Stormin' Stompa
|
The Purgura Avengum were my 4th ed. choppy marines with Furious Assault and lots of vet sergeats with power weapons that were specifically designed to make a mess of Nurgle armies. They were originally designed to be allied with a friend's Daemonhunters force, and so there was always a little backstory brewing.
Here's a piece I knocked out this afternoon... it looks like it needs to be finished, but I've spent enough time on this for now. Enjoy?
Sorry if there's any grammar, I haven't gone through this more than a few reads.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the distance a rhythmic tremor could be heard. Baele knew, as did his brothers, that the Defilers were coming. The planet’s air had taken foul, and the remains of plague-dead filled the ruins of Hive Entite. Promethium was precious to the small company, and the funeral pyres would draw their enemy like flies. Some of the victims of Nurgle’s pox would rise as animated puppets to their virulent hosts, but they were not of great constitution, and as paper to the chainsword.
Captain Baele gazed reverently at the banner that flapped at his side. The tattered flag displayed ‘PURGURA,’ and below, ‘Mortarion Fell,’ in golden letters; symbols of the Inquisition and the company were borne underneath. In the moment of calm he offered his prayers to the Emperor – his only master. Inquisitor Gralesten was absent, but his will was to the same Emperor. It was his father, and his father’s father that had guided the Purgura Vengum against Father Nurgle for millennia. The Gralesten line’s personal army was nurtured from a remnant of the 14th Legion’s gene-seed, uncorrupted by Nurgle’s gifts. What better antibody to stem the plague of his followers? But Baele’s genetic father had fallen long ago – the only purpose he possessed was to remove the stain that was left. With such small numbers against such odds, the process was slow – but it was efficient.
The Purgura Vengum had trained to fight Mortarion’s legion since the Great Heresy, and though more a large company than a fully-fledged chapter, they were elites all. With holy flame, and bolts of hellfire, the vengeful, true sons of Mortarion descended swiftly on their foes, and left none alive.
Baele received a transmission from the reconnaissance team in the next block. Two hulking defilers had come, with five-score of the fallen Death Guard marching behind. Amid the ranks were five hulking figures, surrounded by a black haze of flies and putrescence. He relayed this to Algus, the chaplain who stood in silent prayer with ten other jump-packed marines. The war-priest lifted his head and nodded.
“Brother Algus. Reconnaissance will strike with you. As you come down upon the first defiler, their krak missiles will incapacitate the other from behind.”
“Sergeant Estung’s power-fist has been consecrated. It will be done, and I shall join you in the melee.”
Baele smiled into his respirator as he examined his ornate lightning claw, “Let our battles never end.”
As the sound of marching could be heard through the din of the defiler’s engines, the Purgura Vengum was prepared to strike. The force was en route to another area of the hive, where Chaplain Algus and his assault marines had cleansed an Imperial temple full of Nurgle’s cult only hours before. It was marching along a highway that curved around a large government building, and opposite the dog-leg the Purgura waited in silence, in the ruins of an apartment building not unlike any other residential structure in the hive.
The large figures were now visible in their terminator armour – out of normal formation, but linked by the long streams of the biting insects that swarmed around and between them. They were alert, but murmuring a low chant as they marched – most of the marines gazed straight ahead, but the terminators watched the city walls.
The first defiler slowed and repositioned its six legs to manoeuvre around the corner. It was an unwieldy design, but well-armoured and infested with a rotting mass of seething daemonic tissue. The second was smaller, more mobile, but even more crude; it raised its abdomen on two excavator-claws, and was balanced on a large rear hoof that shook dust from the buildings as it galloped along awkwardly.
“The time is now, Brother-Chaplain…”
Chaplain Algus and five of his chosen men barged their way through a thin ferrocrete wall, their armour and jump-packs bearing the forces involved. From the gout of debris and dust lanced a beam of white light, which liquefied the daemon-infused metal of one of the first defiler’s front legs. It stumbled forward temporarily, then immediately ‘crouched’, curling its claws over its engine-head. This was expected. The mass of drilled plague-marines began to blaze bolter fire over the lowered defiler – it was enough to annihilate any number of men - but the assault marines dropped down onto the infested behemoth, meltabombs already primed. Brother Ancus fired his meltagun again as the squad retreated to the cover of nearby debris. The defiler exploded in four bright flashes, pouring slag in all directions. Meanwhile, the heavier automatic cannons scattered throughout the force began to pound the building from which the ambushers had sprung, quickly stripping the walls from the building. The dust of desiccated corpses lined up against the walls filled the air, and visibility was reduced all over. A loud blast was heard as a guided missile ripped the rear hoof-leg from the second defiler, and it lurched back, its fearsome cannon pointed futilely at the hive’s dim skylit ceiling.
