; young as they are, they are Space Marines, and they will do their duty!

• Do you order a few Assault Squads to aid them? Three assault squads had been following the Land Hulk, eager to see the neophytes performance, and are within Jump distance of the battle. This would give the neophytes much needed support against these fearsome foes, but it would be seen by the Imperial Guard as a vote of no-confidence in the ability of their own men, and the Neophytes would not be pleased. It would, however, greatly raise the morale of the Chapter itself, engaging in battle once again, close-combat against the Enemies of Man, Imperial Guard be damned!

WAR MACHINE

Imperial thought for the day: For those who seek perfection there can be no rest this side of the grave.

"All squads, maintain formation and concentrate your fire on the warriors. Do not let them get up. Maintain your positions."

A hail of bolter and las fire scorched the ground around the scout company as they frantically tried to prevent the fallen necrons from getting back up, with mixed results. It certainly slowed them down, but the necron lord's presence would not allow them to be destroyed until he was. The Lord closed in slowly, the two squads of eight pariahs each at his sides, keeping pace in silence.

When Ezekiel seemed satisfied that the warriors had been slowed down enough, he shouted "All squads, break formation and seek cover! Suppresive fire on the Lord's escort, do not engage them at close range! I repeat, do not engage them at close combat! Ranged weapons only! Switch to plasma if you got them. If you don't " - Ezekiel smiled once again his little humourless smile - "Hope that the Emperor protects."

The neophytes immediately complied, used to taking orders as they were. They found cover behind the several drop pods scattered around the battlefield, and exchanged fire with the Pariahs, who distanced themselves from the Necron Lord to try and engage them in close-combat. The Necron Warriors were almost completely reassembled.

"Gaius, I'm letting off a signalling beacon. Fire at will as soon as you've locked on."

"Yes, Captain" Buzzed the comm-bead in Ezekiel's ear, as the techmarine brought to bear the Land Hulk's long range artillery on the position marked by Ezekiel, right in the middle of the rising necron warriors. Targeting systems seemed faulty. Gaius cursed the Omnissiah under his breath and climbed up to the top of the Land Hulk to activate the systems manually. By the time he did, the reawakened necron warriors were distancing themselves from the signalling beacon, encircling the neophytes positions and preparing to fire at them while the Pariahs closed in on the front.

"Warp take you, damned machine!" Cursed Gaius, frantically trying to get the rangefinder cannons into firing position.

Ezekiel, mid-way in his advance towards the Necron Lord, halted as he heard the imprecation in his comm-bead, looked around and noticed the distinct lack of artillery shells exploding in the night. What was Gaius doing? No time for that now. He saw the hopeless situation; he could not order the neophytes to retreat because they would be almost surely anihilated by the enemies' gauss flayers, and besides, there was nowhere to retreat to: the pariahs were closing in on the other side. He sighed, and prayed they had received extensive close quarters combat training. Their first victory had been a combination of initiative, suprise, and even luck: some of the drop pods had smashed several necron warriors to pieces. But now...it would be death or glory. There was no alternative.

"All squads: CHARGE!"

And charge they did.

Ezekiel himself charged towards the Necron Lord, dodging bolts of green lightining as he dashed from side to side, confident of victory. He swung his Warscythe in an overhead arc while he trusted with his shortsword, both of which missed their mark. The necron lord teleported a few metres away, and started firing his staff again.

"Oh, frak this" Said Ezekiel, throwing his shortsword away. He took the warscythe in both hands and leapt, leaving himself wide open to the Necron's Staff as he swung his scythes high over his head. The Necron Lord trust out the Staff, and fired, hitting his mark and sending the Grim Reaper crashing down into a pile of rocks just beside him. A gaping hole in his chest-plate was visible to the Lord for an instant, before Ezekiel took off his head with a sweeping strike of his warscythe. The Necron Lord's body immediately phased out of existence.

The pariahs halted their advance, but the necron warriors took no notice of his demise since they were too occupied with the neophytes. Though not a single one of them carried a proper meelee weapon, most relying on chainknife-bayonets mounted on their weapons, they had charged with the righteous zeal of the Emperor's Chosen, and succedeed in breaking enemy formation. After that, it was simple, though not easy: Necron Warriors are not formidable in close combat, but they are extremely strong and resilient. The neophytes could not afford to give them one moment's peace to target their gauss flayers, for that would surely mean their doom. So they fought the necrons in a frenzy, not able to give in one inch, not a single moment's pause, wielding their improvised meelee weapons with righteous fury.

And then the boom of cannon fire echoed in the battlefield, a column of smoke emerging from one of the pariah squads' last position. Ezekiel was close enough to feel the heat of the blast and have shrapnel embedded all over his armor.

"Hold fire! Hold fire, you bloody wrenchmonkey!" Cried the Captain as he retrieved his phase shortsword from the ground and charged towards the other group of pariahs, who were still aimless without their Lord's guidance. Ezekiel descended upon them like a true exterminating angel: This was why they called him the Grim Reaper. His scythe's first swing took off the heads of three pariahs, and the rest soon followed.

Techmarine Gaius surveyed the battlefield. All the initiates were standing, bloody, but unbowed. The necron carcasses had phased out and disappeared, as they did when they were defeated. Ezekiel was bleeding from a hole in his chest, but seemed rather nonchalant about it. The Land Hulk retrieved all Battlebrothers, and headed back towards the Kasr.

Inside, the neophytes stood silently. Though their implants had barely time to take root, and their armor had no insignias or Aquila's wings, they had defeated the enemy. They were Battlebrothers now. The truth of this hit them like one of Ezekiel's blows: They were Battlebrothers. Space Marines. They were in silence because they didn't know what to say.

At the Kasr, the assembled Imperial Guard cheered at their victory, and so did a few of the less stern Battlebrothers. But most of them remained in grim silence: They considered Ezekiel's tactics reckless, and could have well costed them another entire company. He should've ordered the Assault Squads to engage, they thought, even if this was the neophytes' battle trial. This was not the time for heroics.

Still, that is what they thought. In their hearts, heroics was all that mattered. It was the very foundation of the Adeptus Astartes to succeed when no-one else could. To fight to the end. Never retreat, never surrender. So while their mistrust for Brother-Captain Ezekiel grew, so too did their confidence in their own condition as Space Marines. Morale experienced a slight boost.

Lord Castellan Creed was deep in conversation with the Lorekeeper as the neophytes arrived, and acknowledged them with a nod. Techmarine Gaius engaged in a heated argument with the senior Mechanics present; clearly the Land Hulk was still something of a hit-and-miss.

• Accept the Castellan's outlined plan of retaking the spaceport? The Lord Castellan is an experienced leader and a gifted tactician and strategist, he has defended Cadia single-handedly from several warp incursions and emerged victorious from every one; to follow his lead brings no dishonour and will almost certainly lead to victory. The Lord Castellan has displayed a brilliant mind and insightful eye in your presence, and since you have chosen cooperation, you could not do better than to accept his leadership in this particular case. But some in the Chapter might feel they are merely grunts doing the Guard's work. Have they not broken through countless sieges, after all, and had they not also slain countless Enemies of Man?

• Do you draw up another battle plan involving the Lorekeeper's advice? The Lord Castellan would accept this grudgingly, though the Lorekeeper is also a gifted strategist and the Black Templars masters of siegecraft, he has become unpredictable of late: his tangible hate for the Inquisition might make him sacrifice total victory over the necrons for tactical superiority over the Holy Ordos when it arrives. Though this would greatly increase the Chapter's sense of independence, there are some who few the Lorekeeper has become a burden, rather than a boon.

• Accept the Enginseers' advice and take the Land Hulk to the nearest Manufactorum? The thing is obviously still unreliable, and nothing more can be done without the appropriate facilities. This would involve a long journey through the tundra, coming relatively close to several pylons, and you cannot be sure you will be back in time for the assault on the spaceport. The Land Hulk would also have to carry the neophytes, since they are still in the initial stages of their gene-seed implantation and need to be monitored by apothecaries at all times. Techmarine Gaius and Brother-Captain Ezekiel would lead this expedition, and the Lord Castellan has graciously offered five hundred men of his own Shock Troopers to accompany you. It would be excellent training for the neophytes, and a definite assertion of just how much the Astartes and the Imperial Guard can do together. And of course, you would finally have a reliable, battle-ready, heavily armed-and-armored troop transport probably unmatched throughout the Imperium, an invaluable asset in every future battle you take part in. Expect to face heavy resistance.

• Do you reject the enginseers' advice and do what you can with what you have? This is a far cry from facing 200 necrons on an open battlefield, you would be saddled with 600 hundred men travelling through the planet with no means of support and encountering Emperor knows how many pockets of enemy resistance. It is a fool's errand. The Land Hulk may not be reliable, but at least it's operational and has shown its capacity at deep striking. You would also have the certainty it would be available for the siege of the spaceport, although you're not sure how much it could do to help. Besides, what if you have to evacuate the Kasr at a moment's notice? You would be effectively left stranded should anything happen. And even worse, what if they fail and the Land Hulk is destroyed? Than you are truly doomed. Better to be safe than to be sorry. Your chapter has taken enough losses as it is, and you might take many more before all of this is over.

Bonus fluff: THE GRIM REAPER'S TALE

I do not remember where I was born. All I remember from there was the day the Tyrant Star came. The world was bathed in bright, black light. It should not be possible, but it was what I saw. Everything turned black, though this dark light still allowed us to see one another. And kill one another. All of them went mad. The planet's population was decimated in weeks. I remember seeing a small child, no older than me at the time, crawling in the blood of its parents and crying softly. I made to help it, and the child lunged at me with a shard of glass: it too was mad, its countenance horribly stretched into the mask of folly. I killed it; It was my first.

Eventually the black light ceased and the Tyrant Star left, and I was the only survivor. Within weeks, an entire planet waged war against itself and won. I remember his voice, soft but emotionless, calling out to me. He said I had put quite a hex on the planet, laughing as he did so. That is where my name comes from. Later, he called me Ezekiel by accident. I took the name. I never learned who Ezekiel was. He seemed fond of me using the name. Soon it became normal for him to use it when talking to me.

We were in Geonide when the Black Templars came. He used me as a scout: I was small and nimble, and could defend myself if need be. I had keen eyes and ears, and was able to gather information quickly and discreetly for my master. Inquisitor Silas Marr. He never told me he was from the Holy Ordos. I never asked. I don't think that at the time I even knew what the Holy Ordos was. I only heard it whispered, here and there, in dread.

The Space Marines took me out of the planet along with my master. I watched as Geonide burned. Afterwards, I witnessed an argument between two of the Black Templars. They were shouting at one another, their faces brimming with holy fervor, or so I thought at the time. One of them turned and suddenly shouted at me:

"And what of you, child?! Do you not think we should have killed them all? Saving a few, we risk damning all!"

