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 Dark Lord Seanron wrote:

lliu wrote:
Pssst, in the old thread, where is it by now?

We're still super early, literally the first few days.

Oh. I was thinking we were almost to the Tau part with the Eldar.

I think the whole thing is getting a little shake up so as to tie everything together more closely.

For the Segmentum Solar, and Terra in particular, the weeks following the death of the most benevolent God-Emperor of Mankind were fraught with silent wars and bloody shadow play, all at the hands of the High Lords of Terra. Having agreed that the Imperium at large could not know of the passing of the empire’s figurehead, they set into motion a series of dark plans and covert operations that would ensure mankind’s ignorance.

The High Lord of the Administratum identified several key figures which he labelled ‘Scopus Gnaritas’, those that had first-hand knowledge of the Emperor’s demise and needed to be contained immediately. This included the Imperial Fists Astartes who first entered the Imperial sanctum after the event, the Custodians of the Imperial Palace, a single priestess of the Mechanicum and the majority of the Astropathic contingent of the palace.

The Astartes were easy to placate. Strong of will and loyal to a fault they may be, The Fists were loath to allow Terra to devolve into chaos. A shadowed council between the Second Captain stationed on Terra and several of the High Lords at many points could have ended in violence, but ended in the agreement that the Fists must keep their confidence until the High Lords could put in place some method to stop the Imperium devolving into anarchy. The High Lords had bought themselves time with the Astartes, but a more permanent solution would need to be implemented down the line.

The Custodies were an entirely different proposition, the personal retinue of the Emperor taking the death incredibly harshly. All attempts at contact with the Custodians brought nothing but silence, the bodyguards sealing themselves away within the former chambers of the Golden Throne. Several attempts were made to breach the doors and face the Custodians face to face, and each time ended in violence and defeat for the High Lords. Eventually, the Fabricator-General and High-Lord of the Astra Militarum agreed to have the personal chambers sealed and vox-guarded until a time the High Lords could guarantee the Custodians silence. The grim and silent guardians made no attempt to leave the chambers, maintaining their silent vigil over the site of their master’s death, much to the relief of the Terran Council.

The Astropaths of the Palace were to meet a very different and much harsher fate. The High-Mistress of the Assassinorium took cruel and wicked pleasure in sending her servants to the farthest corners of the grand edifice and having them silenced permanently. The heinous Culexus Temple stalked the gilded halls, flaying the psychically gifted alive and draining their essence in a cruel warping of mortal hunger. The Vindicare, quiet and unmoving, guarded all possible escape routes for the Astropaths, gunning down men, women and children as the fled the grim pogrom. The Callidus, always adept at subterfuge and misdirection, infiltrated bolt-holes and hiding places, turning their fury on those who until that moment trusted that they were one of their own. And the Eversor, those beasts that should have been aborted at their inception, rampaged through the halls of the Imperial Domain, slaying any and all who fell upon their path. The golden chambers reeked with the smell of blood and terror as the High Lords ensured their truth was the only truth the Imperium would hear.

As for the Priestess of the Mechanicum, no sign could be found of her on Terra. Her trail ended at the fifteenth Imperial Sky Docks on the northern terraces of the Imperial Palace. Despite their best efforts, she had evaded all attempts at capture and successfully left Terra on her Father’s former ship, The Nostradamus. Collating trajectories, launch data and clearance levels, the High Lord of the Administratum projected her expected destination to be the primary forges of Mars, birth world of the Mechanicum. The Fabricator-General appeased his colleagues, the wayward priestess was evidently approaching Mars to inform him of events he was already aware of. He would grant her audience once she reached Mars, and he would ensure her knowledge died there…

Won't be updating til after the New Year folks, everyone have a nice holiday

AWWWW
you too

It was a millennia ago when a learned individual in the central span of the Europa Straits theorised that time itself is relative. The flow of time is like a wild river with numerous currents and eddies of different speeds and pulls. In this river both the massive and molecular are tied to its flow, and nothing barring the singular fury of a black hole can push against the tides. The current is different for everyone, and although the differences between individuals may be infinitesimal, the difference is still there giving form and function to the sub-atomic tapestry of our universe.

