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Well, that is a fitting end to a magnificent epic! Thanks for sharing. We do wonder what happened to o'l Hansa. : ) It just goes to show you, the road to hell really is paved with good intentions. I do like a chatty greater daemon.

Future Project you say?

I just occurred to me that Vost was clearly a Khorne Daemon at the end - extra hilarious!

Bravo! Super story, and well worth the read.

Gotta feel for Mond. Sucks to be that guy.

Lots of fun and an unusual style of story telling. Great work all round.

Thanks all! The theme (well "theme") was always that dichotomy, Space Marines and the Imperium are already such bad guys it can be hard to pick out just where that line is between the stanch defenders of humanity (who do nothing but fight and kill) and the fallen champions of chaos (who do nothing but fight and kill).

While Chaos is usually a cartoon villain, the better GW books can build on this idea that 'Khorne cares not form where the blood flows' and make it clear it don't matter what slogan you're shouting when you're chopping up folks with a chain sword.

Hence Vost Dhan, Lost and Damned spelled sideways.

The strange way of narrating (not just first person narration, but first person with unheard comments from other characters) was there to cut out a lot of the tedium of 'then he swung his sword, then the other guy swung his axe'. If I did my job well it was nonetheless pretty obvious what his unseen interrogators were saying and doing the whole time.

As for Hamsa (whisper in Arabic, most of the names came from whatever Arabic vocabulary I was studying that week) I could just as easily tell this story with her. Inquisition savant, learns the hidden secrets of the universe and is abandoned to die. Or maybe she was a daemon (or daemon possessed) all along.

Anyway glad people liked it, please let me know if you have other questions or comments!

I liked how you kinda knew despite all his protestations that the inquisitor wasn't barking up the wrong tree here. It's pretty clear this guy has no real zeal for the protection of humanity. He only cares about returning to his chapter and it's only their rejection of him that finally breaks his spirit and allows the daemon to finally manifest.

Some of his worst actions are the result of complacency or ignorance or pig-headedness. He behaves like an Astartes. He believes in his own purity and righteousness and BS despite all the evidence to the contrary. He's so blind to the obvious warning signs. Right up to the end, he still doesn't realise who he is or has become.

I completely agree about cutting out the endless combat descriptions. I'm reading a warhammer book which is about a woman who makes her living looting the battlefield - it is fairly interesting except that it is cut with hyper detailed, rather unnecessary and hard to believe long combat sequences.

 kestral wrote:
Future Project you say?

Chapter 1 is still a WIP but here's a teaser.