The sons of corax.
Okay, shrike here, and this is my first story, which I shall make up as I go along. This helps me talk to you guys to work on it and hear from you. I'll be posting segments of it in the comments, and after I've had feedback, It'll be put into this article. With the help of Viktor von Domm, this is what I've come up with so far:
some things you should know beforehand:
This story is about the muninn battle company, a detachment of Agapito's Talons of the raven guard during the Horus heresy, fresh from Istvaan. The other main battle company in the Talons is called huginn. Battle companies consists of around 200 astartes, each led by a commander. Within these battle companies are battlegroups, consisting of about 50 astartes, each led by a veteran sergeant. Muninn's leading battlegroup is Gungir, led by veteran sergeant Validus.
main character's information
Commander Lenore is armed with a plasma pistol and power fist. Lenore is a veteran, having served over two centuries. His trademark is his left side, famously blown off by his trusty plasma pistol in his first battle as a sergeant. For his actions that day, Lenore was promoted to be the new commander of Muninn. The plasma pistol was crafted in the days long before the heresy, and is made of sterner stuff than it's more modern counterparts- it survived the overheating and Lenore still uses it.
though he is a comparative youth to others, Epistolary Audax has shown great aptitude at harnessing the powers of the warp. His rise to glory started in the events leading up to the dropsite massacre, in fighting on the the mining world of Herso. He is known for his banter and joking attitude amongst muninn, but he has his dark side.
Chaplain Praxis is the battle company's chaplain, wearing his ancient terminator armour and wielding his fearsome crozius arcanum and heavy flamer. His proudest moment was when he was seperated from his fellow brothers on a daemon world in the warp. He managed to burn his way through the horde of daemons, when his weapon ran out using it as a club. The newfound Ordo Malleus happened to be operating in-system secretly and came to his aid. He still has the scorch-wounds from his encounter with the world's daemon lord, and thus scarcely removes his skull helm.
the story so far:
Lenore found Praxis in the shrine in their attached stormbird- "nex in obscurum", praying.
"Sorry, chaplain, for interuppting your prayer, but we'll be entering real-space in a matter of seconds, and I want a command council about our great victory over the eldar. The unpredictability of the warp has unfortunately caused us to re-emerge into space outside a mining world, called Herso. It's not a problem, we're full of fuel and can easily make it back to deliverance within the hour." informed Lenore.
"Excellent news, commander." Replied Praxis. "I'll be with you in a minute."
He left the shrine a few seconds later, and rounded up his fellow chaplains.
"Brothers!" He shouted to the assemblage, "A great victory was won here today over the vile eldar, and it shall be remembered as long as the ravenspire stands tall!"
He continued- "Many of our brothers have fallen, and their names shall be carved into the stones of remembrance before the rest of the talons. Our sorrow is to be remembered in your mind, not for it to consume your body. Remember them with your body by crushing the enemies of the emperor, not with sadness and regret! While a man loyal to the imperium still draws breath, it will not be in vain!" His voice lowered. "Now head to the council of war room for debriefing. Commander Lenore wishes to speak with you, and all the other leaders."
As the last few sergeants entered the room and took thier seats, Lenore stood and began to speak.
"The sons of Corax emerge victorious once more, and as I speak we are entering real-time space. We have emerged outside a small mining world, Herso, several systems away from deliverence. This is but a small inconvenience, stopping us returning triumphant to the ravenspire by a few minutes. We shall all-"
And then a squeal of mechanics, and a burst of static came through the speakers arrayed around the room. The image of a proud man appeared on the screen above Lenore.
"This is Inquisitor Velox, communicating to all imperial forces in the Herso system. We have ordered all forces to stay clear of this area due to suspicion of daemonic corruption. This world had gone silent 5 days ago, with no response. All communications were down."
Then static filled the screen, and it reverted to the last frozen image of Velox, catching him in mid sentence.