"A questioning servant is more dangerous than an ignorant heretic" I intoned, as my master had taught me. The Space Marine was furious and moved to strike me; his mailed fist would have left me a red smear painted on the wall of the ship. The other space marine stopped him. The one who had shouted at me stormed off in a rage. The other remained, knelt down, and asked me my name.

"Ezekiel Hex"

"I am Helbrecht, Ezekiel Hex. You seem to be a brave child. What were you doing down there on the planet?"

I did not know. My master had not told me why we were there, nor why we had been evacuated. I was only gathering data, as always. So I picked the most obvious lie:

"Purging the heretic." At this, the space marine let out a small laugh and led me to my living quarters on the ship. Later, he came to my master and asked permission for something. I could not overhear them talking. My master seemed reluctant to agree. They seemed to be bargaining over something. I could overhear the word "Deathwatch" a few times, since both of them spoke it loudly and with much conviction, but not much else.

I was inducted into the Black Templars Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes at the age of twelve. My master did not come to say goodbye. I remained an initiate for a long time: The Black Templars believed in training through battle; they did not have tenth company scouts. I did as I was told and fought without fear. I would have liked to say I fought bravely, but courage is an emotion I have never experienced; I have never experienced fear.

Eventually, my master came back for me. I was led away from the Chapter and made a member of the Deathwatch. I was much smaller than all of them. Though the gene-seed implantation was successful, I never grew to be as large as most Astartes. They handed me Scout Armor, and told me to scout. So I did. My master seemed to be their master, or something very much akin to it. By this time, I had learned to think for myself and to pay attention to the goings-on and connect the dots, as some say. I assumed that my master, whom I now knew to be an Inquisitor, was a member of the Ordo Xenos since he was able to requisition Deathwatch Kill-Teams. The other members of my kill-team told me it was not so: Silas Marr had requisitioned Adepta Sororitas and Grey Knights as well, and none seem to know to which Ordos he belong. He liked to say he was an Ordos all by himself, smiling coyly.

I earned my moniker when we were sent to investigate a possible tombworld on the Segmentum Solar. I scouted a patrol of pariahs well ahead of my Kill-Team; I had never met a necron before and had no idea what they were. To me, the pariahs seemed flimsy servitors wielding bizarre bladed staves. I did not think to ask for reinforcements; they seemed so fragile. I engaged them in battle, and survived only by sheer luck. I dodged and ducked, my chainsword barely doing any damage against the necron's living metal. One of the pariah's swings was too wide and hit one of its companions, cutting it in half. I immediately took the fallen necron's weapon, so superior to my own, and finally could engage these creatures on equal footing. I came close to dying many times, but emerged victorious. Five pariahs lay dead at my feet, if such a word can be used to describe their...inanimation.

I reported back to the Kill-Team with my Warscythe and my findings. They seemed impressed, but that mattered little to me. Pride is another emotion I have not had the pleasure of tasting. One of them asked how could I have kept the warscythe, since all necron equipment phases out as soon as their owners are defeated. I shrugged. I did not know. My fractal phase sword I acquired when a Callidus assassin tried to dispose of my master. I defeated the polymorphing creature and took its blade. Its edge seemed as fine as my Warscythe's.

Eventually I was dismissed from the Deathwatch and ordered to return to my original Chapter, bearing Deathwatch Honours and my xenos weapons. My...former master kindly offered me to take me to one of the nearest Templar battlebarges in his Black Ship. I accepted. However, we veered off course due to a sudden spike in warp activity: It seemed an entire world had fallen to Chaos, and fortuitously a Black Templar battlebarge was hovering in orbit, preparing Exterminatus. I boarded a shuttle and went to the Battlebarge, without saying goodbye to the Inquisitor who had once rescued me from a dead world long ago.

Upon stepping foot inside the battlebarge, I was seized by the same Space Marine who had tried to kill me just after leaving Geonide, though now he wore a slightly different armor and no insignias. He growled through his skull-shaped helmet:

"What are you doing here, Black Templar? Have you come seeking our death or yours?" He immediately swung his Crozius at me, and knocked me off my feet. This was not the welcome I was hoping for.

"Reclusiarch Jeremiah! What are you doing? That is a Battle-Brother!" Shouted an Astartes who bore the Crux Terminatus and wore no helmet.

"He just left a Black Ship! He is an Ordos pawn!"

"That may well be the case, but we should take the matter to the Brother-Commander" Answered Lorekeeper Helfrich thoughtfully.

And now, here I am.

SPACE HULK

As soon as the Land Hulk drove out of the gates and into the barren tundras of Cadia heading towards the Manufactorum, a cadian Scout Trooper arrived running at the Lord Castellan's study, sweating and out of breath.

"Lord Castellan, a huge vessel has just crashed north of our position!"

"What kind of vessel?"

"It looked...orkish, sir."

The Lord Castellan rested his forehead on his hand, and sighed. The battle plan had just been finished: Lorekeeper Helfrich offered fierce resistance and the Lord Castellan was on the verge of giving in to some of his demands before a few Brother-Captains of the Chapter backed him up against the Lorekeeper. The Lorekeeper left the meeting disgruntled and muttering something about respect and duty. Creed was relieved that he was not the only one to think the Dreadnought disturbing. And now, as he was just about to summon all his officers for a briefing, this happens.

IT'S DECISION TIME! WELCOME TO THE NEXT-GEN, STREAMLINED CHOOSE-YOUR-OWN-CHOICE(tm) TEXT-ADVENTURE!

This is how it's gonna go down. Several things need to be done before the assault on the spaceport can begin, and you won't have time nor personnel to do them all. Consider these 'missions', DoW II style, and they'll play out much the same as the Lorekeeper's incursion into the Battlebarge all that time ago. There's a catch, however: You will be only in direct control of one of these missions: The others will be proceed in the background, and their chances of success wil be decided through statistical analysis and a random number generator! yippee for mondblut!

Note that if any of the NPC missions are not successful, failure will mean only retreat, not the loss of the squad. However, should the PC-controlled mission fail...well, we'll see how it goes. Also, the PC-controlled mission will have random, exotic and special encounters (oh, woot, loot!) that will not be tied directly to the mission's objective. Also, if you assume direct control of the mission, its difficulty rating obviously changes (for better or worse, that's up to you). Let me break that down for you.

DIFFICULTY: 
EASY - 80% CHANCE OF SUCCESS 
MEDIUM - 50% CHANCE OF SUCCESS 
HARD - 20% CHANCE OF SUCCESS 

THE NUMBERS: 
THERE WILL BE TEN MISSIONS AVAILABLE. 
YOU MAY CHOOSE TO CARRY OUT 4 PLUS ASSUME DIRECT CONTROL OF THE FIFTH. 

THE BOYS: 
YOU WILL BE IN CONTROL OF AN UNNAMED FORCE COMMANDER (HENCEFORTH KNOWN AS THE NAMELESS ONE) 
AND MAY CHOOSE TO COMPOSE YOUR TEAM WITH (UP TO) FOUR SQUADS OF EIGHT MARINES EACH, 
AND KIT THEM OUT HOWEVER YOU LIKE.

THE MISSIONS

1. Recon the spaceport: We need to know the enemies' current position and numbers for a successful and precise attack.
   Difficulty: Easy
2. Plant signalling beacons on the pylons near the spaceport: Lord Castellan suggested that if Marr's ship can launch the cyclonic torpedoes immediately coming out of warp, it'll have a much better chance of landing in one piece. For this to happen he'll need the targeting beacons planted so he can home in on the pylons swiftly.
   Difficulty: Hard
3. Investigate the crashed Space Hulk: We can't afford to have Orks charging us from behind while we battle the necrons. Find out if there are any still alive, wipe them out if you can: if you can't, retreat and report.
   Difficulty: Hard
4. Scout the nearest Kasrs for supplies and ammunition: Your current Kasr is running low on both supplies and ammunition. Lord Castellan creed has placed several cachés of both in many Kasrs around Cadia. He has given you the coordinates to go and retrieve them.
   Difficulty: Medium
5. Patrol the Kasr's area for necron activity: Techmarine Gaius has reason to believe that there might be more Necron Forces near the Kasr similar to the ones battled by the neophytes. It would be wise to know if this is true.
   Difficulty: Medium
6. Venture inside a Pylon: Lorekeeper Helfrich still insists that the Pylons should be destroyed or at least deactivated, and is trying to assemble a squad of brave (and suicidal) Astartes to venture inside one and find out if this is feasible.
   Difficulty: Impossible
7. Engage the enemy: The Chapter is sorely in need of a battle to raise morale. Head to one of the pylons near the spaceport, find its Necron Lord and his honor guard, and destroy them.
   Difficulty: Hard
8. Investigate your former battlebarge's crash site: Scouts have reported unusual and strange phenomena happening at the barren wasteland caught in the torpedo's blast radius. Find out what is going on.
   Difficulty: Medium
9. Purge the heretic: One of the Regiment's Primaris Psyker has seemingly fallen to Chaos and fled the Kasr with a small contingent of traitor guardsmen. Find them and bring them back, dead or alive.
   Difficulty: Easy
10. Kill the xeno: Scouts have reported a strange creature roaming the area near the Kasr: They have been unable to get an accurate description, but it appears to have several long bladed limbs and is seemingly capable of disappearing in plain sight. It has out-stealthed the scouts consistently, though it has not sought to engage them in battle.
    Difficulty: Medium

After much deliberation, the final choice was 1248+3.

ROLL OUT

Imperial thought for the day: Blessed are the Gun Makers.

The Force Commander left immediately as soon he received the news of the crash: He took four squads with him, all brimming with so much weaponry they left both guardsmen and astartes baffled. When the Lore Keeper asked him what the in the warp was going on, the Force Commander answered he was on garbage duty. The devastator squad, in particular, looked like a mechanical porcupine of bolter barrels, krak missiles' tips and plasma ejectors. How they hoped to reach their destination in any time within the foreseeable future without any troop transport and carrying so much load to weigh them down was a mystery.

But the Force Commander was undaunted. He had requisitioned a Chimera APC from the vehicle pool, and when Lord Creed's aide came down to tell him it was impossible to part with a vehicle at such a crucial time, the commander answered times were about to get a great deal more crucial if they weren't allowed to take one measly chimera. They might get excruciatingly crucial even, said the force commander. The officer signed the permission slip hastily and watched as the Strike Team loaded the vehicle with their heaviest gear, along with their apotechary and techmarine, who, the commander had said, were the backbone of any Chapter and had to be protected at all times. He sounded absolutely serious when he said it.

Strike Team Alpha of the Chapter drove out of the Kasr at high speed, its infantry almost skipping and jumping to keep pace with the vehicle. The Space Hulk had crashed over two hundred kilometers to the north of the Kasr, so merely getting there might take more than a full day. By nightfall, they had covered roughly half the distance to the crashed ship. They were space marines and needed no food or water or rest; all they needed was faith and ammunition. So they carried on. But they weren't alone; something had begun stalking them soon after they left the Kasr and now it was growing more bold as night's darkness offered its auspicious cover. The commander had used the Techmarine's Auspex several times during the day to try and locate the creature, without much success. They were travelling through deserted tundra, devoid of life and vegetation. It was a vast plain, with nowhere to take cover or hide in or about. The force commander couldn't fathom how this creature had eluded them for a full day and eluded them still.

