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PROLOGUE: "KNOW THY ENEMY"

I've written my first new Hexfleet Virules short story in several years ("Know They Enemy") to kick off my first time participating in a narrative campaign. We have 13 Imperial vs 13 Chaos players and I'm pumped! Perfect timing with my Chaos collection getting beautifully painted by GMM Studios right now!

Kronis campaign: https://thekroniscru...players-armies/

“Know Thy Enemy”

A Hexfleet Virules Short Story

+++ Incoming Transmission . . . +++

+++ Signal Clear +++

+++ Data Source: Unknown +++

+++ Encryption Level Gamma . . . +++

+++ Transmission Received. Decrypting . . . +++

My Lord Inquisitor Olberus,

I shall forego our customary exchanges, as your time is valuable and the nature of the threat is dire and imminent. Sufficed to say that our ancient House continues to enjoy the blessings of prosperity even in these dark times, a blessing which is surely due only thanks to the ever-present grace of our immortal Emperor. Our family remains singularly committed as always to the mission of the Ordo, deploying our resources and soliciting information as directed. We remain your loyal servants in the eternal struggle against the Great Enemy, and it is with this mandate in mind that I bear most urgent news, tidings which I fear will bring ill bearings for your current mission in the systems surrounding Kronis.

Following our last correspondence, I accordingly directed all intelligence efforts (and no small portion of royal resources) towards uncovering the nature behind the Heretic Astartes warlord we now know as Virules the Plaguelich (pronounced “Vir-u-lez”), also known by various other equally colorful monikers such as “the Hexwizard” and “the Virulent Iscariot.” As you well know, revealing the full truth behind those Astartes who would turn their backs upon the Throne is ever an impossible affair – not only do such villainous figures inherently operate in the shadows of secrecy and deception, but the very existence of such traitors must remain closely guarded for fear of undermining the sacred propaganda which keeps the average citizen duly loyal and unquestioning of the Imperial order and its defenders.

As such, information typically arrives only in small scraps and tantalizing hints, sewn together like an illicit tapestry of secondary and tertiary sources, damaged vidpics, extracted confessions, forensic investigation, and all other means of discovery. Oftentimes the information we obtain is maddeningly incomplete, inconsistent, or even outright contradictory. We must therefore use our judgment to piece together the most likely narrative based on both must stalwart facts as well as the costly experience our House has developed in our millennia-long struggle with the Enemy.

I regret to inform your Lordship that the truth behind the so-called Plaguelich is far worse than what we had imagined. Though other rumors abound, we believe there is credible reason to believe the traitor is indeed a single individual who hails from a remote agri-world whose name has now been lost to the ages. While it is well known among agents of the Ordo that Virules is a sorcerer of unfortunately dramatic prowess, we believe that these very powers were the initial cause of a betrayal so malignant and foul it is almost without precedent.

Though we do not know his original name, we believe that Virules experienced a full bloom of his psychic potential early on in his life, almost certainly during childhood. Given what we think to have been a remote location and rural nature of the planet, the ruling authorities (to whatever extent they were present) failed to direct the child towards a properly pious path for his gift, such as a sanctioned Imperial psyker in the services of the Astra Militarum. As a result, Virules was a prime target when, by happenstance, a Black Ship made an extremely rare foray to the system to harvest assets from precisely such remote worlds. We do not yet know how exactly a young Virules managed to evade the skilled agents aboard such vessels, but we have reason to believe that when the Black Ship again departed the system, Virules remained undetected upon his homeworld as his brother and parents lost their lives in connection with the visit. While all the accounts are apocryphal, it is widely thought that it was this experience which first planted a deep-seated hatred of the Imperium within the young psyker.

Whether by coincidence or by the foul manipulations of the Enemy, within one or two standard Terran years of the Black Ship’s visit, a little-known Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes expanded to include Virules’ world within its recruitment orbit. Finding Virules to be not only a psychically gifted but also physically impressive and courageous youth, this Chapter unsurprisingly chose to take him and deliver him back to the Chapter Monastery for the customary inspections and trials.

