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A feat for Vulkan from the Beast Arises books  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
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Made in us
Dakka Veteran





The Hunt For Vulkan said:
He strode forward. Each step was grounded. He felt the heart of Caldera reach up through his feet, through his body. The world embraced its avenger.

The orks charged. They were as tall as Vulkan and even more massive in their armour.

‘This world is under my protection,’ he snarled. ‘Trouble it no more.’

He swung the hammer sideways. One blow was enough. Armour shattered like eggshells. Bodies burst and burned.

Behind him, howls of distress and anger from more defenders, too few and too late. The chorus of alarm engulfed the complex. It was the fanfare of xenos defeat.

The primarch stood before the gate. He slammed the hammer against its centre. The iron slab, ten metres high, flew apart.

Vulkan entered the nexus. It was composed of a single vast space, a cathedral of riotous technology. Banks of coils the size of plasma drives rose toward the inner peak. Energy arced between them, creating a crackling web intense enough to fry half a continent. Huge cables from the exterior fuelled the banks with still more energy, while conduits fed the heat of Caldera’s mantle to the machine. At the centre of the cone was a pillar half the height of the structure, and fifty metres wide. It supported the control mechanisms. Scores of orks moved back and forth between monumental levers and dials. A huge greenskin engineer stood above them all on a dais, surrounded by a tangle of sparking machinery. There, Vulkan thought, was the heart of Caldera’s martyrdom. That was what he had come to destroy.

He took in the disposition of the nexus and his target in a fraction of a second. The ork engineer evaluated him in the same moment. Vulkan took a step forward, and the inner defences activated.

The turrets had a precision Vulkan had never encountered in orks before. The need to preserve the control nexus governed their function. They caused no damage to the machinery. There were dozens of them, and they all fired on the primarch. If their rotation brought the precious mechanisms within their line of fire, they fell silent until their guns had a clear bead on the primarch once more.

They hit him with a torrent of energy beams. The concentrated strength of a gas giant’s thunderstorm exploded against his chest. It forced him to take a full step back. He planted his legs and leaned into the attack. His breastplate began to glow. Lightning surrounded him as he moved forward against power that would have incinerated a Leman Russ. One step, then another. He held Doomtremor before him. It absorbed many of the hits, its head flaring and sending the excess energy outward. Vulkan directed it at the engineer. The ork’s personal force field flashed in turn. The beast raged as the onslaught did no more than slow the primarch.

Vulkan advanced. His armour’s interior temperature rocketed upward. He was inside an active volcano. A mortal’s flesh would have started to burn. He marched on, implacable, a continental plate on the move. He passed between the immense coils. He was midway towards the pillar.

He realised the ork engineer was not shouting. It was laughing. The beast pulled a lever.

The weight of a planet fell on his shoulders. He withstood the crushing force for several seconds, and then it brought him to his knees. The ork had turned the gravity weapon against him. The greenskin hurled mountains at the sky, and now it forced Vulkan down. His lungs flattened. Drawing a breath was an act of supreme strength. He growled, denying the force that sought to grind his bones to dust. He would not capitulate. He would rise. He would advance.

A power that had destroyed worlds held him fast.

Then it reversed.

He flew upward. The invisible hand whipped him against the slanted wall near the top of the cone and the impact dented the metal beneath him. Unseen mountain walls came together with him in between. His arms were flat against the surface. He strained to bring them forward. It was all he could do to keep his grip on Doomtremor. The ork laughed again, adjusted the controls, and slammed Vulkan to the floor, a meteor slaved to the greenskin’s will. Before Vulkan could get his bearings, he was flying once more. The battering and speed blurred his sense. Whether he was smashed against the wall or the floor, the crushing never relented. It grew stronger. He felt the crack of bones.

He was trapped in the fist of Caldera, the planet’s own strength turned against its will to destroy its defender.





The Hunt For Vulkan said:
Up. Down. Up. Down. The gravity fist turning Vulkan into the clapper of a bell, the impacts more and more ferocious. The ork engineer showing no care for the integrity of the structure. The gigantic force turned to the single task of destroying one warrior.

This is still not enough, he thought.

The enemy fears you.

The thought emerged from his deepest core. Beneath the battering pain, the constriction, and the confusion of the senses, was the immovable, the implacable, and the calm. Vulkan pulled his consciousness down into his absolute centre. There he had the patience and the resolution of mountains. He shut out damage and suffering. In the stony dark of that calm, he regained the coherence of his thoughts.

The enemy fears you.

You are a threat.

The assault grows more desperate.

Desperation is weakness.

Strike it.