The only reason he even knew they were being stalked was that the Devastator Sargeant, while testing his Missile Launcher's targeting and tracking systems, had accidentaly captured movement nearby. Not one of the men could see or hear anything. The Missile Launcher's systems kept detecting movement intermittently throughout the entire day, and the techmarine assured the force commander the weapon was in perfect working condition, so this was not an error in the machine spirit's reasoning. The Force Commander's reasoning, however, had to pause at this and reconsider some basic assumptions: Missile Launchers had machine spirits? Techmarine Virgil assured the commander that all machines, however small, were children of the Omnissiah. The rest of the strike team sighed at this. Virgil's less-than-orthodox ramblings about the Mechanicus Cult were a constant source of distress for the Chapter, but he was their finest field techmarine.

Still, the Force Commander wished the Lorekeeper had assigned them somebody else.

• Investigate? It will be but a minor detour on the way to Glory. Perhaps this is the same creature the guardsmen scout had reported, or perhaps it is a necron wraith, tracking their movements and setting up an ambush. It pays to be wary.

• Do you carry on? The creature, whatever it was, seemed to have no intention nor capacity of harming them in any way. And the area was clear for miles, not even a Pylon in sight. So it was unlikely anything could happen to them if they left it alone. They had their mission, and they should carry it out. Duty prevails.

LET'S PLAY A LITTLE GAME OF YOU

Imperial thought for the day: Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment.

The Force Commander ordered a perimeter sweep just out of habit, and climbed atop the Chimera were the techmarine had disassembled the three missile launchers and had mounted their tracking systems into a crude, roughly triangular rotating array linked to his Auspex. The commander asked Virgil if he was triangulating the beast's position, and the techmarine sighed. They both stood quietly while the machine emitted the occasional beep indicating that movement had been detected again. Each time, the commander ordered the assault squad to jump to the position and search it thoroughly, with no result. Eventually the commander recalled all squads and told them to rest for a while; he was at a loss.

The apothecary they had brought along was the first to notice that there was vegetation growing on the previously lifeless soil. It was a sickly, thin grass, translucent and purplish. He followed the trail of vegetation for a while; it would be invisible beneath sunlight. It seemed to lead towards their stated destination: The space hulk was a darker spot under the bright moonlight, already visible from this distance. He collected a few samples out of curiosity, and took them back to the APC, which started to beep frantically as the techmarine's contraption detected multiple incoming contacts, all closing in on the vehicle. All around them, the ground rose and what they assumed was frozen tundra assumed a translucent form under the moonlight: Scores of six-limbed creatures, even taller than space marines, surrounded them.

Though their shape was indistinct because of their unnatural cloaking, the moon reflected brightly from all the upturned pairs of scything talons that stood well above the creatures heads and curved downwards. The apothecary barely had time to let out a gasp before one of the creatures leapt an impossible distance and pinned him down to the ground with its talons. But an apothecary veteran of countless black templars crusades was no stranger to ambush: he immediately twisted out of the creatures grasp and let fly a hail of bolter fire that trailed the night sky. The apothecary dropped a flash grenade and scurried back to the Chimera, re-joining formation with his battle-brothers.

As the flash grenade went off, the creature's chameleonic cloaking seemed to falter and fizzle as a greenish substance oozed from the holes left in its body by the apothecary's bolter rounds. For a moment, before it leapt again, all the space marines could see it plain: Its two scything talons, its hindlegs absurdly muscled, its slender but powerful body, and its two clawed arms hanging limply besides it. But most terrifying of all, and most telling, was the creature's face: long and narrow, its eyes dots of grayish-green almost invisible. From the lowest half of its head emerged long tentacles covered with bony spurs, its purpose to feed from the brains of its enemies and learn from them.

It leapt, and with it, leapt the swarm, all nearly invisible in the dark. You are fighting one of the deadliest enemies known to man, and you have fallen into its trap. You cannot see it. You cannot hear it. You can only hear the crackle of bolter fire around you as your squads frantically change position to try and hit an invisible enemy. All you can see are silhouettes and shadows under the moonlight. And the last thing that went through your mind was: why? what are they doing here?

The last thought, that is, before you heard Virgil shouting "What is your order, Force Commander?!"

• "Fall back! We cannot fight what we cannot see! Disengage and prepare to fight by wire! We will follow the auspex arrays' indicator dots to target and fire with precision!"

• "Hold fast, men! Lay down suppressive fire in all directions! Devastators, deploy in a wide arc and cut them down! We don't have time to play hide-and-seek with the Auspex; kill as many as you can and they'll scatter!"

DAWN OF WAR

Imperial thought for the day: the only reward for treachery is retribution

"Hold fast, men! Lay down suppressive fire in all directions! Devastators, deploy in a wide arc and cut them down! We don't have time to play hide-and-seek with the Auspex; kill as many as you can and they'll scatter! Techmarine Virgil, man the Chimera's flamer! I'll cover you." Cried the Force Commander in steely tones.

All around the armored transport, the night was illuminated by bursts of flamer fire and melta streams, and punctuated by the muzzle flash of the unrelenting bolter barrage. Occasionally, a Lictor's shape could be seen against the light. Most often, it couldn't. The Chimera's flamer swung continuously in wild arches of searing fire, while the Force Commander stood beside the techmarine and fired his plasma pistol methodically, utilizing the Auspex array to divine the location of any Lictor approaching the vehicle.

And the battle raged on throughout the night. Alien and human screams alike could be heard, and the only reassurance the Astartes could draw from all of this was the feel of their brothers-in-arms by their sides. The tyranid swarm was, in a way, in disadvantage: The overzealousness of the Force Commander caused him to come with so many men and weaponry that establishing a solid perimeter around such a small vehicle was incredibly easy. The Lictor's only advantage, surprise and swiftness in a single fatal strike, was denied to them: Though the space marines could be badly wounded, they were unlikely to be felled in a single blow by these beasts. So the beasts landed a blow and quickly leapt away as the barrage of fiery death resumed from the battlebrothers' weapons.

The Force Commander, realizing that, while the advantage was theirs, they would be bled continuously by the Lictor's leaping stealth assaults, ordered the strike team to engage the creatures in meelee whenever they came in range, intent on denying the beasts' main advantage of mobility. This was a gamble: While it would effectively incapacitate a part of the tyranid's fighting force, the commander did not know how many of them there were. If there were too many, then the lack of suppressive fire would allow the xenos to overwhelm and kill them soon enough, even if some of the xenos fell to the Chapter's blades. However, the commander reasoned thus: Lictors almost never hunted in groups. A swarm of them was completely unheard of. He was banking on the assumption that it couldn't be very large.

While he never did discover just how many of them there were, his strategy proved fruitful: As soon as the Tyranids realized that they were being pinned down whenever they tried a leaping assault, they interrupted their attack and vanished. When dawn broke, a few bodies were scattered around the Chimera. They had killed perhaps half a dozen lictors, now no longer camouflaged as they lay dead. But among the fallen, some battlebrothers could be counted as well. While it was too soon to tell if they would live or die, at least twelve men, double the number of felled xenos, had been incapacitated and their bodies bore gruesome wounds, their armors torn by the beasts' scything talons.

The Force Commander could recognize these were not normal Lictors as he surveyed the corpses, but that was the extent of his knowledge on that. Their bodies seemed more slender and better proportioned. And their camouflage was practically a mantle of invisibility, something said to be possible only through sorcery. And their pack was too large, their trap too elaborate... But further considerations on this matter would have to wait the return of Brother-Captain Ezekiel, he was the only one in the chapter to have served in the Deathwatch and faced tyranids constantly, in all their various strains.

• Abandon your mission and immediately return to the Kasr to report this incident? This could very well be a tyranid forward team, heralding a full scale invasion! The commanding officers must be told, and your wounded must be tended to. Tyranids in Cadia are unheard of. This is of utmost urgency, it could mean a reappraisal of every plan drawn up till now! Every recent assumption must be examined in light of these events. The space hulk can wait.

• Do you press on? The space hulk is not far, now, and you should reach it at sunset. Though your forces have been diminished, a mission is still a mission, and to report back without full knowledge would be disgraceful. Besides, who's to tell the space hulk and the tyranids are not connected? Perhaps your mission might hold the key to understanding what exactly happened. If the wounded battle-brothers do not survive, then they shall surely sit at the right side of the Emperor when they pass.

IT CAME FROM OUTSIDE

Imperial thought for the day: Ignorance is its own reward.

The wounded were stowed away inside the Chimera, the apothecary doing hist best to tend to them. He warned the Force Commander, however, that the most he could do was keep them comatose until they reached a proper medicae facility, and he could not be sure any of them would make it that far. The commander nodded grimly, but said to himself that it was sweet and fitting to die for the Emperor. He ordered the remaining squads to march on and continue with the mission. Now it was even more essential to find out what this space hulk contained.

Throughout the day, the improvised auspex array continued to capture intermittent movement around the chimera. The commander reasoned the Lictors were probably tracking them down and preparing for another ambush. The creatures would use their diminished numbers and nervousness to strike a killing blow. The Force Commander meant to see that they didn't. But he couldn't even be sure they were not walking into another, much deadlier trap: What if the entire space hulk was infested? They would surely not survive. With that in mind, he had already decided to sent the Assault Squad back to the Kasr as soon as they made an initial recon of the crashed ship, to report everything they had found so far. It would cripple their assault force, but this data was too important to die with them.

When they were no more than half a kilometre away from the ship, the auspex array started beeping frantically once again. The Force Commander sighed, and ordered all squads to run towards the Space Hulk; they would use its wreckage as cover while the reassembled Missile Launchers engaged in a devastating salvo of frag projectiles. He was already marching ahead of the Chimera in an accelerated pace when he heard a shout.

"Belay that order! All squads, maintain your positions. Commander, this is not another ambush!"

The Force Commander climbed back atop the Chimera with a mind to give the techmarine a sound beating for insubordination, but Virgil started babbling immediately after

"Look! It's warp activity, commander. And it's spiking. The chimera's sensors can pick it up as well. It's too much warp activity, commander, all of it coming from the space hulk. Wherever it came from, it spent a great deal of time drifting in the warp. Centuries, perhaps. I doubt there's any orks or tyranids inside, or at least any still alive."

The Force Commander was silent. He checked the auspex's readings, and the chimera's, and checked them again. The techmarine was correct. This ship was infused with perhaps a millenium of warp residue. They approached carefully. The hulk was over 15 kilometres long, and at the center of the fused mass of ships lay what seemed to be a very ancient Astartes Battle Barge, its blackened spires emerging from the hulk's asymmetrical composition. Was this a Chaos raid? Thought the force commander. What was happening in Cadia? Necrons, chaos, tyranids...None of it made any sense. Was the whole universe converging on it? And what of the Black Crusade? Why had Abaddon fled?