It is this physical flow of time which should have saved the Imperium from the Emperor’s death: the news should have taken months to reach the edge of the solar system, years to touch the borders of the Segmentum Solar, and millennia to touch the very edges of the Segmentum Obscurus. Generations would have passed in peace without the knowledge of their Master’s death, toiling away under the stars as they always have done, and many would never know at all, living as they always have in ignorance. This would have been doubly true due to the machinations of Terra’s High Lords, who schemed, plotted and murdered their way away from the truth of the Emperor’s demise. The Galaxy would have spun as it ever had in atomic grace and none the wiser.

However time does not apply to every aspect of the Universe, for behind the black tapestry of our reality lies a psionic cancer, a stain of unreality behind the eyes of every living creature. Time does not conform to any physical law in the maelstrom of the aether, and the Emperor’s demise registered across every corner of the infernal realm simultaneously. And though a celestial anomaly had spared the Segmentum Solar, the rest of the galaxy shuddered as the Warp bled through the veil to consume the servants of a deceased god.

And consume they did…

As always Seanron your writing makes mockery of my own.

O my god I love this

Another shrieker screamed over the trench, vapour billowing from its passage. It embedded itself just behind the trench line before detonating with a scream of destruction, causing the men and women of the Catachan XVII to collapse in agony, blood pouring from their ears and pressure triggering pain in the skulls. Sergeant Coln spat blood into the muddied floor of his company’s trench, straightening painfully as another shrieker corkscrewed wildly overhead.

His troops had been fighting the xenos for three weeks Terran standard now, and whilst casualties to the hated shrieker missiles had been thankfully few, it didn’t stop the alien filth from hurling the projectiles with wanton abandon into the Imperial trench lines, revelling in the mass delirium and panic they triggered. Coln cleared his throat, raised his chainsaber and called out to anyone who could still hear him.

“Eyes up people! You scared of a little noise? You waiting for the Commisar to come hold your hand? Get your elbows up on that lip line and send some noise back!”

His men and women, whom he had fought and bled with for years, reacted quickly and efficiently. They clambered up to the lips of the trench, lasrifles lining up in unison before unleashing a red stream of death that battered into the advancing enemy. Several of the xenos fell, their black-beetle armour cracking and the spines and blades they decorated everything in snapping and smashing as the Catachan XVII vented their fury. Still others powered on, speeding through the fusillade, wicked blades in their hands and alien curses on their tongues. Shriekers and mortars bellowed overhead as both sides struggled to chase the other from the muddy trench lines.

The sky above them, scarred and dirtied with the constant exchange of firepower, began to boil and shift unnoticed by the warring mortals below, and silently thousands of pairs of eyes bled into existence.

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Almeda allowed himself a grim smile as the greenskin vessel broke apart on the screen, its bulk vaporised by the fury of the small Blood Angels fleet. Almeda and his kin had been pursuing the hulk through the sector for several days, bringing it to battle on several occasions, but finally they had struck the hammer blow that had spelled its end. His bridge crew applauded and gave thanks to the Emperor at the end of a campaign well fought. He heard heavy footsteps approaching him from behind as Baltar stood alongside his captain. Almeda nodded toward the screen.

“Tenacious aren’t they? Feels like we’ve been chasing them for weeks never mind days.”

Baltar laughed deeply, his voice a chesty baritone as he replied.

“But the chase has ended in victory captain, glory to the IX! Glory to the fleet!”

Baltar slapped his commander’s shoulder in good jest, and smiled warmly. The xenos had been slain, and the Emperor’s realm was a little safer. Almeda nodded in agreement.

“Glory indeed my friend, but not enough to go round I’ll wager. The aliens fled as soon as they dropped form the warp. It is unlike the greenskin not to stand and fight even in the direst of situations. I almost wish they had put up more of a fight.”

Baltar laughed again and was about to reprimand his oldest friend when the bridge alarms wailed into life. The crew ceased their celebrations as their instruments streamed data on a building warp presence off the ship’s bow. Almeda bellowed orders, the organised chaos on the bridge of his ship being played out across the Blood Angels fleet.