The message was all too clear. Get out. Then a series of loud explosions and quakes. Lenore and Praxis ran to the bridge to see a scene of complete devastation. Thier accompanying strike cruisers and imperial navy ships were down. All of them. The stormbird's engines were down, and the commander-at-sail was doing all he could to redirect power to them. There was no hope of getting the engines back up, and they were alread getting pulled into the orbit.
they fell, screaming through the air like an asteroid. Panels and debris stripped off and burnt up in the atmosphere.
"20,000 metres to go, sir!"
...
"10,000!"
...
"5,000!"
...
"2,500!"
...
"1,000!"
and then...
nothing.
Lenore worked his arm into a gap, and using the formidable strength granted by the bionics within, pushed a huge armour plate from his torso. He rose from the rubble, light glinting from his bionic eye. He heard a grunt, and turned around to see Praxis breaking through the wreckage. His skull helm cracked and broken, he cast it aside, revealing his hideous burns and scar tissue from his struggle with the norn queen decades ago. A huge blast of energy tore him from his thoughts, and he spun to his left, power fist activated, plasma pistol charged and ready, expecting daemons that the inquisition suspected were present, but then audax stepped out, eyes leaking bright blue fire.
"Might as well get out of there in style, eh?"
The trio then spent the next hour or so looking for other surviviors, and found close to 50, all astartes. The servitors, serfs and the other humans had persihed. They could not survive like astartes could. They were going to continue, but then a thought struck Praxis.
"The inquisition banned anyone from going here because of some unconfirmed threat, right? And anything on this side of the equator would have heard us."
Realising what Praxis was getting at, Lenore's eyes widened.
"We have to get out of here. Now!"
They trekked along the deserted plains, constantly looking over thier shoulders for signs of life or daemons. It was past midnight when they found a sheer cliff face, going for miles wide, several hundred feet up. With no other option, the astartes ventured into a cave in the cliff. mine cart tracks led to deeper tunnels, but the astartes moved on ahead, trying to find a reasonable place to rest and gather thier bearings.
eventually reaching a suitable antechamber they sat down and beggan thier routine of planning thier next move and checking on weapons and equipment.
"so, what do we do now?" asked Urkhas, a relatively new sergeant, breaking the silence.
"the only thing we can do." stated Audax. "try and find a means of communication. There's bound to be some vox stations on this damned rock."
Praxis remained unconvinced. "If these daemons overran the local PDF without any noise coming over the vox, they must have destroyed thier vox arrays. All we can do is pray to the emperor that that Velox deems us worthy enough of his time to send us help."
The silence returned upon the large group, the only noise being the racking of boltguns and the occasional clink of a grenade as a marine walked about.
As quick as it was unexpected, over half of the raven guard were killed by blurs of motion. Audax was wounded in that brief struggle, but managed to slay one of the creatures with his force staff. On further inspection, it was some kind of giant metal insect with dozens of legs. Even the Emperor's sons weren't expecting that. They were looking for rampaging daemons, not giant insects. Lenore leaned in over the twitching creature, and sent a plasma round through it's head just to be sure. He was hailed over the vox link by Praxis- he had found something. The newfound enemies were guarding no mere cave- they were guarding a sepulchre.
As Praxis turned to get the others over, another insect smacked him off his feet, requiring some strength seeing as he was in full terminator gear. The abominations snaked around the walls, dozens of them, and soon every raven guard was fighting for his life. Bolt rounds had to be sent through eyes or between armoured exoskeleton plates to cause any significant damage, and the astartes adapted quickly by drawing it's attention away, then using a well-placed krak grenade placed in unarmoured gaps to destroy them from the inside. As the last of the monsters were wiped out by blasts of plasma and crackling power weapons, there were only a dozen raven guard left.