"He did not. It was I who had him leave." Answered Ahriman, supreme sorcerer of the Thousand Sons traitor legion, his azure and golden armor catching the last rays of the setting sun as he emerged from the battlebarge, hundreds of Rubric Marines at his back.

"It seems you are pleased with whittling down my enemies for me. Such a waste of potential, alas, that you should be here, at this time. What is the saying you repeat from your corpse emperor? Ignorance is its own reward? Perhaps you should have followed it. And then again, your Imperium has remained ignorant of this planet's secrets for too long. But i'm afraid I cannot allow you the reprieve of wisdom. For you, today, the reward for ignorance is oblivion."

As Chaosfire erupted from the Sorcerer's staff, the Force Commander could only cry out "Fight to the last men and the last round! For the Emperor!" The Sorcerer came down like a wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in azure and gold.

The swarm came down upon them. Hundreds of tyranids, lictors, raveners, thousands of gaunts. All of them engaged the Chaos Sorcerer and his animated brethren in battle, seemingly indifferent to the Force Commander and his few battle-brothers.

It seems you have been caught in the eye of the storm. Your apothecary has fallen to madness and is giggling to himself while he disembowels your wounded brothers inside the Chimera. If you stay between the tyranids and Ahriman's forces, you shall surely die in the crossfire.

• Try to flee? Enough is enough. Even a faithful mind can see the odds stacked against it. You must report this...this unbelievable turn of events to your Chapter and to the Lord Castellan! The game was rigged from the start. And while you're at it, execute the apothecary and throw his body to the swarm.

• Do you stand your ground and die gloriously? Perhaps you can take advantage of both your enemies and see that they all receive a piece of the Emperor's wrath. You are space marines. Act like them, and take your side at right of the Emperor in death.

• Do you accept the gifts of Papa Nurgle as offered by your apothecary and beat back the odious forces of the Changer of Ways while you defile the minds and bodies of these beasts? What a glorious sight it would be, the entirety of Cadia covered in the foul miasma of Nurgle's gifts!

CHAOS RISING

Imperial thought for the day: The Emperor protects.

The force-commander undid the straps on his jump-pack harness and handed it over to techmarine virgil. This was his plan from the beginning: to recon the place and no matter what they found, send the Assault Team back to base with the report. He had hoped they would travel back inside the chimera, but that was no longer an option. The wounded battlebrothers inside the APC, tainted by the apothecary's foul ministrations, had seemingly risen from their torpor with their souls in the hands of Another. Blood and pus oozed from their wounds together with a vile stench of decay and rottenness. They moved very slowly and had still not managed to clamber out of the vehicle, but they would soon.

Well, no hope for it now, thought the commander. The assault squad will just have to leg it. But they couldn't jump out of the combat zone now: he wasn't even sure their jump would be able to clear the distance from the endless tyranid swarm, but he was sure that eight flying marines would be an easy target for Ahriman's chaos-fire bolts or the newly-arrived carnifexes bioplasma. So they needed a diversion. He ordered Virgil to jump out with the assault squad as soon as he gave the signal, and told him to take the Vox recording of all that had happened along with him. Make haste, he said. The chapter must not commit itself to anything if they are unaware of what has happened here.

The techmarine nodded, along with the rest of the assault squad. There was no other alternative. The techmarine overcharged the chimera's engines while the force commander dropped meltabomb after meltabomb inside the APC through the topside hatch. Then the tactical and devastator squads charged through the enemy lines with the Chimera moving in a frenzy alongside them, smashing creatures left and right. Their rounds soon enough drew attention from both their opponents, and now they were surrounded. He gave the techmarine the signal to jump, and shouted:

"Go, tell the Astartes...that here, by His law, we lie."

The assault squad jumped out and in the middle of their flight they could see the flash of the meltabombs igniting and vaporizing everything in their blast radius, tyranids, chaos marines, and the last of the space marines. It was not a very big explosion, but a sufficient one to let them jump out unscathed from the battlefield. And put to rest the abomination that some of their former battle-brothers had become.

Back at the Kasr, reports were pouring in from the various missions, so the Lord Castellan and Helfrich were in a meeting to sort through them. However, the meeting was cut short by a buzzing transmission in the Kasr's emergency comm-channel:

"Brother...Ezekiel here....Necron patrols everywhere...Vehicle...Heavy damage...Made it to Manufactorum...There are still survivors...Cadia. Lost half...guardsmen...Vehicle...ing repaired. Took in...primaris psyker with...guardsmen. Thought he...ally...by Lord...Creed. Not so...Rogue psyker...summoned a...Os Portal...Daemons everywhere. Manufactorum under...ege. Assistance required. Repeat...under siege...We cannot...much longer. Requesting imme...sistance."

The Lorekeeper stomped out of the run as quickly as he could and explained the situation to the assembled brother-captains. Most of them scoffed at him: They had told both Ezekiel and Gaius that the mission was foolish and could cost them time and precious resources. Now they were besieged by Daemons and they requested assistance? It would be sending good marines after bad. None of them trusted Ezekiel to begin with, and seemed none too concerned at the prospect of losing him and a company of fresh-faced scouts.

The lorekeeper was horrified at this: The battlebarge was their sole remaining vehicle, everything their chapter needed to survive was inside it. And to leave a brother to be feasted upon by the Warp...He managed to assemble only one company of Space Marines who were undecided if they would assist him in his rescue or not.

• Leave Ezekiel and the others to their fate? They took a foolish decision, and now receive their just rewards. If you go after them you might lose yet another company of marines, and you will certainly not be back in time for the spaceport assault, weakening the Lord Castellan's plans. Another Battlebarge can be built in the future. You can still survive in the Kasr.

• Do you follow the Lore Keeper into an attempted rescue? Both the new recruits and the Land Hulk are too valuable to be lost! And Ezekiel said they were survivors in Cadia. What of this? Perhaps there is still a glimmer of hope among all the chaos. Leaving battlebrothers behind is dishounorable. You will not make it in time for the spaceport battle, but so be it. The Chapter takes precedence.

Mission outcomes:
1= marginal success (shitty rolls, average 60)
2= critical failure (rolled an average of 90 - rocks fall everybody dies)
4= marginal failure (56 something, I think)
8= marginal success (48,6, well done)


tzeentch offers you a re-roll if you sell your soul to him along with a water purifier chip. he just met a guy who's in dire need of one and it seems the guy is killing off his ghouls and supermutants to get it. should you find a water chip on cadia, let him know.

THE LONGEST DAY

Imperial thought for the day: foolish is he who claims to know everything and yet fear nothing.

Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed, Hero of Cadia, commander of all Cadian regiments, watched as the Space Marines engaged in yet another conflict among themselves. That blasted dreadnought had managed to persuade one full company to follow him into his rescue mission, and had requisitioned all the Chimera transports the guardsmen had left. Creed was not too troubled by this: His plans for the spaceport never involved the Chimeras in the first place and if they could help save his guardsmen and the initiates, whom he still considered to be his men, then they were worth it. Far more troubling was the astartes' bitter infighting: Now their standing force at the Kasr had been reduced to a mere 300 hundred men, their morale, as ever, low, and their mood dark.

He had anticipated this when he thought up the strategy for the spaceport's assault: the space marines, without their knowledge or consent, would not have a vital or even important role in their assault. They would be tasked merely with keeping the necrons off the guardsmen's backs as Creed and his own fought on. This was not essential, but it would help speed it up. And the Lord Castellan trusted that even these idiots would be able to perfom such a simple task. What worried him about this infighting was how long it would take to spill out towards his own guardsmen: He knew many marines bore an indiscriminate hatred towards the inquisition, and few of them had anything but grudging tolerance towards the Cadian shock troopers. Creed was now worried that he might have unwittingly invited a viper inside his bird's nest. He had never known a space marine chapter to be so divided, so indecisive, so...chaotic. He frowned as this last word formed itself in his mind.

Surely, this was not the work of the Ruinous Powers? Have they affected even the mighty Space Marines? But they did not look mighty, not to his trained eye. They were wondrous fighters, but their lack of focus was on the verge of bringing about their downfall. He just prayed that he would not fall alongside them.

He turned his attention back to the reports he had received. Developments were worrying. The scouting party had reported that the necrons had significantly bolstered their forces at the spaceport and had even Monoliths among them, mighty moving pyramids that shot rays of green death and were near-impossible to bring down. The troops deployed to plant the signalling beacons had failed miserably, they had been unable to elude or break through the necrons' defenses and had to return to the Kasr with their mission unfulfilled. Another bitter news was the foraging party's report: They had been unable to locate the ammunition and supply cachés Creed had left scattered around Cadia. whether this was incompetence or sabotage remained to be seen.

A second scout report shed some light on the necrons' fortifying effort at the spaceport: Apparently, the necron patrols Techmarine Gaius had warned him of were a forward party sent to gather intel on the Kasr and its amassing forces, and they had disappeared soon before the necrons' presence in the spaceport was augmented. He regreted he had not sent someone to deal with them, but he could not spare the men. Surely, he hoped, a few thousand more necrons would not make a difference. But he remembered that hope is often the first step on the road to disappointment.

Most puzzling of all was the last report, drawn up by two Space Marine squads sent by the Lorekeeper to investigate their battle-barge's crash site. Apparently, the destroyed pylon stood over a wide chasm that extended for Emperor knews how many kilometres inside the planet. The dark hole the space marines descended was, they reported, "of foul smell and dark tidings", and they had heard what sounded like "drums. drums in the deep.", as well as felt "the pulsing all around them, as if they were inside a great beast out of Imperial Legend". Their colourful writing masked a strange fact: The pylon seemed to cover something that was abundant with both flora and fauna, as the marines reported "a great many chirping critters and strange plantae, the likes of which have never been reported in the Codices of the Imperium." Creed was unsure what to make of this.

The necrons had purged almost the entire surface of the planet of life, but they...cultivated it underground? kept it hidden? The space marines ventured as far as they could inside the underground forest, until they reached "Impenetrable gates made of bone and living tissue fused together with the strange vegetation that surrounded it, much like apothecary Virgil's visions of the Gates that led to damnation". Creed did not know who this Virgil was nor what were these Gates of Damnation, but it sounded ominous, right enough.

On a lighter note, the Navigators had detected another Space Hulk heading towards Cadia, though they predicted it would land very far from them, on the other side of the planet. The astropaths said that this one bore a distinctive "ork pattern of behavior", and was most likely a Waagh. Creed sighed. He had perhaps a forthnight left before the assault would begin, and all he had to do was watch and wait. He did a great deal of both, lately.

You are the senior Brother-Captain remaining in the Kasr, assuming temporary command of the Chapter until (or perhaps if) the return of Brother Helfrich. You have at your disposal three hundred battered but unbloodied marines, their morale tremendously low and dangerously close to an outbreak of misdirected violence. You have been sitting idly while pondering the entire situation and what to do about it. And then you heard the sound of Jump Pack turbines exhausting madly as their weary owners returned to the Kasr with the news of what had happened at the Space Hulk. Creed has not yet been informed, nor has the rest of your Chapter. You and the remnants of the Strike Team are the only ones to know of the doom that came to Cadia.