And just beyond mortal sight, a bubbling tumour of unreality began to form around the fleet, and those with the gift to hear it would swear they could hear screaming.

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Gurlukh Maen, scourge of the Eastern Reach and Warlord of the Breakers of Bone, buried his blade into the belly of the screaming man and hefted the struggling victim up to meet his eye line. The mortal quailed before the fetid glory of the Warlord, his eyes wild with terror, before Maen extended his jaws and tore the wretch’s face from his bones with his teeth. He dropped the corpse roughly, savouring the taste of blood and gristle on his tongue. Human meat was a rare vintage, and the traitor Astartes revelled in it. His followers bellowed their approval and joined in the bloody feast set about them.

The Breakers of Bone had been slaying their way across a small planetary system for months now, ever since that coward Abaddon (a curse upon his name) had abandoned his own Black Crusade to return to the Eye. A higher calling and a deeper plan were the reasons given, but Gurlukh Maen suspected what he suspected about all of Horus’ bastard spawn: cowardice and incompetence.

So his war band had struck out on their own, killing and burning their way through the Emperor’s realm with reckless and malicious abandon. The Breaker’s seer, Ur’shunt of the Endless Eyes, had promised great things to Gurlukh and his reavers if they soaked the material realm in blood in the shadow of Abaddon’s failure.

Gurlukh had noticed that Ur’shunt had been peculiarly quiet during the fighting. Usually the sorcerer would espouse the names of the Five Hundred Damned and the Epistles of the Ever-lost whilst bathing in the blood of their victims, but his armoured and robed form stood hushed and still, and even the ethereal wisps of warp-things that shadowed the witch-kin’s movements seemed subdued. Shouldering his minions aside, Gurlukh approached his seer, ready to reprimand his lack of devotion to the slaughter when the sorcerer’s head snapped back and elicited a scream that was every scream Gurlukh had ever heard in his long, bloody existence.

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In life Ashan Ad’Amin had always been unlucky, seemingly his death had not changed this fact. The Cryptek threw aside yet another broken mortal body, the pile now filling the great grave-pit almost to bursting. Trying to isolate the essence of the mortal races soul receptacle and hollowing it for the inception of another was proving far more difficult than the ancient construct had first suspected. His work had been promising and endlessly interesting, but nothing solid or conclusive had come from the endless dissecting.

He signalled to his slaves to bring forth another mortal, a shivering, pale haired Eldar to his slab as he prepared his instruments for another round of tests. This would be the seven hundred thousandth such experiment Ashan had attempted, but he was never one to allow failure to dismay him. The Eldar wailed and spat, cursing his jailor with all the fury of Commoragh, but the venting fell on deaf ears. Ashan’s colossal minions forced the creature onto the monolithic slab, waiting silently for their master to begin his ruminations.

Ashan leaned over hi subject, their terror reflecting in the singular dark orb of his eye. His six arms whined and clicked into infeasible positions, each one wielding a device of monstrous pain or physical impossibility. He prepared to make the first incision, on the surface of the mortal’s eyes, when a dull moan filled the chamber. Raising his head, Ashan scanned the room and its myriad sub-dimensions for the source of the sound. His minions stood immobile and uncaring, but the sound of movement, flesh slithering across flesh began to echo about the Cryptek’s personal domain.

Moving away from his ministrations, Ashan stalked to the Body Pit, the noise growing louder as he approached. Leaning over, he opened his optics fully to the deep trough of bodies before him. A faint hiss escaped the dead, before a clawed hand erupted from the dead and seized the Necron by the neck…

I was wondering where you'd gone, then you come back with this huge amount of great material, keep up the good work!

Don't the Catachans have standard issue ear plugs?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Don't the Catachans have standard issue ear plugs?

Hmm, I thought most did.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Don't the Catachans have standard issue ear plugs?

Hmm, I thought most did.

You guys get hung up on the strangest things, honestly...

 Dark Lord Seanron wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Don't the Catachans have standard issue ear plugs?

Hmm, I thought most did.