From the debris that fell over the roadside, Baele and his brothers burst with blazing fire and whirring blade. Baele himself was accompanied by his guard of veterans in black and bone armour. They bore power blades, but for the Champion Ferrum with a great axe, and Brother Borom with his holy powerfist. Baele’s claw sunk into the first plague-marine in his path, the foe’s bolter rounds glancing off the Captain’s ancient armour. The line of pestilent warriors held, though, and counter- advanced with cruel knives and axes. They did not respond to the loss-of-limb, but for frenzy to make up the debilitation.
Scores more of the Purgura Avengum dashed out, a gleaming green power sword at the head of each squadron. Baele and his elite left their weakened opponents behind and waded further into the ranks, as a second wave of chainswords tore into the ambushed warriors. The spearhead of blessed power-weapons was unstoppable, and one of the fearsome Terminators drew nearer to challenge the Emperor’s chosen.
From close range the diseased hulk unleashed its payload of light cannon shells, while charging at Baele with chain-glaive raised to strike. Before it could reach him, however, Chaplain Algus and his marines slammed into the line, in a pincer movement with five further jump-pack equipped troops that hadn’t been involved in the defiler’s destruction. As the strike force of foot-assault marines advanced from behind him, Baele stormed toward the next stalking fog-lined figure, knocking his relatively bloated and clumsy foes aside with sweeps of his terrible claw. Wounds that should have killed them did not, and as though to demonstrate the quality they openly fired at the captain in his ornate bone armour, hitting their own allies as often as the captain’s deflector shield.
The terminator bore a polearm tipped with a razor-sharp hollow tube. The syringe-like weapon was attached by tubes to a reservoir of brown liquid that moved as though it was alive. A mass of slimy creatures attached to its back fired several filth-encrusted bolters and small arms in no apparent direction as their host lunged forward, weapon ready.
Baele was ready, and unleashed a bolt of superheated plasma from his sidearm. The charging terminator took it in the shoulder, and recoiled, as thick smoke poured from it. Baele’s men had quickly overtaken and cut down the foes surrounding the terminator, and the captain taunted his filthy, armoured foe.
“I will see you destroyed, plague-servant!”
The briefly enraged Chosen of Nurgle was unaware as battle-brother Borom strode up behind him and gripped the diseased shell with his powerfist, squeezing and pushing the doomed warrior into the ground. He fired his bolt pistol into its bent frame, stripping off daemonic flesh, crushing the weaker armour and spattering the diseased soup that lay within. The swarm of flies immediately dissipated, and Baele surveyed the field for a brief moment.
The cloud of flies was now centralised over the rear bulk of infantry, held back by the mass of loyalist marines that had inflicted terrible damage with their ambush. The swarm seem to rise like a tendril, and then collapse on itself. Putrescent diseased beetles and smaller biting insects swarmed in all directions, now confusing the melee in their sheer mass of numbers. There even seemed to be more. The light from the sky dimmed, and Baele cut down two stray foes as he waded toward the main line.
“Algus, if you have visibility, form a wedge and split their force. I will come from the centre.”
“Eighteen seconds, Brother-Captain.”
The insects still seemed to multiply; Baele had not experienced this, and he had fought the plague-father for centuries. It was almost as though…
It became difficult to push through the flies, and the Captain could see and hear nothing but the buzzing forms of the virulent plague-host. He raised his plasma pistol and warmed up a charge. Insects met with the glowing-hot plasma chamber housing and melted away, and they began to move away from the source of burning heat. Baele could see metres ahead, where the flies seemed to end abruptly, as though they were swarming around him.
He waded forth once more, and found himself not in battle, but in a dome-shaped vacuum, and the plague swarmed in a great circle about him.
He demanded, “Petty daemon-servant, end this trick!”
The flies immediately rushed over the captain again, then appeared to disperse again… but they did not. Baele longed for combat, but found himself further away then before!
“Algus, no backup. Break to eastern flank, meet with Injectus!”
The flies swarmed toward a point between Baele and his intended destination; as he ran heavily forward he saw something begin to appear. A shadow like a withered stump that grew rapidly and… Baele was blasted back by a fierce impact. The armour on his right arm had been scorched, and black sorcerous flames danced upon the blackened scar. Another bolt of dark energy blasted into his chest; the breastplate stood, but the great Captain was thrown back. The Chaos Sorcerer emerged from the cloud and produced a chortling noise. He was bloated far beyond his armour, and metal plates of further armour seemed to have been implanted into that layer of substance. The Nurgle-Priest was pale and disease ravaged. Its mouth was three times as wide as it had any right to be, appearing to split its boil-encrusted head in two when it spoke:
“Your seed will win me great favour!”
Baele was on his feet again; his pistol had been blown away, but his claw was unscathed. He wasted no time in advancing, the first finger of that claw pointed at his hated foe.
“Your insult will not prolong your suffering, heretic!”
The putrescent sorcerer made another noise akin to laughter, raising his arms and calling his beetles back to form a thick chitinous scale upon his significant frame.
“I am no mere heretic, mortal. I am Daemon!”
|