• Damn Creed and his guardsmen, the Lorekeeper and his mutinous Astartes, damn them all to the Warp and order an immediate advance upon the enemy's position! Spread these black news to your Chapter and your Chapter alone. Enough politicking and sitting around! Chaos is here, it is your duty to erradicate it! Death or Glory! The Emperor looks favourably upon those who have no fear.

• Do you consult with Creed and the rest of your Chapter in how to best proceed on this? If Chaos and Tyranids are here, this could affect the whole endeavour that is being planned here. The Lord Castellan has a right to know, in a way, since he is your tentative ally. He might hold valuable insight, and, if nothing else, he will be at least prepared for what is to come.

• Do you neither tell Creed nor attack? Knowledge is power: Guard it well. You are undermanned and outgunned, any attack would be fruitless, but to spread these news to the rest of the Chapter and to Creed would undermine their morale and their resolve in fighting the primary threat: the undying army of the necron horde. You can only pray that these two foes will remain engaged with one another long enough to carry out the attack efficiently.

• Do you consult with the sanctioned psykers on this? Though they are considered anathema by your Chapter, they might have valuable knowledge about this situation because of their intimate connection to the Warp and its workings, and desperate times call for desperate measures. They might even know who the sorcerer behind this incursion is, and how to best counter his influence. It is a gamble, however, since you might very well lead them to temptation with the information you now possess.

LOOK UPON MY WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR

Imperial thought for the day: A hundred thousand worlds, ten hundred thousand wars. There is no respite, there is nowhere to hide. Across the galaxy there is only war.

"Brothers! The long night is upon us; the enemy is at our doorstep! Chaos seeks once again to tarnish this world, and it is left for us to defend it. A mere three hundred men against the endless legions of the warp! The guardsmen would choose to aid the Inquisition rather than defend the Imperium, so the task falls to us. But fear not, brothers! Hold fast! Renew your vows before battle! We are the last of the true Black Templars! As our Primarch did long ago when the Emperor was felled by foul Horus, we shall do so now: We will give the enemy no respite, no chance to retreat, we will never surrender! They come here seeking death, and they will find their own. We have been declared traitors for defending the Imperium, and so we honour this sentence by defending it once more! I swear to you, brothers, that we will not fail. We will fight Chaos until Chaos is no more. We wil fight Chaos even in death. We will fight Chaos even if we are consumed by it. Raise your heads high, Space Marines: Today, we march for Mankind and Victory!"

Three hundred Space Marines, the greatest of the Imperium's defenders, marched towards glory. They renewed their vows. They checked their weapons. Brother-Captain Tiberius donned the fallen Reclusiarch's terminator armour, and armed himself with the Chapter's most powerful relic: A mighty daemonhammer covered with hexa- and pentagrammatic wards along with a thundershield, both engraved with a humble signature "Ferrus Manus me fabricat".

Lord Castellan Creed was powerless to stop them, and he was both relieved and furious: Though this meant the guardsmen were no longer under threat by the unstable astartes, they had made a vow to him that they would help his forces when the time came. They were given the services of his techpriests, they were given ammunition, they were given weapons. And now they betrayed them in a manner most vile. And untimely, thought Creed to himself. So be it. Cadia will hold as Cadia has done for millennia, and its defenders will prove their worth beneath the Emperor's gaze once again.

The Chapter marched for two full days before it reached the crashed hulk. Though signs of a great battle were strewn all around it, with many tyranids corpses and some fallen rubric marines, the enemy was nowhere to be found. Techmarine Virgil ventured inside the hulk with a small squad to investigate the ships' Logic Engine. When he came out, he reported to Tiberius that it had apparently originated from somewhere far beyond the Eye of Terror, and its course should have landed it in the Pylon they could see dimly in the west, some five hundred kilometres away from their current position. The tracks were easy enough to follow: Both tyranids and Chaos forces had gone that way.

After five more days of marching and repelling many tyranid and necron sternguard patrols, they finally reached the Pylon and witnessed a scene most curious: A three-way battle was taking place between necrons, chaos marines, and tyranids. The necrons were intent on defending the Pylon, the tyranids were apparently trying to bring it down with a steady but slow charge of Carnifexes and their Bioplasma, and the Chaos forces were...trying to break through the necron ranks, but had steered clear from targeting the Pylon itself. It looked like they sought to enter it. All of the forces were much larger than the space marines' meagre 300: the Thousand Sons numbered at least a thousand, perhaps honouring their namesake, and the tyranids many times that number. The necrons were outnumbered by both but they received continous and apparently endless reinforcements from inside the Pylon, though there was no Necron Lord in sight.

Ahriman seemingly acknowledged the Space Marines arrival with a nod, and gave a little mocking wave with his hand towads them. But he did no more than that, concentrating himself on the battle at hand.

• Charge this treasonous fool and slaughter his forces? Let the machines and the beasts destroy one another. Your mission is here is to destroy Chaos. Ahriman does not seem to be expecting a direct attack: You may well catch him off guard, though his numeric advantage will prove difficult to overcome. However, the Battle-Brothers morale is at an all time high, for they are now finally getting to grips with the enemy and faced with impossible odds: The situation any Astartes favours above all others. Strike while the iron is hot, as they say.

• Do you set up strategic positions around the Pylon and watch as your enemies slaughter one another, waiting for the best time to strike? They seem indifferent towards you, all of them focused on the Pylon. Let them whittle each other down, and strike when it is most suitable to your goal of obliterating Chaos. Perhaps you might even have a chance of destroying the other two forces if you play your hand well.

Bonus fluff: STAR GODS

Deep beneath the surface of mars, inside the Noctis Labyrinth, a dark figure, clothed in dark robes, hovered above a dark background with dark intentions. Another dark figure, not nearly as ominous, sat comfortably upon a strange chair made of living metal. An ancient and deep roar filled the air, and a voice came after it, a voice that had not been heard in the Galaxy since the Emperor's Ascension to the throne of Terra. A voice nearly as old as the star themselves. A voice born out of the fires of Creation, when the universe first came into existence.

"What...comes...now?"

"The machine priests already openly worship you, oh Great One" Replied the sitting figure, mockingly. "What else is it you want? We will harvest all life in the galaxy. We will feed on all its souls."

"What of...him? Is he...truly dead? I will see him...obliterated. Is he...returning?"

"Do not worry yourself unduly, brother. He is far away. The Warp will not allow him to return. It fears him far more than we."

"And...the warp? When will we...see it...gone?" Wheezed the Void Dragon, its ancient corpse twisted and shaped by the Emperor himself into the Noctis Labyrinth the other figures now stood inside.

"Soon, brother. Soon." Answered the Deceiver, rising from his chair and leaving the vast hall.

"Follow...him. See that he...does not...betray us again. I thirst...and hunger...for this galaxy. He must not...stand in...our way." Said the incorporeal voice to the third figure, still hovering above the silvery surface of the Void Dragon's body.

The Nightbringer nodded, and followed the Jackal God towards the stars.

TRICKERY

Imperial thought for the day: When you decide to die, remember to give your enemy the same honour.

"Devastators, set up firing positions on both sides of the ridge. Concentrate your fire on the sorcerers. If you have a clean shot at their warpspawned commander" spat Tiberius, gazing vengefully towards Ahriman "take it. If you do not, conserve your ammunition and take out their squad leaders. Assault squads, do not jump until you are sure you can break their formation. All of you, you are veterans of countless crusades against chaos. You know well what to do. No pity. No remorse. No fear."

The three hundred men advanced and took up their positions. As they marched down the ridge towards the battle, Ahriman's forces still seemed oblivious to them. Brother-Captain Tiberius tried to take advantage of this by ordering a charge as soon as they were in range of the enemies' guns. The tactical squads covered them as the assault squads ran furiously towards the enemy and stopped suddenly: they clashed against an invisible wall and were knocked back. Ahriman turned towards them, and gave another mocking wave. And all around the pylon, chaosfire sprouted from the ground and rained from the heavens, meshed with itself and grew, until it became an impenetrable wall made of the stuff of the warp. This obscured the battle-brothers vision of the battlefield and cut short the tyranid's assault, their sternguard suddenly separated from their main force, who was still inside the perimeter of Ahriman's warp barrier.

The pylon began to fire wildly, its tip erupting in thousands of green, thin wisps of energy that struck the barrier and made it shudder, but caused no damage. Soon the barrier grew to encompass the pylon completely, turning into a huge dome of warpstuff. Nothing could be seen or heard from the inside. The tyranids, their target unreachable for the moment, turned their attention to the Space Marines, still bewildered and positioned to strike at an enemy who had suddenly turned to be too far away. But as the swarm of termagaunts descended upon them, they quickly assumed formation and engaged the enemy. It was clear to all of them that this was a hopeless battle: the tyranid swarm overnumbered them 20-to-1 at the least. But they fought on, while the Warp dome glistened at their backs, sometimes turning translucent and almost ethereal, other times appearing to be more solid and more real than the background it stood on.

"Techmarine Virgil, this is First Techmarine Gaius. Do you read me?"

Virgil, who had been standing back with a devastator squad trying to adapt his improvised auspex array to target Ahriman with a deadly barrage of missiles, was ripped from his comfortable world of numbers and trajectory calculations and answered in a barely audible croak that he could hear Gaius.

"The Lord Castellan transmitted your last known coordinates to us before he left for the spaceport. We have been tracking you since. We are a day away from Orbital Drop Distance, can you hold the enemy until then? Give us the coordinates for the drop locations."

A day? This warp barrier would not hold that long. If you you can deliver another company right into the heart of the enemy's forces, you might have a chance to deal a killing blow and stop this Chaostaint from spreading. But you would remain hopelessly outnumbered against the tyranid swarm. On the other hand, if you tell Gaius to deploy at the tyranid's rear, they would be wide open for a crushing blow, and if the Lorekeeper and Ezekiel manage to kill the hive tyrant, then this battle would be won. It is a fair assumption that by then, however, Ahriman would have probably already infiltrated the Pylon, if he has not already.

Do you give Gaius the coordinates to deploy the drop pods at...

• The Chaos Warcoven surrounding Ahriman?

• The tyranid's rear formations and the Hive Tyrant's location?

DIVIDE ET IMPERA

Imperial thought for the day: Serve Him today, for tomorrow you die.

Virgil relayed the drop-coordinates to Gaius and resumed his work in the Auspex array, now presumably trying to target the Hive Tyrant at the back of the tyranid swarm, though his squadmates mostly ignored him and just tried to hit whatever was in range. Brother-Captain Tiberius held the front line until nightfall, when the tyranids retreated and sent a wave of chameleonic lictors to assault the space marines' positions. This proved to be far more effective than their first assault near the Space Hulk against the Force Commander: Both because they had superior numbers and because the space marines were spread thin over a wide area and couldn't hope to cover it entirely with bolter fire. When dawn broke, at least half a company lay dead, including Brother-Captain Tiberius and all the remaining brother-captains. The tyranids were growing smarter, and though the Astartes knew no fear, they certainly knew the value of leadership, something they now lacked.