You guys get hung up on the strangest things, honestly...

When your enemy is using sound as a weapon, a little ear protection is warranted, yes?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 Dark Lord Seanron wrote:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Don't the Catachans have standard issue ear plugs?

Hmm, I thought most did.

You guys get hung up on the strangest things, honestly...

When your enemy is using sound as a weapon, a little ear protection is warranted, yes?

Well I am a game designer, I complain about the smallest things. Comes with the field really.

But Hopefully you continue writing this.

I wouldn't mind seeing a new take on the 40k lore.

*MIND EXPLODES* Oh my goodness i saved the old work on my ipad to read when i was at work, now i gotta save over it with this new awesome rewrite. My goodness man you are amazing! Keep it coming to fufill my anxiousness of seeing Magnus the Red "redeemed"

I don't quite get why the Emperor's servants would kill themselves after they killed the Emperor. And what's more, the Emperor can't talk.
But otherwise, good story.

 Xilvi wrote:
my anxiousness of seeing Magnus the Red "redeemed"

Text to speach webseries much? Amirite?

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:
I don't quite get why the Emperor's servants would kill themselves after they killed the Emperor. And what's more, the Emperor can't talk.
But otherwise, good story.

Its fear, fear of what might happen or them not doing their duty for their lord. Its basically depression for super humans. You did a bad job, I'll go kill myself. Or it is something more sinister.

People suddenly dying in the imperium, especially the custodes. It sounds like something bad

Been a bit swamped of late, update is nearly finished thanks guys for your kind word and patience

A Necron being killed by zombies... oh the irony

The grotesque eyes in the heavens began to weep, and wherever their tears landed matter flowed and boiled like hot wax. The barren trench lines below boiled and steamed as the sorrow from beyond the veil warped and melted the landscape in a deluge of daemonic rain. Man and xenos below suffered the same, skin and muscle sloughing from bone in gore-stained chunks, bloodying the mud and liquid below until the entire battlefield was a garish, gore-choked swamp. Sergeant Coln raised his blistered sword arm to the sky and attempted to sound a retreat to his troops even as they cooked and disintegrated around him. He closed his eyes and bellowed his fury to the sky, his throat filling with the unholy rain. His insides oozed and boiled, pouring from tears and rents in his body, dripping and bucketing to the slick ground beneath. When the infernal eyes finally ceased their weeping, nothing remained on the world except a barren ocean of gore-streaked matter and refuse.

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In space, there is no sound, only a glacial silence that all physical law must bow to. But the screams erupting from the rents in the ether were based in no law of known physics, and for the first time space was forced to suffer the mournful din. They battered and tore across the Imperial Fleet with in a mix of ravenous elation and dreadful terror. Almeda roared to his bridge crew, demanding they turn about and surge away from the hellish stellar wound, but no one could reply. The screams tore through brain matter and sliced through neurons, men, women and Astartes collapsing with their hands clasped over bloody ears and eyes. All sound was drowned out in the fury of the screams as Almeda turned his horrified gaze to the ships central viewport. The tear in space had formed a vast maw, miles upon miles of serrated and cracked fangs lining its maddening gums. The mouth opened wider and wider, sucking matter and light and leaving screams in their stead. The Blood Angel Captain fell to his knees as his fleet was swallowed by the infernal maw. It would not stop opening until it had consumed the whole system, leaving only blackness and emptiness in its wake.

