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Short narrative detailing first recorded account of my counts-as-Skarbrand bloodthirster. 40k
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+++AUTH CODE 41-55/22.666+++

++APPROVED+++

+++Record Start+++
+++Timestamp 995890.M41+++
+++High chapel of Planetary Governor Halfintax+++
+++Greater Anotholy Hive+++
+++Northern Continental Landmass, Planet Carthusia+++
+++Scarus Sector, Sub Sector 14, Halo Star Fringe+++

+++ Knowledge Is Dangerous But Wisdom Is Priceless +++


All these years later, and still I wake screaming.
It is indelibly burnt into my mind.
The night the WarGod strode amongst us.

I was young then, some thirty standard years, and a newly promoted lieutenant in the Carthusian XII, the famed 'Gate Breakers'. Three thousand years before my time the regiment had fought and bled bravely in the dusty black gravel of Cadia, shoulder to shoulder with the Emperor's Angels. The regiment had returned home, a few hundred ragged survivors, the strongest and luckiest of the ten thousand souls that had stood their ground that day. They brought back with them the new name of the regiment, bestowed by an Angel Captain of unknown chapter. A demigod in gold chased burnished gunmetal armour with crackling halberd and booming voice. They brought also eternal glory. All that is gone now like dust in the wind, it ended that night.

We had been pushing hard for a little over two weeks, the grey, jagged mountainous terrain was punishing, but the only way to reach our objective. The grey dusty skies of the backwater planet known as Kanarak IV robbed the world of any sense of colour, I remember we woke and walked in a perpetuity of shades of grey. The distant young white star of Kanarak Majoris bathed the landscape in pale sickly daylight and at night the three moons reflected the wan light back, so it was never truly dark, always grey.
Our objective was a huge plateau some seventy miles inside the principal mountain range of the planet's only continent. A garbled, distorted distress call using high level Imperial codes had been picked up by our small fleet as we had broke warp, and we had deviated from our next scheduled warp jump and made orbit to check the source of the signal. The system was listed as uninhabited. The sensorium had pinpointed the origin of the call to the plateau, but orbital augurs had been unable to observe the location due to the prescence of anomalous magnetic fields and a perpetual dark thunderhead over the area. Three Valkyries were dispatched to check the site. All had lost contact reporting power failures, none had returned, so there we were. Some tasks still need be done by the humble Mk1 guard soldier.
On the evening of the fifteenth day we arrived at the plateau. It was huge, I would estimate some fifty miles across, dead level and made from the same grey rock as the rest of the world. As our ten thousand troops embarked onto the plateau from the South we spread into search formations and proceeded North to sweep the area. Before long we were walking under the thunderhead, I remember the light fading to a ghostly, shadowy murk and the wind picking up to a stiff breeze. Distant thunder occasionally rumbled in the clouds overhead. The going was easy on the level plateau and around midway through the night we found the obelisk.
It was made of some kind of black vitrified glass, some twenty metres tall, the rough shape of a bolter round stood on end and buried in the dead centre of the plateau. I remember it had curving designs and sweeping lines carved into it, sergeant Barthos swore it was of Eldar construction, and the earth for miles around it was throbbing in a low bass tone. All our electrical equipment was out and several of our lasguns powercells had spontaneously discharged, robbing us of firepower.
We corralled our forces around the discovery and held a command meeting. It was decided to try to approach and force entry into the obelisk to ascertain the source of the signal. Commander Trakolas, our regimental commander, the giant hulk of a man known to all and sundry as Ol' Stiffback took a hundred men and approached the obelisk. As he drew close the throbbing seemed to increase in frequency and pitch until I could feel it bouncing in my stomach, and then through my magnoculars I saw it. I tried to call out but it was already too late. As the commander approached he scuffed his foot through a circle of silver salt surrounding the obelisk. Instantly, with a deafening thud like the sky falling in the obelisk detonated.
As I regained my wits and my feet my first thought was that my face was hot and wet. Although I was scraped and cut by exploding glass I realized it was mostly covered with the aerosoled blood of what had been dozens of my former comrades a few seconds before. Where the obelisk had once stood was a screaming, swirling mass of darkness so black it left twisting, pulsing after-images on the retina. It hurt just to look at the damn thing.
Suddenly, from inside the maelstrom, something burst skywards, a second later it thundered down into the ranks of men still pulling themselves to their feet with a sound like the hammer of god. Men were pulped, red mist filled the air, it was here. It was among us.

It was the WarGod.

It paused for a split second and I took in its full horror. It was the size of a hab block, with cloven hooves, huge wings and skin the colour of burning blood, a monster from darkest legend. Its daemonic, horned visage was made of molten bronze and heat radiated from its eyes and mouth. In its hands it carried a bronze axe seeming grown from corrupted bronze. A horrific, barbed monstrous parody of an axe, as big as a tank.
The Wargod attacked. Men died by the score. Where he strode utter ruination of the human form followed in his wake. Every sweep of the axe was almost too fast to follow but utterly beautiful, sublime even, like the darkest poetry of night written in steaming blood and death. It was death given form, the sweet promise of a bloody caress by a god of bronze fulfilled. The unrestrained hatred and violence was staggering, I felt like I'd been hit in the face by an unstoppable comet of blood and fire. The air became foggy with hot blood mist, punctuated by gargling screams and flashes of laser fire. It strode above the fog bank of blood reaping skulls in the hundreds with every swing. Arcs of raw flesh flew around it like it was a giant mower of men. It took the WarGod, this avatar of pure distilled fury less than three minutes to butcher all ten thousand of us. All except me.
As the last men around me fell in pieces I mustered what courage remained in me and screamed a wordless cant of hatred at the creature. The axe stopped its dance of death, the daemons head swung around and regarded me with eyes like newborn stars. It cocked it's head, considering me for a moment, and then it screamed right back. My eardrums burst and bowels voided themselves at the assault. My clothes burnt, the flesh of my face blistered and charred and I knew I was about to die. I waited for the touch of the axe. It did not come. When I looked again the creature was gone.

All of this happened so many years ago. I walked out of the mountains alone, a survivor, a hero, and eventually became planetary governor, a role I have held for nearly two hundred years, but the experience has changed me more deeply than I care to admit.
I should have died. The WarGod cheated me of my rightful death all those decades ago, condemning me to a shameful death by old age. My skull would adorn no throne.
It matters not, he will be here soon. We shall meet again.
The ritual nears its end.
It's truly staggering just how many people you can sacrifice in two hundred years.



+++Recording Ends+++
+++Last Recording Before Documented Daemonic Invasion+++
+++Planet Carthusia, Scarus Sector+++
+++ Population Zero+++


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