With 6 hours or so remaining until Gaius could deploy the drop pods, the warp barrier around the pylon dissipated. This proved to be a welcome respite for the Space Marines: The tyranid rear force they were fighting immediately disengaged and resumed its relentless assault upon the Pylon. Chaos positions were entrenched much in the same places as they had been the previous day, although necron forces had thinned considerably and the pylon seemed to be cracking under the pressure of the Carnifexes' Bioplasma. Without a Captain, the Chapter fell back to Tiberius' previous orders: Take down the sorceres and their commander. Devastators changed their targeting grid towards them, and the remaining space marines initiated a slow and steady advance towards the Pylon and the thousand sons. This proved to be difficult: Rubric Marines were incredibly resilient, much more so than "average" space marines. Though they were not especially deadly, they seemed to be deathless: Being, to all intents and purposes, merely animated suits of armor without any capacity to feel pain or to be disabled by loss of blood or tissue. The small contingent of Space Marines left proved unable to break their ranks and get close enough to Ahriman, and the devastators were having difficulty hitting the sorceres, who used the warp to distort the space around them, proving an elusive target.

All of this changed when the drop pods hit the ground demolishing both the necron and chaos formations', as an entire company of Astartes flowed from them, including both the Lorekeeper and Brother-Captain Ezekiel, the only remaining captain in the entire Chapter. The Accelerator Tower seemed much more precise in its deployment, and all 10 drop pods hit their marks flawlessly. The newly-arrived marines had been kept abreast of the battle through Virgil's tranmissions, and they immediately engaged the sorcerers in meelee combat, felling most of them quickly, and thus apparently disabling or at least slowing the Rubric Marines, whose souls turned completely static without sorcerous guidance. Ahriman himself almost perished at this assault, caught completely off-guard and engaged at the same time by Ezekiel, against whom his psychic assaults had no effect, and the Lorekeeper, who shrugged off most of whatever it was that hit his venerable carapace. But he already had a clear line of sight to the Pylon, and his way was unimpeded by the now very few necrons remaining in the battlefield. He made a mad dash towards the Pylon along with his Warcoven, a squad of a few sorcerers and Rubric Terminators, and using his unholy powers managed to reach it and enter it, disappearing from the battlefield and, at least temporarily, from the world of the living.

This was all that the Chapter needed to finally break the back of the Thousand Sons forces: A moment of uncertainty on their part led to all of the remaining sorcerers on the battlefield being viciously attacked and defeated. All of the Rubric Marines stilled at this, and though they did not fall to the ground, they remained unmoving and unresponsive inside their cursed suits of armour, their tainted souls lost inside the nightmare of Ahriman's making, his Rubric. The remaining battle-brothers were now advancing towards the Pylon, destroying the paralysed chaos marines with vicious blasts of melta and bolter fire until only ash was left, and repelling the scant few necrons that still patrolled the battlefield. The Lorekeeper ordered a careful retreat: He saw no reason to remain on the battlefield fighting the swarm beasts, endless as they were, and he was anxious to resume course to the spaceport and honour his tentative agreement with the Lord Castellan. The tyranids could wait.

However, before a full retreat could be mounted, the Pylon finally gave in to the Carnifex assault and crumbled. Slabs of black and gray stone slid down from its top, and its foundations shook and exploded, bringing the entire structure down with them in an avalanche of gray and green, some its pieces still letting out their eerie lightning. Helfrich could scarcely believe it. It had taken them more than one cyclonic torpedo to bring one of these structures down, and they tyranids seemed to be able to do it with ease. Perhaps the sorcerer's entry had weakened it somehow, or perhaps other, darker forces were at work. It would require investigation. But not right now. Right now they had a duty, however distasteful, to honor. It proved to be a difficult duty, however, when the entirety of the Tyranid swarm turned its attention upon the battle-brothers after destroying the Pylon.

This was not, by all means, a hopeless situation. He had already ordered a retreat, which Brother-Captain Ezekiel was quick to lead, and most of the Astartes were already well on their way out of the battlefield and headed towards the Land Hulk, only fifty kilometres away, half a day's march, or even less. The Lorekeeper had with him half a company, most of them armed with heavy weapons, whose duty was simply to purge the battlefield from the chaos abominations that Ahriman had left behind. He could not risk the sorcerer coming back, unlikely though it seemed, and re-animate these chaos marines. He never counted on the tyranids being able to destroy the Pylon at all, much less as quickly as this. Still, most of their work was done. A few rubric marines remained here and there, but he reasoned they were not worth losing half a company over. It seemed unlikely they were going anywhere soon, so he ordered the marines he had with him to fall back and leave the tyranids to their alien folly.

What turned all of this into a hopeless situation was the sudden emergence of scores of Trygons from the hole in the earth the Pylon had left. They were massive serpentine creatures similar to Raveners but much larger in size, and capable of burrowing in the ground and tunneling through it with an incredible sense of direction and speed. The swarm seemingly ignored the Lore Keeper, and immediately started following the Trygons inside the tunnels they were digging, their destination obviously the Land Hulk, as the tremors beneath the Astartes' feet confirmed, as did the Land Hulk's auspex, said Gaius in a hollow, hopeless motone. The massive vehicle would be helpless against an attack from below, and everyone and everything inside it would be destroyed well before the retreating companies ever managed to reach it, leaving the Chapter effectively stranded in Cadia, without any hope of restocking their supplies or ammunition, and without any form of transportation or even long-range communication. The swarm grew smarter still.

There was no other choice. Lorekeeper Helfrich ordered the remaining fifty Space Marines on the battlefield to head towards the tunnels, destroy the trygons and collapse them, hopefully giving enough time for the remaining companies to reach the Land Hulk and mount a defense. The Lorekeeper himself lead this hopeless assault, and the last that Ezekiel, already far away, would see of him was his immense bulk disappearing inside surface of the planet, hitting beasts left and right with his immense mailed fist and streams of vaporizing pyrum-petrol, his comm-bead eerily silent as the swarm fell upon him.

Gaius reasoned later that the Lorekeeper must have succeeded; the remaining three hundred marines were able to reach the Land Hulk and board it without problems, and the Auspex sensors detected no incoming movement from below the ground, nor from above it. There was no need to even defend the vehicle, since the tyranids had been unable to reach it. You have with you four hundred marines, much like you had at the very start. But a hundred of these are initiates, far from receiving the training and the implants required to become truly super-human. And you now face a choice.

• Do you forsake the agreement with the Lord Castellan completely and order the Land Hulk to head towards your last battlefield? Gaius reported that he could not detect any movement nor tyranid activity in it. The beasts had gone back to wherever it was that they had come from, and you are still at a loss as to why they were even here in the first place. You can try and investigate the Pylon's remnants and what lies beneath them for answers, as well as for the target you have been pursuing: The Chaos Sorcerer who led the thousand sons, and ultimately, who led the Lorekeeper to his death.

• Do you leave this for later? These ruins are not going anywhere. The Inquisitor is still your best hope of getting information about all the events you have gone through since you crash-landed in this damned rock. And the Lore Keeper was very explicit in his instructions: Though the Chapter came first, Mankind came next, and this, right now, meant the Cadian Shock Troopers and their incoming guest. It would be fitting to his memory to honor his last orders and head towards the spaceport. It's high time you got some answers.

THE LHO-STICK SMOKING MAN

Imperial thought for the day: The difference between heresy and treachery is ignorance.

The Land Hulk was at least two weeks away from the spaceport, though the battlebrothers were grateful for the rest. All four companies had fought hard against odds that seemed insurmountable, both daemonic and alien in nature, and not a single space marine was unbloodied. But all were victorious. Now, they were enjoying the righteous peace of the Emperor's justice. Captain Ezekiel, however, was deep in thought: He was not a skilled orator like the late Helfrich, and he was unsure of what he should do when he came face-to-face with his old master, Inquisitor Silas Marr. He did not even knew what to tell him. Should he report the events that had transpired on Cadia, or should he keep silent? His chapter was excommunicate traitoris. The Holy Ordos might have very well come to wipe them out, though this seemed unlikely given the circumstances. Still...Without the Lorekeeper's guidance, he was lost. His only skill was in battle, his only reason for promotion to brother-captain was bravery and valour, not ability to command. And now he may very well be driving all that was left of his chapter inside the wolf's jaws. Silas would not come unprotected, and even two companies of Deathwatch marines were probably more than a match for 400 weary, leaderless astartes. But he did the only thing he knew how to do: He followed orders. Even if they were from a dead man.

He had killed the Reclusiarch, yes, but that was different. Jeremiah had executed a battlebrother without provocation. They were not the Imperial Guard: they did not kill for simple disagreements. All battlebrothers deserved a chance to redeem themselves in battle; Capital punishment was only applicable when the taint of Chaos was obvious. And he had hoped that, with that strike of his scythe, he would restore order to the Chapter. The truth could not be more different: The Chapter had barely recognized the Lorekeeper's guidance, and fragmented. Three companies openly broke their compact with the Lord Castellan and went off in a pursuit of their own, their motives still clouded to Ezekiel. And now they were returning to their very first duty, the duty that had saved them from destruction but had also erupted in open conflict among the chapter. To aid Creed. To save Cadia. To ensure an Inquisitor, one of the chapter's most hatred boogeymen, could land safely in their planet. Was he doing the right thing, he asked himself constantly, as the days rolled by idly, the landscape never changing.

Meanwhile, Master Apotechary Galen had his hands full: At least a tenth of the firsth company had fallen ill on the first day of travelling, shaking uncontrollably and with a fever that would have killed any normal human. This was unheard of: Apart from Nurgle's plagues, space marines were immune to disease. The affected astartes soon started to develop mutations, small ones at first, disfigured fingers and sores, though their minds seemed in agony rather than thrall to Chaos. The psykers present in the Land Hulk that were rescued from the Manufactorum stated very clearly that they could not detect any presence of Chaos. This seemed to be a true if horrific disease, not a work of the ruinous powers.

Over the next weeks, thirty more marines had succumbed to the disease. And their minds seemed to be going as well: They spoke of visions of a great devourer, of blackness, and they tried to claw and bite their way out of their restraints. They seemed chewed their own lips and drank the blood that seeped from them, and whenever they were left unsupervised, they would start a fight with the other sick astartes. Soon the medbay became painted with red, blood dripping from the plasteel slabs the sick marines were restrained in as the apothecaries tried to quell their violent urges. Galen was at a loss, and even consulted both Gaius and Ezekiel as to what he should do. Both of them had no idea: The psykers aboard still insisted that this was not the work of Chaos, and as long as the sick marines remained quarantined, they were not a danger to anyone aboard the Hulk. So Galen tended to them and prayed for the Emperor's guidance.