Not the clapper of a bell, then. He was the hammer against the anvil. His core turned molten. The calm of the mountain became the anger of the volcano.

Erupt.

His consciousness exploded back into the full awareness of his body, and then transcended it. He observed his arc against the wall, and saw not the wound inflicted but the action he must take. And when the engineer hurled him to the floor again, he moved. He did not struggle against gravity. He acted in concert with it. He turned it into his own weapon. He punched forward with his left hand, hitting the floor, and drove his arm deep into the stone. He took root. He held Caldera. It held him back.

When gravity reversed, he remained in place.

The agony was a revelation. Forces sought to rip his body apart. He defied them. The ork had ceased to laugh, and now it froze. It stared at him, hands hovering uncertainly over its controls.

Tempered by the pain, guided by magmatic anger, Vulkan raised Doomtremor. The hammer’s wrath lit up the interior of the nexus with the blaze of a sun. Thunderhead, Dawnbringer, weapons long lost, were present to his spirit in that which he now held aloft. Their terrible strength demanded Vulkan rise. And with the reversed gravity, but against its current, he threw the hammer.

Its flight was true. A comet roared across the space between Vulkan and the pillar. It struck the platform, the impact released the energy of the throw, of the hammer, and of gravity itself. The explosion swallowed the top half of the pillar. The gravitic fist released him. He stood, and marched through a vortex of howling, chaotic lightning to retrieve Doomtremor.

The pillar ended in a jagged stump. The control mechanism was gone, vaporised along with its master. Around Vulkan, surviving orks ran in panic as their great mechanism lost all direction. The ground heaved and cracked.

Vulkan moved through a gathering storm. He picked up his hammer, braced his stance, and waited, fighting the instinct to destroy the abomination around him. If it did not find a new master within the next few moments, the storm would rip the planet open.

The shaking built.

Cracks became chasms.

The world groaned.




This is cool.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/09/06 03:39:46


 
   
Made in ca
Gargantuan Gargant






Okay? Not that surprising given that he's both a Perpetual and a Primarch, one already known for strength and endurance at that.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





 Grimskul wrote:
Okay? Not that surprising given that he's both a Perpetual and a Primarch, one already known for strength and endurance at that.




Its a planetary feat. There is a similar feat in Ruinstorm, but with Sanguinius.
   
Made in ca
Gargantuan Gargant






Onething123456 wrote:
 Grimskul wrote:
Okay? Not that surprising given that he's both a Perpetual and a Primarch, one already known for strength and endurance at that.




Its a planetary feat. There is a similar feat in Ruinstorm, but with Sanguinius.


Right, but they're Primarchs, which as you mentioned with Sanguinius, is kind of their thing. I mean even Angron, super-wounded and weakened, was able to stop a Warhound Titan from crushing Lorgar to death with his bare hands. Their whole schtick is to do legendary feats that their successors in the 41st Millenium would be hard-pressed to do or even emulate.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/09/06 08:24:13


 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





 Grimskul wrote:
Onething123456 wrote:
 Grimskul wrote:
Okay? Not that surprising given that he's both a Perpetual and a Primarch, one already known for strength and endurance at that.




Its a planetary feat. There is a similar feat in Ruinstorm, but with Sanguinius.


Right, but they're Primarchs, which as you mentioned with Sanguinius, is kind of their thing. I mean even Angron, super-wounded and weakened, was able to stop a Warhound Titan from crushing Lorgar to death with his bare hands. Their whole schtick is to do legendary feats that their successors in the 41st Millenium would be hard-pressed to do or even emulate.




What Vulkan and Sanguinius did was much stronger than what Angron did. Planetary, as that Ork engine could and did destroy planets. I think David Annandale makes Primarchs stronger than other authors.


Angron was super wounded and weakened? Oh yeah. He was hit with an explosion that brought a mountain onto him and was weakened getting out from it. And Lorgar was weakened going into Angron's mind and blocked the blasts from the Warhound fine until he went into Angron's mind and was weakened.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/09/06 08:34:29


 
   
Made in ca
Gargantuan Gargant






So is the point of the thread supposed to be that primarchs are OP? Because if so, then yes. Since they're effectively demigods. There's a reason why Guilliman's return shakes things up.
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





I know. I read Dark Imperium. And Its because I thought it was crazy. And good to hear from you again.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Grimskul wrote:
So is the point of the thread supposed to be that primarchs are OP? Because if so, then yes. Since they're effectively demigods. There's a reason why Guilliman's return shakes things up.



And Angron exploded from thousands of tons of mountain debris after being hit with the explosives that caused it. And Marines mistake him exploding out it for more explosives.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/09/06 19:16:45


 
   
 
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