As with all Chapters, aspirants for these Astartes were naturally investigated for both spiritual and psychic corruption. Such an inspection should surely have detected the deep malevolence and ill intent harbored by the young Virules. However, our sources indicate that around the same time when Virules first arrived at the Chapter, their long-serving Chief Librarian passed way under unknown circumstances. We are again left to speculate whether such an incident was a mere coincidence or in fact the product of a darker agenda, and whether this change played a role in allowing Virules admission into the Chapter. It is my suspicion that the chaos created by this change indeed created an opening for Virules, as this particular Chapter had a long practice – despite customary warnings and traditions amongst the Astartes to the contrary – of placing a primacy on its most psychically-gifted members. Such a primacy, in fact, that the most gifted and senior of its Librarians – including, in this case, the one who experienced an ultimately death near the time of Virules’ arrival – typically served as in a dual capacity as Chapter Master. It is not difficult to imagine that under such circumstances, a Chapter which had just lost both its Chief Librarian and Chapter Master might not have duly exercised its full diligence in closely examining what appeared to the fortuitous arrival of a once-in-a-generation applicant. Upon admission to the Chapter, the youth lost his birth name and become known as Brother Virelion.

Few details are available for the following years. However, multiple sources corroborate the same sordid ending to the story. After an unknown period of centuries, Virelion eventually rose to the position of Chapter Master and Chief Librarian. After a relatively short numbers of years leading his Chapter, Virelion appears to have recalled every last battle brother to the Chapter Monastery – purportedly for the whole Chapter to simultaneously and collectively renew its sacred oaths to the Emperor and the Imperium. Whether out of fear or reverence, even the traitors we have managed to capture and vigorously question have thus far refused to divulge exactly what happened next.

As far as we can tell, Virelion lured his whole Chapter into the Chapter Reclusiam, at which point he trapped and sacrificed wholesale the unexpecting entirety of his sworn brotherhood – geneseed and all – in an unimaginably profane and potent sacrifice to the Ruinous Powers. There appear to have been no survivors. In the long records of our House, I have been unable to locate records of any similar rituals or any other betrayals of one’s own Chapter on such a scale. I am sure that your Lordship now appreciates why I was forced to delay for a secure line of communication before forwarding a report of such heresy.

Following his immense betrayal, Virelion took the name Virules in recognition of his dark transformation. It was at the same time that Virules appears to have sold his soul to the service of that putrid and abominable deity known as Nurgle’leth, though it is unknown whether this pact was made prior or subsequent to the sacrifice of his Chapter. In recognition of this dark pact, Virules also appears to have received a scythe of prodigious power from his new patron. Based on our own reports with battlefield survivors and psychic forensic analysis, we believe that this scythe is in fact a daemon weapon containing the bound essence of an unknown Great Unclean One, and that the weapon primarily serves to further amplify the Plaguelich’s already amble psychic might.

The next several centuries are again murky, but we believe that Virules, left alone following the sacrifice of all his brothers, became a traveling sorcerer selling his gifts to the highest bidder among various competing Chaos and Xenos warlords. At some point Virules came into contact with the warfleet of Nurgle’s most notorious mortal servant, Typhus the Wanderer (cross-ref: Calas Typhon). We speculate that during this time the two collaborated on the concoction of various psychic diseases, namely various strains of the so-called “zombie plague” which has been commonly reported in battle zones featuring either sorcerer. Tensions between the two rival psykers appear to have been high, and after an indeterminate amount of time, Virules again betrayed his peers when he led a large number of plague ships, Death Guard and Nurgle warbands, cultists, and Dark Mechanicus to abruptly abandon Typhus’ plague fleet. We think the two rivals have since engaged in open conflict multiple times throughout the centuries.