When they finally reached the spaceport, it was deserted, apart from the hulking spaceship that had landed in the middle of it. It was immense: It could easily have spanned the length of three battlebarges, at least 20 kilometres from port to starboard, and over a kilometre in both width and height. If this was one of the famed Black Ships of the Inquisition, it was a new model: This...thing looked like more a planet-destroying weapon than a space-faring vessel, bristling as it was with cannons and torpedo tubes, although its jet black colour gave it a disconcerting, funereal look, as if it was a ship that carried the dead, not caused them. Atop its rear was mounted something akin to an Imperial Shrine, although it was coloured entirely in black and it lacked the stained coloured glasses commemorating famous victories over the Enemies of Man.

Imperial guardsmen lay dead all around the landing pad, and there was no sign of necrons. It seemed that the guardsmen won, even if it was a phyrric victory: Ezekiel counted the corpses of most of the regiment they encountered on the Kasr. That meant almost ten thousand men dead, and their enemies vanished. In front of the Black Ship was erected a crude tent, and inside it a middle-aged man with an amiable expression was smoking a lho-stick while browsing through a datapad. Ezekiel ordered his men to stay back in the Land Hulk, and approached the figure cautiously. The cigarette-smoking man was guarded on both his sides by...Creatures, Ezekiel reasoned, that looked human but certainly weren't. They were humanoid, dressed entirely in black, with huge, oversized rifles stocked against their shoulders and prepared to fire. They wore black bodygloves that fit the skin tightly, and over their eyes there were only grim visors adorned with skull insignias. Ezekiel took stock of their weapons. Exitium Rifles. These were Vindicare Assassins, capable of taking out more than one squad of space marines from long range. Their weapons punched through even the best terminator armor and killed its occupant effortlessly. Only one type of person merited such protection.

"Inquisitor Marr" said Ezekiel to the cigarette-smoking man, entering the tent cautiously.

"Ezekiel, my boy! It has been so long. Come, sit! Do not be intimidated by these two. I have many more" The Inquisitor grinned in a good natured way, and continued "Enough even to spot the very unusual vehicle your Chapter now calls its fortress-monastery. Pray tell me, where did that design come from? I have never seen such a Stantard Template Construct before."

Ezekiel shrugged off the provocation and spoke in a confident voice "It seems you have won your battle. Where is the rest of the guardsmen?"

"Oh, most of them are dead. After the xenos were routed they started fighting each other, see. Many fell to madness and started to mutate and scream for blood and darkness, and so...Well, you see the results. I assume they were ill."

"You assume? You know more."

"Indeed. As do you. You have come at a most fortuitous moment, for It will be here soon. And none of us are going anywhere, since the pylons damaged the ship's propulsion system before we could destroy them. But in the meantime, you may tell your men to stand down and come closer. I have no intention of harming you or them, and I do not consider your Excommunicate Traitoris notice valid. You must have many questions, I imagine. Do ask. And then I shall ask mine in turn."

This mechanic is very simple: ask the questions you want to know the answers about. The Inquisitor might not know all the answers, and he might lie a lot, but it's essentially this. What do you want to know from him? I imagine a lot of the posts will contain similar questions, so i'll try to merge them as best I can. The dialogue that will follow will depend upon the types of questions you decide to ask.

Remember, if you do not wish for the inquisitor to know of something, then refrain from asking a question that give away such information. And also remember, you have been given a lot of second-hand information about the Inquisitor, his intentions, his retinue, his 'assets', etc. this is your only chance of finding those things out, should he deign to tell you the truth. I'll wait a while and then collate the questions to create the dialogue. It shouldn't be too hard. Obviously, asking the Inquisitor about multihead-dicks and such will be disregarded, though perhaps in a blooper reel we could see what he'd think of those.

And start paying attention to the Imperial thoughts for the Day because they contain clues and are important, goddamnit!

Bonus fluff: THE LORE KEEPER'S TALE

I was recruited by the Black Templars when they passed through the Malfian Sub-Sector in a crusade heading to Dusk, where the planet had been overrun by khornates seeking the legendary Haarlock Legacy treasures. I myself was a high-born son of a respected malfian family at the time, though my bloodline was what some considered less than pure: The Tainted Blood of Malfi, they called it. Cunning and treachery ran in our veins, or so I was told, but that didn't bother me much. Cunning and treachery had served me well while, as a small child, I survived a world of intrigue in the aristocratic courts with remarkable grace. My father was proud. He said I would soon be ready to be inducted in "the secrets". He talked of them in hushed tones, and I was eager to see what they were.

But my education was entrusted to another man, one I had come to value highly: A former drill abbot in the Schola Progenium, father had hired him to instill in me the necessary qualities for both a strategian, a leader, and a skilled orator. What father did not know was that this drill abbot, a fellow by the name of Cain, was not a drill abbot at all: Though raised in the Schola Progenium, He was a former commisar in the Valhallan Imperial Guard regiment, and he had retired to Malfi to live a 'quiet life, but with some excitement'. He posed as a drill abbot, I suspect, merely to get into the good graces of the high-born families and their daughters. But he seemed to genuinely care for me.

He told me many stories, and confided to me that he was terrified most of the time while in battle: He seemed to have a genuine distaste for violence and a vigorous care for the lives under his command. He repeatedly told me he was no hero, but his stories painted a different picture. He further taught me the value of cunning and a little bit of trickery, but instilled in me something of a more religious fervor: He said treachery and deceit should never be used for personal gain, but for the good of Mankind. He smirked while he said it, but I took it to heart. This man did not make me a zealot, but he did make me a curious scholar seeking the Emperor's Grace. I was enraptured by the ideals contained in the Imperial Creed, much to his and my father's distaste, though commisar Cain said I should choose my own path regardless of his. One day he was called away, and before we parted, he told me this "Remember...It is better to live for the Emperor than to die for yourself." I took these words to heart.

I spent many days studying the Codices of the Ecclesiarchy, and though some of their ideas sounded backward and at times savage, I could see their necessity, and the truth of them. The Imperium was a dark place, besieged by all sides by Chaos and Aliens, ready to devour or destroy us if our will should falter for a single moment. One moment was all it took. A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy. As I delved deeper into books that no normal citizen of the Imperium should have access too, I became enchanted with the Emperor's Ideals for mankind. Peace through War. Security through Vigilance. This was what I had truly sought for: A purpose. I perhaps lacked the zeal of many of my compatriots, but I understood the necessity of their zeal. I understood the necessity of faith. It was plain for all to see: If we were not firm of purpose, we would fall to Chaos and mankind would be doomed. Sacrifices had to be made.

On the very same day the commissar left, my father took me to his study and said he was ready to show me 'the secrets'. I was led through dark corridors which I did not know existed inside our mansion, and deep beneath the labyrinthine tunnels lay an altar surrounded by candles that gave off scents with the promise of pleasure and comfort. In the middle of the altar was something much like a bed, and around it sigils and engravings I could not recognize. My father told me to watch as he took one of his handmaidens by the hand and leading her to the bed, mounted her before my eyes, all the while both of them chanting unearthly melodies that filled my mind with forbidden, nay, heretical thoughts. Something answered their chant: A horned figure enveloped in smoke with a female silhouette, her ample breasts bare for all to see, stepped out of thin air and joined them in their unholy ritual. As they climaxed, all of them screamed the same word. Slaanesh.

I fled. I was far more intelligent than my father ever gave me credit for. This was a summoning of unholy forces, though I did not yet know what they were. My own father was a heretic! He consorted with daemons. I could not let this lie...Though I was tempted to join them for a moment with their promises of earthly delights I could never imagine, I remembered commissar Cain's last words to me. Live for the Emperor. And the Imperial Creed. Purge the heretic. As the fire raged in the mansion with my father and his succubi still trapped inside, I looked proudly at the empty gallon of pyrum-petrol and the pilot light of the flamer my father kept in his armory.

It was fate, I suspect, that led the Black Templars to me that very night. The Emperor works in mysterious ways. It seemed the commander of their task force, a chaplain by the name of Jeremiah, had been tracking down a slaaneshi cult for days in Malfi, believed to be linked to the Dusk incident. This would normally be the inquisition's work, but as I was told later, Jeremiah never trusted them much. As he found me staring at the flames that consumed my former home, he asked what had happened. And I told him. He gave me a hard, long look. After a long silence, he asked me if I would be willing die in the Emperor's service. I told him I would live for the Emperor as long as He willed it. This seemed to satisfy him.

I was inducted into the Black Templars chapter of the Adeptus Astartes at the age of fifteen. And though my blood is tainted, my mind is pure. The Emperor protects.

Bonus fluff: THE RECLUSIARCH ASCENDANT

"Rise, Heiliges Jeremiah of the Black Templars. Do you know where you are?"

Jeremiah looked around. The sky was crimson and there was no sun. Pulses of reddish energy coursed through the surface he was standing on.

"I am dead, and in Hell."

"Yes, this is hell for you. Do you know who I am?"

The Reclusiarch looked at the figure that had been speaking to him. It was a hulking shape fully covered by an ornate power armor adorned with spikes and skulls, bearing the livery and the heraldry of the Word Bearers Traitor Legion. The speaker's face was obscured by a horned helmet, though the helmet was somewhat familiar to Jeremiah...He couldn't quite place it where he'd seen it before.

"No."

"Ignorance is the Emperor's gift to mankind. Do you know why you are here?"

"Yes. Brother-Captain Ezekiel killed me. He betrayed me. He sided himself with that daemonic dreadnought. But I do not know why I am in such an evil place. I have been a devout man. In death, I seek only respite." Jeremiah tried to inject a measure of righteous anger in his voice, but it rang hollow in this unhallowed place.

"Indeed. But the choice of afterlife is not yours to make. The Ruinous Powers saw fit to bring you back. Are you not pleased with this?"

"No. I will rather die a thousand times more than to serve as a tool for the dark gods."

"But you will never die again, Reclusiarch. Do not make the mistake of thinking I sympathize with the Chaos Gods. I was merely at the wrong place, at the wrong time. I have fought for an Imperium Undivided, and the dark powers of the warp are merely means to an end."

"Then I shall strike you down where you stand, heretic, for you are tainted and not deservant of the Emperor's Light, no matter your treacherous motives."

"I believe you will not, Brother. You do not have any power over me here, inside the Eye. But I can give you that power. I can grant you revenge against those who have wronged you. I can give you a chance to correct the mistakes your chapter has made ever since your tragic landing on Cadia. I can give you all of that."

"Silence, heretic! I will not hear your poisonous promises!"

"Ah, but you should, brother. You should. What is there left for you? The Emperor is dead. The Imperium must be forged anew. Is it not the time to bring the fires of retribution upon those who seek to undermine it at every turn?"

"Do not call me brother, heretic. The Emperor lives. I will never sell my soul to your dark promises."

