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Hey guys. I love warhammer/warhammer 40k. So one day (a couple of days ago) I decided to start a story or sort of parallel history because obviously some events in this chapter are different in official terms for example captain Tycho didn't die defending Baal from orks he died attacking them and so on. Anyway, here it is please excuse any spelling mistakes:

The crimson slaughter and the blood angels
Somewhere in uncharted space:


The shadow flickered across the room like a small creature hiding from a predator. But really it was the shadow of, a predator, the predator. Captain Typhus of the 1st death guard strode across the command bridge. ‘’Bring Lord Kranon online!’’ his voice was like the dying shriek of a thousand souls. Another hulking figure of metal strode across to a control console and pressed a few buttons. A head plated in red and lined with gold which had a pair of horns protruding from its top appeared on the screen.
‘’Typhus,’’ the voice was like the sigh of wind through a willow.
‘’Kranon’’ Replied Typhus ‘’How goes your mission?’’
‘’A few of the imperial guard engaged us.’’ spoke the one called Kranon.
‘’Those ants? They weren’t a problem I hope!?’’
‘’Of course not Typhus, those ants can’t stop the crimson slaughter!’’
‘’How long until you are ready Kranon? Chaos is waiting.’’
‘’Soon my friend, soon just one more planet then Terra will be ours!’’
‘’Go then!’’
‘’Death to the corpse emperor!’’
‘’Indeed Kronan.’’
The face disappeared. The man at the controls turned to Typhus.
‘’I don’t like trusting those liars!’’
‘’Soon Severius, soon then honour will be ours’’
On board the other ship lord ‘Kronan the relentless’ strode to his personal quarters waiting there was his second in command Mortis Metalikus one of the few dreadnaughts of chaos to have not gone completely insane. Resting there in the heart of the colossal armour was one of chaos’ oldest still living soldiers older than Kronan himself. In fact some say that Mortis was chapter master of the Crimson Sabres which the crimson slaughter had been founded from. Whatever his beginning he had not shared it with anyone, not even Kronan and Kronan respected him for that (although secretly he believed that Mortis had actually started that rumour)and as long as it did not affect his combat capabilities he was fine.
‘’Master.’’
‘’Ancient one’’
This same greeting had been passed between them for almost six hundred years and it was something of a ritual.
‘’Are the host prepared?’’
‘’Yes my lord!’’
‘’Then it is now that Horvatch falls!’’
On board shuttle alpha deco:
Inquisitor Sidermius glanced over at the twelve crusaders that were his personal retinue. They had been recruited straight from the Cardinal’s crimson honour guard a branch of the ecclesiarchy. He wandered over to the transparanium viewport and looked upon the hundred or so servitors and inquisition assassins who would aid Horvatches PDF or Planetary Defense Guard. A Grey Knights strike squad would aid the dark angels already on the planet. There was a massive imperial force gathered on Horvatch as the Empires bureaucracy had finally realised that an invasion by chaos on Terra was imminent if they lost Horvatch. There were twelve imperial frigates as well as eight battleships and two command ships. Then there was the Space marine space hulk Adalius as well as ten strike cruisers and a battle barge. All these ships were ready for war and bristling with weapons and fighters, and if the forces of chaos somehow broke through well there were three companies of dark angels two companies of the adepta sororitas or the sisters of battle. There was also the small matter of nine hundred thousand Imperial guard troops with a full air and land contingent. The empire thought they were prepared. They weren’t.

On board the command ship Fire of Redemption:

‘’Commander!’’ said a lieutenant operating a radar console.
‘’Yes?’’ said Commander Garrulus senior colonel-admiral of the imperial navy.
‘’Unidentified craft squawking code 777.7 requesting to land on Horvatch sir!’’
‘’Is he on the list lieutenant?’’
‘’yes sir!’’
‘’ Well maybe you should let him in!’’
‘’Yes sir!’’
Garrulus sighed, these new recruits asked permission for everything he had heard one ask him last week if he could use the... Anyway they were just eager to impress and he hadn’t seen a better shot than the aforementioned lieutenant.

The shuttle touched down on the steel landing platform at the centre of Horvatches commercial centre of J’dakul. All around him were factories and wind farms providing power and resources for almost the whole planet. Sidermius strode across to where two guards stood.
‘’Inquisitor Sidermius to see President Ovastan!’’
‘’Yes sir! Very good sir, welcome to Horvatch sir!’’
Sidermius strode through the door the twelve crusaders following him. President Ovastan sat on a gold throne which gleamed like a thiefs eye. On seeing Sidermius the presidents face lit up with fear but only for such a split second so that Sidermius couldn’t be sure whether he had just imagined it.
‘’President,’’ said Sidermius.
‘’Inquisitor!’’ replied Ovastan,
‘’You are under arrest for not functioning properly in your position you are here by being detained. I declare that all of Horvatch be placed under martial law and that you will be questioned as to why you have allowed such a lapse in your capabilities.’’ stated Sidermius in a level tone.
‘’Is that so?’’ said Ovastan a smile on his face.
There was a sudden explosion and screams smashed through the air. Twenty five figures, space marines, ran in bolters roaring. Sidermius felt himself be hit. One. Two. Three hits in total and then he collapsed...