Audax single-handedly slew a trio of the monstrosities, and the survivors made thier way towards the mysterious nest. They planted grenades around the cave to cover it up from any more creatures that might be lying in wait, and so it came to finding out whatever was being guarded. As they turned to face it- it had been torn apart. Suddenly there were screams from the other side of a barricade of rock, and several raven guard lay dead, the supposedly dormant creature standing over them. It was twice the size of even Praxis, with six legs and a bloated abdomen covered in armoured plates. Boltgun and plasma rounds could not damage it- grenades exploded harmlessly off it's armour, and Praxis himself planted his crozius through it's chest- it roared in pain, cast it away and then smacked Praxis across the side, launching him several feet.
Angry beyond belief at the death of so many of his brothers, Audax charged at it, bellowing. it swung it's talon-like legs. Audax ducked the blow, swinging his empty left hand and punched the insect's body. It withstood the blow with but a tiny acknowledgement of the strike. It grabbed the still extended arm and snapped it like a twig. Crying out in pain, Audax fell to the floor. As the thing stood over him, it raised the pointed tip of one of it's legs downwards, and leant back to deliver a killing blow. Audax rolled on his belly, spinning up as he did so with his one good arm, and rammed his crackling force weapon through it's side. At the touch of such a force weapon, the potent insect disintegrated. With this, Lenore's thirteen-strong group left the forsaken place, to be awarded and promoted accordingly.
Lenore later learned of the planet's history- after a suspected taint, the planet was declared exterminatus, and the imperial navy commenced orbital bombardment. There was too much explosive feedback coming out that any biological scans came back with wildly variating readings- too much for any conclusive result. Taking no chances, they locked all import and export from the planet. Inquisitor Velox heard about this and arrived in-system to authorise the planet's freedom or further lockdown, depending on results once the feedback died down.
Before that happened, Lenore and company crash landed and discovered that the botched exterminatus strike had accellerated the local wildlife's evolution and produced life forms who heavily mutated to survive the radiation of the exterminatus.
Any animals which didn't evolve in time were obliterated, as were every imperial guard expedition team to dare to set foot on the planet. Astartes are made of sterner stuff, which is why the raven guard weren't dead.
later, once the astartes were extracted, Velox studied the DNA of the mutations gathered from the raven guard's knives and armour and created a virus bomb capable of destroying them, which was fired at the surface of the planet.
the remnants of the raven guard force went to the ravenspire to seek council with thier overall commander, Agapito. There, they reviewed what the survivors had been through, and assessed what might be done about it. It was confirmed by inquisitor Velox that there were no historic sites or relics worth saving, and so the imperial navy commenced orbital bombardment from low orbit.
Lenore watched the planet as fire consumed it, like a terrible flower closing its deadly petals over the surface from a viewport in nex in obscurum impassively. He knew that any humans that would have inhabited Herso would be long dead. He turned his back from the window, returning to his battle brothers in the barracks.
Agapito slammed his fist on the circular table. "We cannot simply sit back and do nothing while our brothers die fighting those heretics!"
Commander Aloni calmly replied with cool tones. "We must. We have our cards set before us, and a mindless charge is not one of them. We must play with what we've got, and what we've got is two options- either hold back and rebuild our strength, or send small groups of astartes to different worlds, thus we will not be so crippled again."
Commander Branne leaned closer to the table as he spoke. "I support Aloni's analysis of our situation, and reccommend a vote on either option."
Commander Agapito replied, rage fading from his face as he started to see the mindlessness of his suggestion. "I agree to part of Commander Branne's statement, in that we cannot commit our full force to one battlefield, but I see things less black and white. I'd like, for a moment, for the council to think between the two extremes- we could leave around 10 companies here, and have the others split, though not so thinly as Aloni suggests. I say we bring a few companies to several worlds across a couple of systems, where there is already great need for assistance."
Commander Solaro stepped forward, so far being content to listen. "I would like to recommend that we split several companies from different commanders into a seperate world, to have a better impact on the world concerned and more adaptability, but still reduce the likelihood of further mass death."
Branne, suitably convinced, took the side of Solati and Agapito over Aloni. "I support this suggestion. It is the best for our given crisis.
Aloni's tone changed from cool to cold. "Corax would not have wanted this."