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The body of Ur’shunt of the Endless Eyes cracked and swelled, his robes and armour exploding out like a shrapnel grenade, scoring rents and wounds in the armour of his comrades. The former Astartes body bubbled and tore as new limbs and tumorous growths burst from his mass. Gurlukh Maen roared to his followers to subdue the warping sorcerer as he raised his axe above his head, his minions turning weapons on their former comrade with all the precision and speed their former master had bred into them. Gunfire exploded into the fleshy mass, explosive rounds eliciting bloody gouges and roars from the mutating Space Marine. But still he grew, mouths and eyes and bristled fly-hair bursting from obscene folds and globs of tissue. Ropey tendrils of sinew burst from Ur’shunt, wrapping their slick lengths around his former brothers, pulling them closer to his blubbered form. Armour and weapons cracked broke as the tumorous stain on reality consumed the traitor Astartes, their mass adding to his in a perverted hunger. Blood and gristle spilled from Ur’shunt, his vile orifices eliciting moans of pleasure and agony in equal measure. Gurlukh Maen hacked and flayed, screaming curses to the Gods as he was forced back by the unholy mass. A fleshy vine snatched at his leg, and Maen crashed onto his back, his axe falling from his grip. Before he could right himself, Ur’shunt was upon him, the blob of growth crushing the ancient armour of its former master. Maen beat his fist at the wall of skin and muscle, and the last thing he would ever see was the folds of fat parting to reveal a hungry ravenous maw that seemed to smile before swallowing his head whole.

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The clawed fist gripped Ashan Ad’Amin by the head and squeezed like a piston of meat and bone. The Cryptek jerked backwards but the claw remained vice-like, squeezing Ashan’s head with a grim certainty. Necrodermix cracked and buckled under the strain, and a sharp snap rang through the chamber as Ashan’s sole optic cracked under the relentless grip.

The Cryptek’s sentinels leapt silently into action, metallic wardens pouncing on the arm and pulling it from their master. With a sickening tear, the arm broke and the claw released the Cryptek, who collapsed to the floor, limbs twitching and gibberish pouring from his lipless mouth. The body pit exploded outward as the bearer of the arm revealed itself, and if the Necron guardians still had the propensity to feel then they would have quailed at the sickening creature before.

The bodies of the pit were no longer individual sacks of dead meat, but had melded and roiled into one colossal worm like whole, their arms reaching out and pulling the thing forward. Slime and excrement oozed from seams and scars on the bodies, and a huge leering face had formed upon the stumped neck, malice shining in a set of oversized eyes, fangs wrought from snapped bones glittering in the slit of its mouth. A single, crooked horn sat regally upon its head and flies billowed about its form in a halo of filth and corruption. It centred its wretched gaze upon the attacking sentinels and laughed a gluttonous, liquid laugh:

METAL THINGS WITH SOULS OF SORROW I SEE. YOUR LITTLE TRICKS AND TRAPS CAN KEEP THE TRAPPINGS OF THE GRANDFATHER AT BAY NO LONGER.

The horrific monster hurled itself at the sentinels with a speed that belayed its grotesque mass, and the sounds of breaking metal and torn flesh filled the chamber, blood and flint streaking across the floor.

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When the revival protocols had done their work, Ashan Ad’Amin rose to his feet once more, and for the first time in his millennia-long existence, he was given pause. His chambers, once a place of clinical knowledge and refinement, was a charnel house. Blood and pus covered everything, flies and maggots crawled on every surface and the bodies of his once proud sentinels lay about the chamber, broken and rent beyond any kind of repair. Most of the chamber wall had been burned and torn away, and sticky viscera coated the impromptu entrance. The sounds of violence and shrill, monstrous squeals echoed from the cavernous hole. The Eldar subject that had lain on the operating slab lay there still, its guts opened to the air and foul insect-things breeding and cavorting in the wound. As to where the Eldar’s head was Ashan could not say.

The disarray in the Cryptek’s chambers should not have happened, he had laced the tomb with quantum shielding and warp-diffusers himself and any warp activity or incursion should have been halted. Something had changed, something in the wider universe beyond the Cryptek’s understanding. That was unacceptable, nothing in this world or the next should be beyond the deathless mind of Ashan Ad’Amin. He would understand this incursion. He would understand it and he would stop it. Wrapping his robes about himself, the Cryptek stalked into the gaping cavernous dark, intent on unravelling the darkness that had descended on his world.

I don't think catachan standard issue ear plugs will help anymore.

This may seem like a bias request, but please talk about cadians.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
This may seem like a bias request, but please talk about cadians.

Being on the doorstep of the Eye of Terror will probably guarantee them a few paragraphs.

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
This may seem like a bias request, but please talk about cadians.

If this ends up being even remotely similar to our Dark Lord's original go at the end times, the Cadians will have their time in the sun.