On board unidentified craft 777.7:

They were the chosen, they were the equivalent of terminators and they were ready for battle. The ‘unidentified craft’ was actually a chaos transporter carrying two land raiders. As the shuttle neared the landing platform its lascannons fired destroying the slender private craft marked with inquisition logos. The land raiders deployed and the chosen ran out of the craft as the huge doors were blown open by the land raiders. The screams of guards suddenly in the midst of heavy combat accompanied the explosions in a song of violence. The chosen burst through the wreckage where twelve crusaders stood but they already had their force shields ready in defence but the imperial inquisitor didn’t bullets wracked his body and he slid to the ground. President Ovastan was there two as he stood up in greeting a bullet from a bolt pistol entered his head, he died instantly. But while the chaos space marines were quick the imperial guard was too, missiles smashed into the palace.

Captain Burzxe of the crimson slaughters chosen saw two of his brethren die killed by missiles fired from valkyries and marauders then the real trouble came. Space marine land speeder storms of the dark angels rushed towards them already firing. Too late did captain Burzxe realise that this was just a mission to distract and not of real strategic importance he activated all of his grenades and ran at the nearest storm squadron all four were torn apart with him including most of the space marine scouts on them.

Conspirator X had had a good life serving chaos in all possible ways and providing information for them. Now as the chaos fleet engaged with the empire he was going to commit his most religious act ever, carefully positioned in the centre of the command ship Excelsior: one of two deployed to Horvatch with the fleet he pulled the small pyramid from beneath his robes gazing at it he began the ritual and the room filled with blood red light. Then he spoke a single command word.

Fighter Delta Echo 1462:

Sergeant Eyo of the eighth imperial honour squadron sat at the controls of his modified thunderbolt fighter waiting for contact with enemy fighters. He passed over the command ship Excelsior. He tuned in on the command feed waiting for the order to strike.
~’’Excelsior to Fire of Redemption experiencing technical difficulties over.’’~
~’’Roger Excelsior. In need of support?’’~
~’’ Negative we’ll fi-’’~
The Excelsior exploded in a ball of purple flame at the centre opened a warp portal. Eyo felt his ship begin to be pulled in to it. He pushed his engines almost to warp and began to pull free then another transmission came through.
~’’Enemy fighters! Engage!’’~
~’’Roger’’~
One of Eyo’s screens flashed red-missile lock- well thats the end of me then instead of avoiding he did something else he switched everything off and was sucked into the warp.

Terra,inquisition HQ:

‘’Commander Jaldon transmission from Baal!’’
‘’[all available imperial units distress call alpha Baal is falling Baal is falling!]’’
‘’Can you hail them?’’
‘’No sir, it was just a recording. Probably everything in the galaxy heard it.’’
‘’Who would attack a space marine homeworld?’’
‘’Orks sir. Thats who.’’

Baal:


The ork ships crowded into the system fighting with each other before they had even got in range of Baal, the homeworld of the adeptus astartes chapter the Blood angels. Chapter master Gabriel Seth and his advisor, also chief librarian Mephiston victim of a rogue ork missile attack which had destroyed most of their fortress-monastery and destroyed almost the whole second company. The blood angels lay in disarray; the ork attack being completely unprecedented. That was about all they knew because even this could be a lie. Then again, they had had one warning, from an outlying radar outpost which had also been overrun.
Captain Tycho of the death company felt that this was his final moment. The ork bastion stood in the distance and many hundreds of the foul creatures stood guard. Every attack had been repelled fiercely so obviously that meant they had to send in the death company or the sanguinary guard. But the sanguinary guard were fighting onboard the ork ships so now it was time for the death company to fight through. He felt rage flow through him and charged ‘’For the deus Sanguinius!’’ The next seconds and minutes were a blur for all around him as they saw him fight with the skill of the Sanguinius himself and in his final moments a sea of ork lay dead around him. He collapsed. And died.

I think this is in the wrong forum. Dakka Fiction is where this should go.

Indeed.

... so off we go....

SkavenLord wrote:
I think this is in the wrong forum. Dakka Fiction is where this should go.