Branne replied. "But corax is not here- locked away in his chamber."
Aloni's tone grew louder, now edging towards shouting. "We must follow in his footsteps!"
Branne retorted once more- "If we do so all the way, then we will follow him into self isolation and depravity and that will be far worse!"
Aloni, shouting now, bit back. "You say this only because you were elected to stay behind when the rest of us went to battle!"
Branne, close to retaliating at Aloni's rage, leaned in closer to him. "You only say that because you are a zealous follower of his! You have spent too much time close to him, brother."
Agapito, calmer now, stepped between the bout of words that would grow out of control. "I doubt very much that this has anything to do with either of your personal feelings towards the primarch. Branne, stopper your jaw before Aloni does so for you. Aloni, you are outvoted three to one. We deploy at selected worlds as we choose as suggested by Commander Solaro, with evenly split forces.
Since you show such distaste wth our plan, you can stay on deliverence, overseeing the revival of our once glorious chapter."
The commanders then retired to thier private chambers, and began preparing for war.
Lenore was cleaning his plasma pistol with more precision than needed, for he was restless with the lack of news about deployment, and he needed something to take his mind off of it. The next-best thing to war is preparing for it. The waiting is often the most difficult time for warriors, especially ones so tuned towards it as space marines, Lenore remembered being told by his predecessor.
Agapito's honour guard sergeant Cerpius entered his chamber with a respectful knock.
"Agapito has summoned you and your senior officers to a council of war in the strategium" He stated, "along with the other commanders of the talons."
"I will be there momentarily." He nodded to Cerpius. "Just allow me to gather my men."
"Of course."
Lenore shook his head to himself as Cerpius left. He would never get the measure of that man. So reserved amongst his brothers, yet so courageous and violent in war. He followed the sergeant out of his chamber, and steered left into one of the four shrines near the troop barracks. He knew Praxis would be there. Praxis knew full well that he could visit the upper shrines reserved for chaplains, commanders and librarians, but he prefered to stay near the tactical marines of the talons, where he could inspire them. The other officers needed no ispiration or advice, they'd already heard it.
Lenore entered the third shrine with a reverential silence, making a brief prayer to the gold statue of the emperor at the front of the shrine, before turning to the chaplain knelt beside him.
"Agapito has summoned us to a council of war."
Praxis nodded, made the sign of the aquila briefly on his chestplate, and turned to Lenore.
"Go and summon Audax from his private room. He will be there."
Praxis nodded and headed up the black marble stairway to the right of the shrines.
Lenore knew that this was simply a formality, and that Audax will have seen Agapito in his mind, calling for a council.
He'd sent Praxis in instead of himself because, though he would never tell anyone unless directly asked, he thought Praxis should get to know Audax more. They regarded each other with respect and followed advice without question, but they were always wary of each other. The epistolary's supernatural powers will forever seperate him from others, but Lenore resolved to soften that barrier as best he could.
Everyone in the talons was sat around the steel table, and when Agapito himself entered, all stood.
"Be seated, brothers."
They all sat back down, chairs supporting thier massive weight, thanks to the reinforcing ceramite running inside them.
the commanders were gathered according to thier detachments- Corax, Praxis, Audax and Validus were seated to the left of Agapito and his honour guard.
"We have suffered a crippling blow, this chapter, and several others have too. The imperium is in dour need of warriors to defend us from Xenos, traitors and heretics."
the latter of the three earned hisses of hate through grimacing faces.
"We have decided that around 600 astartes will stay here, in deliverence, to oversee the rebuilding of this once-noble chapter."
Cortus, a Commander, in the same rank as Lenore, opened his mouth to speak.
Agapito cut him off with a hand, palm out.
"But that is not us. Aloni's astartes will do that duty. We have been chosen, along with commanders Branne and Solaro, to be split up to multiple worlds an systems, where the need for us is great."
"What of deployment, commander?" Asked commander Hudon.