This event marked the beginning of the so-called “Hexfleet” in which Virules became a roaming Chaos warlord in his own right, with an ever-growing armada of ships and traitors drawn to the psyker’s banner over the course of many centuries. Though previously unrecorded in our own records (and in the records of the Ordo which I was able to access), it is my belief that Virules and his Hexfleet were in fact present in a clandestine role for a lengthy period of time during the Siege of Vraks. Specifically, Virules and a notable contingent of his most loyal plaguecasters are believed to have been present along the Eastern Front. You will recall that it was in this theater of the war in which the Imperium lost millions of Death Corps of Krieg in direct conflict with a Nurgle Warbrand known as the Tainted, which employed such horrific and diseased chemical weapons that even the hardened soldiers of Krieg were unable to withstand the onslaught despite their own potent chemical warfare equipment.

Though it may seem unfathomable given the long and loyal record of the Death Corps, we have direct evidence indicating that a substantial portion of the casualties reported along the Eastern Front were in fact due to not to deaths and injuries but rather desertion. It is well known that the soldiers of Krieg make such good soldiers precisely because they expect to die and thus do not fear death, accepting as they should that their fate is one of noble sacrifice in the Emperor’s name.

However, such a defense, stalwart as it is, does not bolster the courage of common men against the possibility of a fate worse than death. What we have uncovered suggests that Virules consorted with Necrosius, a champion of the Tainted and a fellow sorcerer of Nurgle, to experiment with a new, potent form of the Zombie Plague by the name of the Hex Plague. We believe that those men of Krieg who remained loyal to the Emperor not only faced the risk of death by bomb or bullet, by also that they might become afflicted with an incurable disease that damned them forever to the most horrific unlife of excoriating pain and loss of free will. Faced with the possibility of becoming prisoners within their own rotting flesh, it seems that no small number of ordinary soldiers (and even some higher-ranking officers) chose instead to cure themselves (and gain access to an unnatural longevity) by selling their souls to Nurgle and pledging their military service to the Hexfleet. Blasphemous as it may seem, such a theory would explain the numerous battlefield recordings secured by our agents…recordings which often feature Chaos soldiers who at first appear to be cultists, but upon closer examination wear heavy coats and masks with a striking (if ragged) similarity to the heraldry worn by the Krieg detachments which fought at Vraks.

As important as such intelligence may be, it is neither the background of the Hexfleet nor its mortal auxiliaries which present the greatest threat to the Emperor’s work on Kronis and beyond. It is well-known that among the ranks of the heretic, there are many who are gifted in the foul ways of the Warp or who enjoy access to traitorous regiments and armor.

What concerns us the most regarding this elusive wizard are his specific patterns of engagements and alliances dating back for at least the last several centuries. Those of us who serve the Emperor know that faith is our shield, and that we are bound together by a unity of service which cannot be matched by the fractious, divisive warlords and factions which comprise any Chaos force of notable scale. Even the Ruinous Powers themselves compete ever eternally in their perverse Great Game. We have thus come to see over the millennia that the diverse forces of Chaos, though presenting a numerous and multi-faceted threat, only ever cooperate as allies of convenience at best, with eventual betrayal an inevitable epilogue. One would assume this to be doubly true for Virules given his record.

Alas, we have conclusively determined that since forming his own fleet, Virules has unwaveringly treated his alliances with heretics and aliens with an ironclad integrity at total odds with his earlier betrayal of the Imperium and his Chapter. Loyalty and cooperation amongst the mortal and daemonic servants of the Plague God are known to be atypically common in comparison to those affiliated with others of that blasphemous pantheon. Thus it would be of little surprise for Virules to conduct joint operations alongside reinforcements from the Neverborn of Nurgle.

To our great misfortune, however, Virules has also repeatedly entered into, and deepened pacts with, warbands and daemons also affiliated with Khorne, Slaanesh, and even Tzeentch. The sorcerer seems to treat such relationships as crucial transactions, and as such places a high priority on demonstrating his own reliability and value as an ally. Coupled with his own knowledge of the Warp, Virules has thus consistently succeeded in opening realspace rifts permitting passage by not only by Nurgle’s daemons but also by infernal legions representing the rest of the pantheon. Worse, his repetitive bargains with various champions of all four Ruinious Powers appear to progressively ease his difficulty in cajoling and summoning such beings and their armies in successive campaigns.