Oh sorry I didn't realise there was another forum for that

Well, I'll be blunt. Bluntness is the greatest food for the writer's soul, and it nurtures his talent. I don't like this. First, let's talk about the content before we get to the mechanics of it. Your story is extremely weak because you have tried very, very hard to do the "fade to black, mysteriously" bit at every possible occasion. You can do this once, but then you'd best put some real content in and start fleshing out your world a little more. Speaking of, you offer very little in the way of description in any of your scenes. The characters can only be imagined in the reader's mind if you provide details. For example, there is not one single concrete fact about President Ovastan's appearance. What is he wearing, how does he style his hair, is he young or old, there is nothing. Remember, you might have a great idea of the scene, but we cannot read your mind.

The next thing I have to offer is that, if you can't give us a concrete reason why we're jumping from chaos and inquisitors on Hovarth to Orks and Blood Angels on Baal, then don't jump to that.

Also, there's a big problem here. You've called this a book, which it unfortunately can never be because of license issues. You should, in these cases, refer to it as a short story or fanfic. It can be a good fanfic, even a great one, but unless it is a work that could be published it cannot be a book. Sorry about that.

Now for the real killer, the mechanics. This piece has a ton of grammatical and punctuation errors, far too much for me to go through and list it all. I highly recommend, nay, order you on threat of exterminatus, to go read a bunch of online articles about punctuation for writers. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will get a reader to move on to something else faster than mechanical problems in writing. This is the biggest problem you have, and it desperately needs addressing.

 bossfearless wrote:
Well, I'll be blunt. Bluntness is the greatest food for the writer's soul, and it nurtures his talent. I don't like this. First, let's talk about the content before we get to the mechanics of it. Your story is extremely weak because you have tried very, very hard to do the "fade to black, mysteriously" bit at every possible occasion. You can do this once, but then you'd best put some real content in and start fleshing out your world a little more. Speaking of, you offer very little in the way of description in any of your scenes. The characters can only be imagined in the reader's mind if you provide details. For example, there is not one single concrete fact about President Ovastan's appearance. What is he wearing, how does he style his hair, is he young or old, there is nothing. Remember, you might have a great idea of the scene, but we cannot read your mind.

The next thing I have to offer is that, if you can't give us a concrete reason why we're jumping from chaos and inquisitors on Hovarth to Orks and Blood Angels on Baal, then don't jump to that.

Also, there's a big problem here. You've called this a book, which it unfortunately can never be because of license issues. You should, in these cases, refer to it as a short story or fanfic. It can be a good fanfic, even a great one, but unless it is a work that could be published it cannot be a book. Sorry about that.

Now for the real killer, the mechanics. This piece has a ton of grammatical and punctuation errors, far too much for me to go through and list it all. I highly recommend, nay, order you on threat of exterminatus, to go read a bunch of online articles about punctuation for writers. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will get a reader to move on to something else faster than mechanical problems in writing. This is the biggest problem you have, and it desperately needs addressing.

Well for someone with dyslexia I think that it will be hard but not impossible for me to change all this after your point about the grammar is very valid (EXTREMELY VALID) thank you for being blunt it is indeed the best way to comment on this writing

Sorry to be harsh, but it's the criticism you need to hear in order to get better. I wish more people would be brutal when they review my work.

 bossfearless wrote:
Sorry to be harsh, but it's the criticism you need to hear in order to get better. I wish more people would be brutal when they review my work.

There's a fine line between being unnecessarily harsh and being justifiably thorough when providing constructive criticism. It's a shame that being thorough is all too often regarded as a personal attack by more defensive writers, and anything more than "Good work, keep it up" is usually met with criticism of the critic for not heaping on praise. Attempts to go any further into a lot of works online are met with varying degrees of resistance from the writer, with some being open-minded and acceptive but a lot being unwilling to accept fault.

It's partly because of this that most people (myself included) rarely give constructive criticism at all; what we say ends up falling upon deaf ears half the time, and it's not worth the effort. Even when people claim to want constructive criticism, what they really want is 'constructive criticism so long as it agrees with me'. The difficulty lies in working out whether or not it's worth one's own time to write a thorough review on the off-chance that this person might accept it.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 bossfearless wrote:
Sorry to be harsh, but it's the criticism you need to hear in order to get better. I wish more people would be brutal when they review my work.

There's a fine line between being unnecessarily harsh and being justifiably thorough when providing constructive criticism. It's a shame that being thorough is all too often regarded as a personal attack by more defensive writers, and anything more than "Good work, keep it up" is usually met with criticism of the critic for not heaping on praise. Attempts to go any further into a lot of works online are met with varying degrees of resistance from the writer, with some being open-minded and acceptive but a lot being unwilling to accept fault.

It's partly because of this that most people (myself included) rarely give constructive criticism at all; what we say ends up falling upon deaf ears half the time, and it's not worth the effort. Even when people claim to want constructive criticism, what they really want is 'constructive criticism so long as it agrees with me'. The difficulty lies in working out whether or not it's worth one's own time to write a thorough review on the off-chance that this person might accept it.

I like your sig. David Eddings for the win!!!!!!