"There will be companies of 100 or so, a mixture of crusade, tactical, assault, scout and bike squads for more variation and adaptability.
"the only exception will be that I will lead 220 astartes, including 10 crusaders, 20 assault marines, 18 bikers, 30 scouts, 130 tactical, and my personal honour guard."
"Lenore will lead 70 astartes, a mixture of his choice."
Then came the other commanders, each getting thier choice of mixtures, but being set a specific number of men, with orders to include at least a squad of each speciality, with at least 2 full tactical squads.
They then left, to think of who they shall take with them on this crusade of vengeance.
Lenore decided, upon hours of contemplation, who he would take.
He chose tactical squads Chrontus and Hontor, Bike squad Sentor, Assault squad Flastron, Devastator squad Ungis, Terminator squad Invect and Scout squad Caddius.
He'd chosen both those inside and outside of his command, never having ordered Three of the squads before. Caddius was an old aquaintance of his, serving alongside each other over a century ago as scouts. Lenore had ascended while Caddius chose to stay as a scout, training neophytes and helping them on thier way up over him.
Flastron and Sentor he'd seen in action before, and both were solid. Tygon was recommended to him by Aloni as being dependable and decisive. Ungos he'd heard positive reports of, and so included him in the mix, and Invect, well, you don't really need a reason to choose any of the crusade squads.
In total, he had 65 marines there, and then formed his command squad out of those he knew and trusted most- Apothecary Coe, who'd saved the lives of most of Muninn at least once; Veteran sergeant Oten, who was as loyal as he was a tough fighter; Special weapon veteran Hadel, who was reknowned for his unerringly accurate and deadly meltagun shots; Ancient Pentor, who'd held the company banner aloft for decades, and Champion Ultis, who'd bested leaders of just about every race in battle at least once.
Lenore decided that he would take his company to the planet of Thoria III, an industrial world on the fringes of the deliverence system, where local planetary defence forces and a small warband of imperial guardsmen led by a commissar-general were fighting to contain a chaos-driven uprising.
Lenore met with his senior officers- Veteran sergeant Validus, Epistolary Audax, Chaplain Praxis, Terminator sergeant Invect, Scout sergeant Caddius and Command squad veteran Oten. He discussed deployment plans, and settled to split his forces in two- one to be led by Audax and Invect, another to be led by Lenore and Praxis personally. Oten was amongst those who stuck with Lenore to quash the rebellion in the capital, along with a tactical, devastator and bike squads.
To be spread out amongst the rest of the outlying cities and towns were Validus, Caddius, an assault and tactical squads. There were three cities and two towns in the immediate viscinity of the capital of Eros.
By the time the squad leaders had arranged thier squad's deployments using more focused and in-detail maps of thier area, they were reaching planetary orbit.
There were three city-sized communities near Eros, all of which the locals named imaginatively- "Hab-block Beta", "Segmentum Munitorum" and "Agri-plantation", a habitation block, factory and rural farmland respectively. Audax and his accompanying assault squad deployed in the farmland, Sternguard squad Validus in the munitorum, Invect in the habs where tactical dreadnought armour was in it's element and Scout squad Caddius scouting around the hab complex. Sergeant Hontor (with newly augmented legs) went to the two outlying towns to herd the population into the relative safety of Eros.
Tactical squad Chrontus guarded the entrance to Eros, Devastator squad Ungis along the walls to the inner city, Sentor patrolling the borders of the outer city, while Praxis, Oten and Lenore went to the main spire to meet with the Commissar-General and his senior staff.
The trio ascended up the granite stairway at the entrance to the main spire, passed two storm troopers dressed in matt black combat fatigues and one-way mirrored visors at the gateway, and was greeted by a rather scrawny-looking corporal, who showed them to his leader's office.
"The General-Commissar will be waiting for you." The serf assured the space marines as they walked down a long, marble hallway. At intervals small incloves displayed statues of heroes slaying xenos or holding regimental banners aloft. They reached an oak door with a brass plaque, which read "General-Commissar V. Croaks, Thorian 1st"
The serf opened the door slowly, and, with a bow, stood by to let the raven guard in. They had to duck to get through the two metre high doorway.