As our intelligence indicates that Virules and his Hexfleet have already been detected near Kronis, I fear that his presence bolsters the potential military strength of the Chaos forces to an unknown degree. The Plaguelich’s ability to call upon a wide variety of daemonic allies creates a wildcard which the Imperial defenders may be poorly positioned to counter. Our House has bent considerable effort to inferring the sorcerer’s next gambit, engaging in all manner of psychic scrying and constant attempts at divining the Emperor’s Tarot.

Finally, an almost fatal breakthrough by one of our most powerful psykers strongly suggested that Virules has been attempting to aggressively secure entry for a daemonic being of staggering power and violence. After combining our more esoteric discoveries with logi-engine analysis of prior Hexfleet campaigns, we hypothesize that Virules is preparing for an all-out assault on Kronis by breaching the planet’s defenses with a vanguard of Khorne daemons led by An'ggrath the Unbound (cross-ref: Siege of Vraks). Such an alliance would be all the more plausible if indeed Virules had been present on the Chaos side during the grinding war for Vraks.

If Khorne’s legions can establish a beachhead on Kronis, it is highly likely that Virules will flood such a foothold with even larger battalions of Nurgle daemons and Deathguard reinforcements, at which point it may become almost impossible to dislodge the Plaguelich before he can accomplish his unknown objectives. You and I know all too well the cost of storming a front defended by entrenched Death Guard infantry and the mutated swamps of Nurgle’s Garden leaking into realspace. I therefore pray that you are able to prevent planetary entry by the Hexfleet before the sorcerer and his armies can turn the tide against us in the fight for Kronis.

We will continue to watch and support from the shadows, as our covenant has long demanded. The Emperor protects.

Ever your loyal servant,

King Andritius VIII


ATTACHMENT 1/1

NAME: VIDPIC STILL #044651

SOURCE: CLASSIFIED

ACCESS: MAXIMUM RESTRICTION / GENECODE ONLY

CHAPTER ONE: "BLOOD JUNGLE"

I've decided to keep going by narrating the whole campaign as our 30 players go through each two-week round. I'll do my best to keep up by publishing a new story to incorporate into the narrative after each one of my games. As hinted at in the prologue, in my first game I played a pure Khorne Daemon army led by An'ggrath the Unbound. I spent quite a bit of time writing and editing this piece, so I hope at least a few people get a kick out of it.

Kronis campaign: https://thekroniscrusade.wordpress.com/nick-vs-stefan/

“What’re you thinkin’ Sarge?”

Gowther didn’t answer as he peered through the large rectangular opening where there had once been a window. He glanced upwards at the grey heavens, careful not to get too close to the rain pouring down from all the storm clouds rolling slowly through the sky. At least there wasn’t any wind to blow the rain into their shelter, here up high on the third floor. Not that it really mattered; there was no way to keep dry given the suffocating humidity carpeting the jungle valley.

The Vostroyan Sergeant shifted away from the opening, sitting on the floor with his back set against the uncomfortable concrete wall. No one up the chain seemed to know who’d built these twin buildings or how old they were, but clearly they’d been built to last. The core parts of the structures remained strong even after an unknown number of centuries of earthquakes, jungle growth, and rain. The perpendicular edges and windows strongly suggested architecture of human construction and use, but the scale was all wrong…the individual floors seemed way too tall above the ground and again between each of the four levels. They’d used ladders to scale each floor, half the company (the unlucky half) dug in outside and the rest scattered across all the floors of both buildings.

Pausing another moment, Gowther turned and looked at his longtime friend. It wasn’t any fun squatting in ruins for days on end in rain that never seemed to stop, but Gowther and Lionel had been through much worse over the years. It was funny that in all that time, his companion’s accent had never improved much from the ganger slang of Vostroya.