"I am afraid he is dead, Reclusiarch. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, he is dead. You know this, though you do not care to admit it."

The Reclusiarch's voice trembled with uncertainty as he spoke "And what if he is? His light shines upon us still. Do you think me so weak to give myself to the warp merely because my father is dead? I will carry on his work if he is unable to do it."

"You will? You sound uncertain. No man can carry out a god's work. That is, no normal man. You are dead and trapped in the warp, to be toyed with by the whims of those whom you've fought your entire existence. Is this the destiny you desire? You will find no peace here. Nurgle will rot your body, Tzeentch will rot your mind, Khorne will call for your blood, and Slaanesh will devour your purity. That is what awaits you if you do not accept what I offer."

"And what is it you offer...heretic?"

"Justice. The punishment for treachery is retribution" Said Eliphas the Inheritor, Dark Apostle of the Word Bearers.

SUB UMBRA ALARUM TUARUM

Imperial thought for the day: Dark dreams lie upon the heart

Ezekiel turned off his comm-bead and took a seat in front of the inquisitor. He regarded him for a long time before speaking:

"What are you doing here?"

"Waiting. What about you?"

"We came here to repell Abaddon's forces. You must know this."

The Inquisitor looked around bemused, and chuckled.

"If so, then you have done a splendid job, my boy. It seems Cadia is free of the Ruinous Powers. I see none of them here."

Ezekiel frowned, unsure if he should mention what had transpired in the planet. He knew this light-hearted manner of the Inquisitor, this was how he got his answers.

"You said you were waiting. Waiting for what?"

"You'll see soon enough. Is there any more you wish to ask of me?"

"How did you get here? Warp travel no longer works."

"I do not propose to tell you that."

"...What of the Imperium?"

"What of it?"

"How fares it, these days? All goes well?"

"Well, some of the High Lords have been gossiping --" Ezekiel grabbed the Inquisitor by the collar and roared in his face "Do you think me a clown, Marr?! You know full well what I mean! The Emperor is dead! The undead walk on the surface of Cadia! Warp travel is disrupted! What is happening?!"

If the Inquisitor had been a second longer in waving his hand, two Exitium rounds would have reduced the Brother-Captain's skulls to a fine red mist. The pair of Vindicare stood their weapons down at their master's signal, but remained wary.

"There is no need to get flustered, Ezekiel. The Emperor is dead, you say? How curious. I wonder how do you know this?"

"I...He...Lord Castellan Creed told us, he said his navigators could no longer see the Astronomican's light." Said Ezekiel, letting go of the Inquisitor's robe.

"Did he now? And you believed him?"

"I had no reason not to."

"Indeed. I wonder what else you know."

Ezekiel gave in: "There are tyranids in Cadia. We fought many swarms. Brother Helfrich was lost to them. And we fought a powerful chaos sorcerer that tried to infiltrate one of the necron pylons. He got away, but we destroyed his forces, about a thousand of them. There are only a handful of them left, lost to the bowels of this accursed planet."

"A chaos sorcerer? From which legion?"

"The thousand sons. They bore the azure and gold, and he filled the battlefield with chaosfire."

"How curious. A pity you let him get away. But no matter, I'm sure destroying a full thousand chaos marines shall redeem many sins you and yours have committed."

"Me and mine are pure. What are you implying?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing. Mind wandering, I expect. Comes with old age. You have done well, no doubt. And the presence of tyranids, necrons and chaos sorcerers is surely portentous."

"It is. Why are they here, Inquisitor? One of our scouts explored a cave beneath a pylon; they reported it was like a massive living organism with plantas and animals aplenty. Yet the necrons destroy all life in their path. What is this? What is happening?"

"A living thing, eh? How curious."

"Yes. And even more curious is the fact that both a few of my marines and many of the guardsmen have succumbed to a strange illness that causes mutation and madness."

"Ah, your marines, too? Well, it is to be expected. It affects everything equally, or so it is said. I expect more conditioned minds and bodies are more resistant to its effects."

"The effects of what? What is this "It" you talk about?"

The Inquisitor remained silent, his expression blank.

"Very well. And what of Creed? Is he alive? Where are the rest of the guardsmen?"

"Some survived, they are inside my ship. For questioning, you see. Creed himself has succumbed to the madness and has been confined. We could not get a word out of him. Shame, really, a leader of men like him. Nothing like what you are."

"What I am? Tell me what is happening, Inquisitor, or I swear I will order my men to strike you down."

"The Emperor Protects."

"Tell me, damn you! What are you doing here! Why are you not hunting us?! What is this place?! What is happening? Tell me!"

"Shush, shush, child. Be calm. I do not know what this planet hides, that knowledge rests only within the Black Library of the Eldar, and no man has ever entered it, though some say Ahriman of the Thousand Sons came close. Perhaps he did more than that. Perhaps he was the one you fought. All I know is this planet hides something important, something that has awakened after the God-Emperor's demise. Something that calls darkness to itself. I do not know what it is."

"And so you have come here? While the Imperium burns? There are a thousand evils in the galaxy, a million places of absolute darkness. Why here? Why now?"

"You'll see it, when it comes. But if you need answers, I need something in return. I shall need your help for this, Ezekiel. You know you are no leader of man. But I am. Your chapter is already falling apart. The guardsmen told me. Other Inquisitors are looking for you, to exterminate you. You will not survive this place, you will not survive what is to come without my guidance. Are you ready to serve your master once more? The Tyrant Star is coming, Ezekiel. Will you help me fight it?"

Ezekiel froze. Those words brought back long-forsaken memories of an emotionless childhood, though there was affection there, there was purpose. There was something more than just the slice of the blade. Slowly, the Space Marine divested himself of his weapons and knelt in front of the Inquisitor, and answered:

• Yes?

• No?

NO GODS, NO MASTERS

Imperial thought for the day: There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter and the laughter of thirsting gods.

"No."

"I'm afraid I can't accept that answer, my boy. I need you. You survived the Tyrant Star. I trained you, and the Black Templars improved you. All of your life has been leading to this. Your time spent fighting necrons in the Deathwatch, the "chance" encounter with the Wrathborn, your chapter here...I have molded you. And now I shall use you, and you shall help me use your Chapter. Vindicare, disable him but keep him alive. Then take him to the Reclusiam."

Ezekiel had already slipped his phase sword into his hand and was rising in a striking arc, decapitating the three men standing before him with lightining speed.

"No. I'm no tool to be used. You've shaped nothing, Silas. My Will is my Chapter's, my destiny theirs, and theirs mine. I bow to no one but the Emperor."

Ezekiel turned on his comm-bead and told the Land Hulk to power up all their weapon systems and target them on the ship. He then ripped through the tent and stood in front of the ship's open entrance hatch, the ramp lowered. He peered into the darkness inside, and bellowed:

"Come out! Your master lies slain. I will hear no more of your lies. You are tainted. This Inquisitor sought to come here only to study his obsession. He does not serve mankind. Do you stand by him?"

"We stand by no one but the Emperor" Answered a voice from the inside. And the Deathwatch came out, their armour all blackened but their right shoulder pads, who bore their chapter of origin's insignia. All of them wore Tactical Dreadnought Armour, and all of them bore the same insignia. Black Templars.

"So you have come for us. What will you do?"

Endless Black Templar Deathwatchers poured from the ship, and many more vehicles and personnel, Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and Primaris Psykers, from the side hatches. The Chapter was hopelessly outnumbered. The ship's mighty cannons trained on the Land Hulk.

"Your Chapter stands accused of desertion, of treachery, of heresy, of executing exterminatus without due authority, of straying from the emperor's light and into the path of Chaos. Your actions in Cadia have not improved this. You slayed your own Reclusiarch, he who keeps the faith; You may have fought bravely against the Thousand Sons, but you abandoned your comrades-in-arms to pursue a lofty ideal that could have come later. Loyalty to your Battle-Brothers always comes first. You betrayed them and left them to die in the xenos' hands. You sought compact with heretical Mechanicus and built an abomination; you allowed a heretical psyker to run free and open a Warp Gate. Through and through, you proved yet again that all other humans apart from yourselvers are merely fodder for your insane ambition, by denying both the Guardsmen and the Inquisitor assistance. And now you have murdered him in cold blood. Your Chapter is a stain in the history of the Imperium, Brother-Captain Ezekiel. It would have been better for you to accept the Ruinous Powers gifts, for then at least you would not have lied to yourselves." Declared the apparent Leader of the Deathwatch marines.

"We are sworn to pursue Chaos whenever it presents itself! Jeremiah was tainted, The Inquisitor was tainted, did you not hear his words?! We root out heresy! We fight for mankind!"

"You fight for nothing. Still your lying tongue. You have done enough. You have been weighed in the balance, and found wanting. The sentence is execution."

Ezekiel was the first to fall. An Exitium round turned his upper body to a fine red paste. The Chapter fought bravely, but it was hopeless. Against two companies of terminators, scores of Predator Tanks, and many regiments of Stormtroopers and Primaris Psykers, they were outmatched. Not even the Land Hulk's mighty weapons and Drop Pods were of use; there was no time to use them. Though Ezekiel's warning to power up the systems proved useful in shrugging off the first assault, he had never imagined the sheer numbers of their attackers. In the end, the vehicle was reduced to a heap of scrap metal, its drop pods scattered around its carcass.

The broken battle-brothers lay dying, the battlefield slippery with their blood and guts. The attackers were vicious; their eviscerators tore through the Astartes in a bloody mess of bone and bile. Techmarine Gaius was pulverized instantly when one of the Predator Anihilator's twin-linked lascannons hit him. The scout company, former cadian men, were slaughtered mercilessly; boys no older than fourteen had their skulls stomped to the ground by the Terminatour's mighty boots and reduced to a pulp, their broken bodies thrown towards the attackers as improvised projectiles, loaded with meltabombs. The Adeptus Mechanicus and the few psykers who had followed the Chapter aboard the Land Hulk were taken out and burned alive by streams of melta fire, screaming in agony as the streams of pyrum-petrol seared their bodies and souls. The attacking battle-psykers left many battle-brothers babbling incoherently and convulsing in unthinkable pain before a Black Templar thunderhammer felled them. When the attacking force found the diseased marines in the medicae bay, being tended to by Master Apothecary Galen, they levelled the place with a barrage of autocannon fire and ripped the apothecary's spine out of his body and placed it on a spike, considering him the culprit for what they thought was the Nurgle's Rot afflicting these marines. The diseased became deceased, and nothing was left of them.

Though some of the attacking forces suffered casualties, they were shrugged off nonchalantly. This was not a battle; it was a massacre. At the end of the day, the Exterminating Angels were no more. Their legacy one of chaos and corruption, or so the Black Templars would later say, their ashes scattered to the four winds and their gene-seed considered too vile to be even retrieved. Deserters and heretics deserved no mercy. They were burned down to the bone and left to rot under the Cadian sun.

And in his tomb of a thousand years, Ignatius Helfrich opened his mouth and screamed as he heard the laughter of the thirsting gods.