 King Pariah wrote:

 CREEEEEEEEED wrote:
This may seem like a bias request, but please talk about cadians.

If this ends up being even remotely similar to our Dark Lord's original go at the end times, the Cadians will have their time in the sun.

*Spotlight


But yeah That would be interesting to see. I am interested in seeing the differences between the two.

Fanfiction has three levels.

1. Terrible
2. Semigood
3. This Should Be Canon
4. I think you broke the system (Exists outside of the levels)

DarkLord Seanron and everything he writes is number 4 in a nut shell. its so awesome, that even canon has a hard time comparing to the amount of epic you can pump out in a paragraph.

Just doing some housekeeping to the thread before I post Part IV

Such events as previously described were not individual flukes or chance happenings, but a few in a tidal wave of horror and despair that was to pour from the throat of the Ether. Across real-space, the Warp pushed and tore at the fabric between realities, the fragile skin of defence once held firm by the Emperor now dead along with him. Like a monstrous, painful birth the denizens of the infernal plain tore from the womb of their maddened realm in a bid to consume and control the universe their Gods had always craved.

Entire worlds were lost as daemons burst into reality, setting their populations to the torch in the name of creatures too dark and labyrinth for mortals to truly comprehend. Humans in their billions turned on each other in mad butchery, some in panic, some in rage, and others in wanton desire. The Gods called out to the masses, and the masses answered with sword and flame and sin.

The Cardinal World of Gideon XII burned as an army of living flame marched across its surface in the name of the Lord of Fate. Noble spires and religious edifices to the Imperium of Man melted like hot wax as the fiery spectres laid siege to the temple world, its populace reduced to ash in the heat of a thousand hells.

The system of Pershal to a man went mad with anger, unleashing total war upon everyone and everything around them. Men, women and children stalked each other through the streets of cities, the plains of valleys, the corridors of starships carrying murder and ruin in their hands. From the steaming corpses and bloodied grounds rose red-hued horrors, carrion monsters of twisted sinew and blackened horns whom bellowed the glory of the Blood God before setting upon the survivors in an orgy of unescapable murder.

The grand fleet of the Rogue Trader Alexis Gurdain the Third found itself besieged from within when its Pleasure Barge vomited an unending train of daemonic filth and hedonism into its neighbour ships. Crews found themselves both embattled and enraptured by the svelte daemons assaulting them, equal parts lover, mother and destroyer. The crews died in droves, their killers cavorting and writhing obscenely in the bloody mayhem they had wrought. When every denizen of the ships were dead the Daemons led the ships to nearby worlds, beginning the rapture to the Dark Princess once more.

The Psychic Colleges on Uhuru became a cess pit of corruption, when the pupils who had been selected to lead a pilgrimage to Terra erupted into molten gore-streaked portals to the forested blightlands of the Grandfather. Wild forests of disease and decay crawled relentlessly from the formerly glittering spires, choking everything in their path in despair and detritus. In the wake of the choking fauna came millions upon millions of the Grandfather’s tallymen, pus slicked horns upon their brows and rusted, pitted bells in their fists. Palsied claws smote a funeral dirge as they marched over the broken bodies of the living, sacrificing the world to the Lord of Pestilences and securing Uhuru as an entrance to their master’s great garden.

Across the known realms of man it was as if Old Night had returned with vengeance and ruin in its blackened heart. The Agri-worlds of Agalypton festered and burned, the Holy Hives of Gallileo XVII toppled and cracked as titanic daemons of iron and flesh battered the glittering towers to the ground. The Almari and Havesford systems seethed with civil war stoked by the raging desires of man and daemon alike. Fleets burned, planets bled and the Imperium of Man rent itself in twain in the space of a few short bloody nights.