Lionel pressed again. “You wonderin’ again why they stuck us out here? We’ve been out here for weeks without seeing a damn thing. Only interestin’ things anywhere within grox spit are those stupid rocks the toolbox and the witch keep pokin’ at. You know it, I know it, the boys know it. How long are we gonna sit in the middle of nowhere pokin’ at damn rocks, Sarge? I thought there was an invasion going on.”

“Like I always tell you, it’s not our business why,” Gowther finally snapped back. “They told us to hold this location at all costs, and by the Emperor, that’s what we’re going to do.”

In truth, Gowther was curious too. Nothing about this mission made sense. Rumor had it that Kronis had some sort of special black monoliths, but the rocks outside were something totally different. At the ground floor of each of the two buildings and all around the courtyard were a total of six crystal boulders, each situated halfway in the earth. They all glowed a strange gradient, shifting eerily between pink, white, and purple hues.

When the company had first arrived here at the turn of the moon, they’d immediately cut out a large circular clearing around the two buildings with the help of the four tanks. The infantry squads then took to fortifying both ruins until the core structure were up to bastion strength, capable of withstanding even the heaviest of direct artillery hits. Next, they set up an entrenched quadgun outside each building, so they could repel any flying threats. Lastly, they’d plastered and half-buried debris between the two buildings to form a solid floor for the tanks that wouldn’t leave the vehicles stuck in the mud. In true Guard fashion, razor-wire fencing now linked both buildings.

Clearly, they were digging in to defend this area against something. But why here? And what could possibly threaten a fully entrenched company of Vostroyans, all the way out here in the deep wilderness?

***

Antonius stared again at the dimly-glowing crystal mound. After weeks of effort, neither he nor the Enginseer were any closer to understanding the strange rocks, or more importantly, figuring out how to extract them for off-site examination and isolation. Digging was no help; though no larger than an Ogryn, each mound was so impossibly heavy that their mass defied all mathematical models. Removing the surrounding dirt just caused the crystals to sink deeper into the earth. The psyker almost had the odd feeling that the rocks were intentionally resisting all efforts to separate them from the planet. He didn’t understand how the mounds didn’t just constantly sink deeper and deeper into the ground if they were too heavy for any mechanical lifting, or how they gave off weight measurements that seemed completely implausible. Chipping or cutting them had proven equally fruitless.

Though his Mechanicus companion continued to practically convulse with excitement at the inscrutable puzzle, Antonius was growing ever more frantic. Districted by his thoughts, he pulled a slip of silk cloth from inside his midnight-blue robes and wiped the beads of water from his forehead. Though the hood of the robes protected his face from the steady rain out here in the debris-reinforced courtyard, the sheer humidity caused water and sweat to pool ceaselessly right above his eyebrows.

He tucked the cloth slip away again to keep it as dry as possible. Antonius knew his absent-minded nervousness was borne from his burden. Of all the men out here, only he knew the true purpose of their mission, handed down directly from an authority best left hidden from the soldiers and other company attachés. The crystal mounds were actually psychic resonance devices of unknown age and origin, likely not directly related to the pylons found elsewhere on the planet. Whether the crystals were meant to amplify or dampen Warp activity was also a mystery thanks to their apparently dormant nature.

Peering straight at the crystal, Antonius gave up trying to gleam anything from the mound with his supernatural gifts. But the shifting colors were pleasing enough to keep the eyes on the otherworldly formation. Had it grown darker outside the last few minutes? Not looking away, Antonius again pulled out his slip and dabbed his brow. The moisture compiling on his forehead felt stickier than usual.

Antonius pulled his hand down and look at his luxurious silk slip. It was full of blood.

***

This time Gowther wasn’t avoiding the rain. He was sticking his head right out of the window as far as he could, trying to figure out what in the Throne had changed with the downpour. It was red now and smelled metallic, yet wasn’t burning like the acid rains they’d seen on some other planets. The storm clouds were also much darker now, and thicker. Lionel and the other guardsmen on the floor were murmuring nervously amongst themselves.