Sat in front of them was the man himself. As the superhumans stopped at his desk, he promptly rose to his feet and gave a sharp salute, before opening his mouth to speak.
"Welcome, noble space marines. General-Commissar Viktor Croaks of the Thorian 1st regiment. Lenore gave a curt nod of his head before introducing himself and his men.
"I am commander Lenore of the raven guard talons, and this is my Chaplain Praxis and Veteran Sergeant Oten."
at thier names the two astartes briefly dipped thier heads.
Croaks was an imposing figure, though not as much compared to the astartes in full battle gear. He was 6 feet tall, slim, with an augmentic leg which whirred and clicked as he moved it when he stood up. As he removed his gloves, he revealed three missing digits, replaced with bionics. These battle wounds, as well as the scar along the right side of his jaw, spoke of a veteran, seeing action in many theatres of war. Such wounds are not uncommon amongst those of his rank. The scar cutting through his jaw did little to stop speech or cause problems, but when he smiles (a rare sight for a commissar with such a ruthless personality) the right side of his mouth goes slightly lopsided.
Dressed in a commissar's traditional black leather stormcoat with red trim, Croaks also displayed a couple of medals, shoulder braids, a belt with a holster and sheath attached, and freshly polished black boots. Most of these were purely for decoration- during patrols and such, the medals would be taken off, the black boots would be replaced with sturdier brown ones, and the sheath and holster would carry thier respectful weapons. Also fitted would be an oxygen tank- some areas of the city were filled with acidic smoke and some parts of the agricultural area with pesticides, and a satchel strapped to the belt, which would contain a small pack of medical supplies, a canteen and some extra clips for his pistol.
The office was rectangular, with a window looking out on the city behind the desk, paintings on the walls either side and the regimental banner of the Thorian first. A full-length mirror was also on one wall, as well as a shelf of books regarding a variety of things, such as the imperial guard infrantryman's uplifting primer, a worn copy of quotes from a famous tactician, and a book of prayers to the god-emperor.
On a second shelf next to the books rested a medal rack, a few souvenir weapons from previous fields of battle, the commissar's pistol which, by the looks of it, was able to go rapid fire, had a detachable stock and a box magazine in front of a broomstick-shaped handle. The sword next to it was clearly a power weapon, able to slice through centimetre-thick armour in a flash, and was obviously important- a relic of some kind, perhaps. It lay on a glass stand in front of a tapestry depicting some heroic last stand of a handful of imperial guardsmen against an army of dark eldar.
All of this was seen in an instant by Lenore as he was led out of the room by Croaks and into another with a table, upon which was scattered maps and data-slates.
In this rectangular room was an oval chair made of glass, with four seats sat evenly spaced around it. Croaks gestured to the chairs with "Take a seat."
The astartes lowered themselves onto the large chairs andwaited for the General-Commissar to sit before talking.
Lenore began. "So this area here- Eros?"
Croaks answered. "Yes. The perimeter is fairly secure, but we have trouble with raiders here in the east gate."
"I see. And this settlment facing it?" Praxis asked.
"That is the agricultural district- a rural town with very little in the way of defences."
Lenore pointed to a different area on the map. "Right. And this one here, on the west face, over the river?"
"The habs. Local PDF are working to get the residents into the safety of the hive."
"How long will that take?" Praxis inquired.
"At least a week."
Lenore, concerned for the civilian populace and also how they'd get in the way of his defence, made a note to Otar. "Send some troops down to speed it up. We need those habs clear."
"At your will, Commander." He replied.
Lenore pointed to the south of the hive city. "And this last one?"
"The munitorum facilities. All serfs and tech-priests have been evacuated as soon as news of the archenemy reached us. To lose them would be to destroy the city's economy."
>stay tuned. Comms end.<