Yet even amidst the unrelenting horror, small victories were won. A guttering hope was still clung to by the survivors of the Emperor’s realm. For those of the Psyker gene with the will and strength to resist the dark gods, they stood to defend their brothers and sisters, casting the wretched filth back to the warp from whence they came. The Astartes of the White Scars, Salamanders and Iron Hands, some of the longest and most devoted of the Emperor’s disciples hurled back the forces of Chaos wherever they found them, defending their charges with their lives. The Holy Hive World of Juda would have boiled in blood if not for the stoic example set by their religious leaders and the guns of the Astra Militarum. Fleets of warships battered back the warp filth that spawned in the void, small pockets of victorious resistance in an otherwise grim tapestry. The Great Eye flared in the heavens and Chaos reaped a bloody toll across the void.

The men and women of the Cadian Gate, the one stable real-space route into the blasted Eye, girded itself for war. The flaring of the unholy realm could only mean the return of the dark hordes, and the soldiers and citizens of Cadia and its worlds steeled themselves against the oncoming tide.

They waited…

They watched…

But nothing came. The Eye was silent, raw and glutted with power, but silent. For within the eddies and currents, a new battle line was being drawn.

A battle line that would change the balances of power for millions.

The Despoiler, thrice-blessed by the Gods, watched the steaming pile of gore before him impassively as his minions went about their bloody business. The four seers pulled and tore at the meat, gibbering inanely to each other in a tongue that no mortal mind should comprehend let alone understand. Blood boiled and steam rose from the corpse as the carrion witches sought signs amid the ruined body. The leader of the coven, a twisted bloated creature by the name of Skalmiix, waived his blood-drenched claw to silence his brothers and fixed the Despoiler with a single, bloodshot eye. When it spoke, its brothers whispered in assent, the sound sending shivers down the spines of unborn children sectors away.

“The signs are clear Lord Abaddon. The Pretender is dead. How and why we cannot see, for the eyes of heaven are clouded. But the realm of the corpse-god is in retreat. Now is the time. Now is the time to strike”

Abaddon clenched his granite jaw, and stared straight into the maddened eye of the Seer, who looked away humbly in the face of the God’s chosen son. When he spoke, he spoke in a deep baritone, laced equally in old anger and arrogance.

“You have assured me of such victories before Skalmiix. Thirteen times I have ridden from the Eye with victory assured and thirteen times I have crawled back into the cesspool in defeat. Why should your words assure me of anything now?”

The seers squealed in fear at the Despoilers words, their chattering like the gnawing of vermin on a corpse. Skalmiix cracked his knuckles and barked for his brothers to silence themselves. The chamber went silent once more; the only sound the dripping of blood from the steaming corpse before them and the quiet hum of the vessel which housed it. Skalmiix arced his wizened neck to meet the Despoiler’s grim visage.

“The False Emperor is dead...this changes everything. The enemy have no defence, no contact, no protection. If we strike now, we can finish your father’s work and...”

“MY work seer...my work. Never forget that” snapped Abaddon, interrupting the seer. The coven winced at the sudden outburst. Composing himself quickly, the witch continued.

“Your work my Lord, you can storm the Cadian Gate and from there a swift march to the throne on Terra. You can fulfil your purpose in the eyes of the Gods. You can be king!”

The Despoiler had heard such promises from the witch coven before, but it never ceased to raise a wicked smile to his otherwise brutal face. The idea of him achieving what even his Father could not, dominion over the mortal masses of the broken Imperium, filled him with a rare joy. The long war had raged for centuries, far longer than Abaddon or any of his kin desired, and the chance to finally tear the throat from the bastard kingdom was something Abaddon desired greatly. Already his Legion celebrated the demise of their former master, revelling in the easy war to come. With the Gods behind him, Abaddon could not fail. The past failures of the so-called Black Crusades would pale in comparison to the utter victory he would taste when his Legions fell upon Terra proper.

“Very well seer. Summon your kin. Relay my words to the Legions. We will march on Terra, the Gates of Cadia shall fall and I will bathe in the blood of the weakling Imperium.”

The coven raised their voices and claws in praise of the Despoiler, before renting their fanaticism once more on the corpse before them. Turning from the grizzly display, The Despoiler left the ritual chamber and made his way to the bridge. He would bring war unimagined to the Imperium, and this time he would succeed. The Corpse-God was dead and the four great powers bowed to Abaddon, nothing would stop him this time, nothing.