Lightning suddenly began flashing in the sky, some of the bolts exploding beyond the nearby tree line and even some inside the clearing itself. The thunderclaps were deafening, but they were nothing compared to the horrible sound that began slowly swelling above them. It was as if they were listening to someone ripping apart sheet metal except a thousand times worse. The onyx clouds started to turn like a giant drain in the sky, picking up speed as the sound grew louder and louder. A tropical hurricane this far from the coast?

Gowther had seen a lot in his days in the Guard, but what happened next just about dropped his heart from his chest down to his stomach and then right out his rear end. The epicenter of the swirling clouds began puffing and billowing until shapes started to form and push down from the cloud layer. Huge horns, a nose, tusks, braided hair, a face like a bull. Nearby, enormous axes and arms made of clouds pushed out deep from the black ceiling in the sky. The hazy cloud sculpture was the size of a mountain, and even with the imperfect detail, two humongous, hate-filled eyes seemed to star straight down at the clearing, and in it, Gowther.

After looking around for a moment, the daemonic sky-leviathan screamed. Gowther’s vision blurred and he thought he felt something pop in one of his ears. The ground shook, and even the reinforced bastion shook with it. When the roar finally ended, it had been replaced with multiple screeching sounds. Resisting all urges to hide or soil himself, the Sergeant dared to peek his head out the window again. The cloud monster was gone but now the sky was an angry red with countless blazing dots streaking towards them. When they finally hit, the meteors exploded with titanic impact. Though only about the size of a tire, they blew huge fountains of earth into the air. One flew directly past Gowther’s window and for a moment he could have sworn it looked like a giant, flaming skull. Nothing made any sense any more.

***

Antonius pivoted and hopped as fast as his old body would move, desperate to avoid the missiles raining down around him. Most of the soldiers stationed outside had already gone to ground in either the courtyard debris or in the surrounding mud entrenchments. He threw himself under the front end of Leman Russ knowing it would absorb any blows from above. Several of the tanks, including that of the tank commander, were already in flames after sustaining heavy damage from the barrage. Antonius pressed against the tank and closed his eyes. The pain from his otherworldly senses was unbearable. The pressure in his head was worse than the waves buffeting his body from the explosions.

Hearing a new rumbling sound, Antonius opened one eye and looked around the clearing. Enormous stone monuments came rising out of the earth like a dagger through a sheet, the arrow-shaped formations clawing their way past dirt and rock. On one side of the clearing, an even larger shape rose through the ground, an edifice to violence and madness; the punishing symbol of Khorne, the Blood God. They were too late. The Ruinous Powers had come to claim their prize.

The frail psyker cast a panicked glance to the crystal mounds. The impenetrable formations began to liquefy, slowly at first but then rapidly bubbling. They flowed like candles melting to wax ever faster, and as they ran, they changed from their beautiful pink-white gradients to a hateful brass color. Paralyzed with horror, Antonius watched as each mound re-solidified again as a massive disc in symbol of Khorne. Whatever purpose the crystals had once played, they were now forever changed in the image of the Blood God.

***

“Fire at will!”

Gowther held on to his men as loosely as he held on to his own sanity. Their only tethers to reality were the muscle memory of repetitively practiced firepower and the simplicity of having an enemy in front of them. The rifts had opened almost directly in front of their entrenchments, making a mockery of the carefully-cleared killing fields prepared between their positions and the tree line. The gaps themselves were horrific black slits surrounded by pulsing, deep red tendrils. Through these holes in reality flowed column after column of red daemonic infantry, charging with terrifying speed to the sound of unearthly brass trumpets. Atop their position high up in the ruin-bastion neither Gowther’s squad nor the Scions could miss hitting a target.

It didn’t matter. Within seconds the daemons crested over the entrenchments and razorwire fence. Their huge black swords crashed into the courtyard defenders with such force that explosions of bone and blood erupted everywhere below. The violence was so intense even the battle-hardened Sergeant was forced to look away.

Gowther turned to see a white-faced Lionel staring at him, along with the rest of their squad. The Scions on the other side of the floor continued to fire out the windows with far more discipline. Knowing he quickly had to find some sort of lifeline for the morale of his men, Gowther forced himself to swallow. “Don’t worry lads. There’s no way those beasts can climb these floors, not with the ladders we needed and the reinforcements we’ve added to this tower. The Emperor looked after us today by placing us here up high in these impenetrable walls, all the better to rain down His justice on these abominations. Like a lighthouse in the storm, we will hold and we will cut through the darkness. We are Vostroyans. We are the Guard. We will hold.”

It was a better speech than he’d expected to dig up on such short notice. The boys looked at each other nervously. Slowly, they seemed to accept his conviction of safety, then quickly evangelize it. Moments later they believed him absolutely. Drowning men are apt to cling tenaciously the security of a lifeline. Gowther had his squad back. A few faint smiles appeared as they checked their lasguns for charge capacity and prepared to return to the windows.

Gowther almost bit his tongue off as the whole building shuddered for a moment. They heard as much as felt the impact. This time even the Scions on the other side of the floor exchanged confused looks – the firestorm from above ended minutes ago? Was it back? Then came another shudder. Silence. And another shudder, louder and more massive each time. It almost reminded Gowther of the titanic steps of the Titans he’d served with. But that was ridiculous; on their bastion, in this jungle valley, they would have seen a Titan coming from at least ten hive-leagues away.

The Vostroyan Sergeant reoriented himself and turned to say something – he wasn’t sure what – to his men. A room of paralyzed faces stared back at him. No. Not at him. Something else.

Gowther turned around to look back out his window. The view was gone. One enormous, baleful, pupil-less eye stared back at him, a searing white nested in an ocean of red flesh. Whatever it was, it was as tall as the tallest floor in their building.

When the roar came this time, it wasn’t from the remote heavens but from a concrete wall away. The sound hit them so hard they flew to the ground with crunching impact. The roar stole all thought from his body as he was filled with a primordial fear of the likes he’d never experienced. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if this was how an animal felt when it encountered the alpha predator of its food chain.

Everything else that happened felt like both a dream and a nightmare. Somewhere, massive crashes hit the bastion in quick succession. The room tumbled, the ceiling collapsed, and masonry went flying everywhere. Gowther dimly registered his body flying high through the air as the whole building exploded.

He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it couldn’t have been long. He was far across the clearing now, in thick foliage nested against a palm tree. He could barely move anything, which was no surprise. The real surprise was that he wasn’t dead. Gowther felt something odd and cast a painful glance behind him. Lionel’s unmoving eyes stared back. His friend, his dear friend who’d saved Gowther’s life so many times on so many worlds, had accidently saved his Sergeant one last time. Lionel’s dead body had broken Gowther’s landing against the tree. At long last, the former lion of the lower hive gangs was no more.

The blood continued to pour down from the black skies faster and thicker than ever before. Gowther turned his blurry eyes back to the clearing to see the end.

He saw his brothers slaughtered in amidst the courtyard debris.

He saw the company’s psyker blast two daemons to ashes before being decapitated by a giant sword.

He saw a damaged tank get severed almost in half by a Chimera-sized daemon with a single massive axe.

He saw red dogs with fins for ears chase down first-born sons crawling out from collapsed masonry.

And he saw a living building with enormous wings cross the whole courtyard in one mighty leap. It landed next to the second bastion before savaging it with twin axes bigger than Basilisk carriages. The other building joined its deceased twin in total ruin.

Then Gowther saw no more.

***

“Are you sure that’s all?”

He squinted again against the bright lights, unable to sort out anything else in the infinite darkness. It was hard for Gowther to sense much of anything. Even with minimal restraints he could barely move a muscle. They must have used substantial drugs to wake him and keep him conscious in spite of his condition. He didn’t know where or when he was, only that his body had struggled heavily to narrate the battle of the blood jungle. With effort, he nodded slowly.

“I see. Thank you.”

Even in the darkness, Gowther could make out the blue power-up glow of an ornate plasma pistol. This time, it truly was the last thing he ever saw.

The lights came back on. The voice stood up and addressed what remained of the dead Vostroyan and his ruined armchair.

“Your orders were to hold at all costs.”

The man casually holstered his pistol and adjusted his black-and-gold robes. He turned to the interrogation window and addressed the military officers he knew were watching on the other side.

“The expeditionary force ventured off-course in the deep jungle. Trapped and lost, they took a direct hit from an intense and fatal weather event. By the time reinforcements found them, the whole company had been lost. They will be remembered for their faithful service in the Emperor’s name.”

With that, Inquisitor Olberus turned and briskly left the room. The Great Enemy awaited him.

***

Morus moved his hands across the screens and panels with deliberate steadiness. Over the centuries all the infinite inputs and outputs had ascended training and become instinct. Once long ago, when he still called himself a man of Krieg, he had been a land commander of considerable gifts. With the passage of time his more experienced and powerful brethren among the Death Guard had taught him how to adapt his talents to the arenas of naval navigation and warfare among the stars. Unlike his Imperial counterparts, he needed no title for his rank. He was simply Morus. Within the rotten Nurgle core that comprised the bulk of the Hexfleet, all hierarchy was understood and discipline was absolute. Morus had commanded the operational side of space engagements and interstellar travel since years now beyond recollection. Even the pilots of the Heretic Astartes obeyed his directions without question. Despite the best of bionics, few Imperial Admirals would ever live long enough to earn such authority. But such mortals did not enjoy the undying blessings of the Grandfather.

He read the data without emotion as numbers and images flashed past the green lenses of his long-defunct rebreather mask. Morus did not need to turn around to sense the presence of his leader on the balcony high above the command deck. Their savior, who had rescued them from the flesh-curse and liberated them from a birth-decreed enslavement to the Throne.

Morus began immediately. Inefficient ceremony had little place aboard the flagship. “Warp suppression continues to weaken with each successive 12-hour cycle following destruction of the Rubadian Stones. Their lingering effect on sorcery-based protocols is now estimated at less than 5% and will reduce to an effective 0% by the next solar rotation. Only the Blackstone structures themselves continue to compromise Garden-sync potential within their local jurisdictions. Even these nodes are now viable zones for daemon engine deployment.”

He switched to a new data array and quickly swiped past hundreds of orbital scans and battle recordings. “Other than our own operation, military efforts by other warlords around the system have generated varied results. Tactical inputs continue to aggregate, but we project that the Imperium will narrowly hold the majority of combat zones. The Weeping Legion and Thousand Sons invasions have breached major defensive strongholds, but many of the other warbands failed to deploy sufficient firepower for displacing the heavily-entrenched Astra Militarum regiments still holding the planet’s key strategic positions.”

After a moment, his master finally spoke. The voice was always deceptively handsome and clear. “It is no matter. This is precisely why we resolved to conduct our own operations separately from the rest of the war effort. So long as we are ultimately able establish a beachhead within one of the zones corresponding to the sacred numerology, the Neverborn awaiting our call will be more than sufficient in number for us to execute the extraction stage.”

Morus nodded. “My Lord, was it truly right to begin our war by opening the door for the Blood God? Should not the glory of our first planetary engagement have been given to honor the banner of decay?” Morus knew he was free to ask such questions. They related to strategy and piety, both considerations which were encouraged within the Nurgle fulcrum of the Hexfleet.

“Let the Unbound serve his purpose. The pact provides for his needs as well as ours. For a rot to take root, it is necessary to first puncture the flesh. For a particularly troublesome hide, this will often require an especially savage blade. From the open wound follows glorious contagion. So our Father has taught me in my dreams.”

Morus heard a rustling of feathers and he sensed he was again left to his own devices. The Plaguelich had spoken.