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Final Inspirational Friday - Legends of Chaos (until 11/9)


Kierdale

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Daemonic possession of T’au??

yeah it happened in Farsight: Crisis of faith IIRC, tau went onto a ship with a failing gellar field and a burst warp engine, one of them got possessed. Also the entire 4th expansion fleet went into the warp without a gellar field, so they probably all got totally screwed too. Also apparently tau that do the bonding ritual (cant remember its name) have their souls glow brighter in the warp, like their souls get combined sort of 

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The First Sons

From the command-hololith on the bridge Sleipnir watched the exchange of fire as his ship, The Promise of Calamity, fired upon the loyalist vessel and her escorts that followed her into battle. It was a smaller and faster warship compared to his more ponderous battleship. His flesh cracked as a smile darted across his face. Cannons of various destructive capacities had thundered noiselessly in the void meting out feinted violence.

 

Several salvos had missed with their trajectory from being aimed too wide deliberatly. Others merely impacted against the void shield while even fewer pierced through to strike the hull of the cruiser. Only did her escorts suffer under the guns of the Black Legion. In response the enemy fired boarding torpedoes with far too many surviving the perilous voyage to penetrate the Promise’s own hull and bury themselves deep within her bones.

 

Was that wise, my lord? asked the glowing phantasm of the Promise of Calamity’s captain, Mistress Scheherazade. She watched where there they impacted and felt it as though needles pierced her corporeal form. I sense the First Legion boarders already engaging my slaves and crew while your astartes hold back. She hovered by his side as fog-like wisps danced from the projection of her gown onto the deck.

 

He looked into the green, glowing orbs of her eyes from beneath his tattered hood.  My warriors have their command and so do you, mistress. They will engage soon to draw our visitor’s wrath from the mortals. You will guide the loyalists to me, commanded Sleipnir in the hushed tones she had become accustomed to. The image of Scheherazade bowed her spectral form in compliance. Then you may destroy their ships he whispered as he turned to leave.

 

Mistress Scheherazade watched as the hulking form of her Lord marched from the bridge. She knew the grudges of the demi-gods ran deep amongst their own kindred. Still, allowing them to trespass aboard her ship went beyond reason. She closed her phantasm eyes as her form turned to fog and seeped into cracks of her ship.

 

---

 

Anathema, the word stuck to the tongue of the Librarian with a bitter taste. Every step through the ship’s corridors and cells resounded with wrongness. Though this ship had been borne in the material realm the warp now coursed through its veins and its perversion was prevalent. He could feel the ship’s spirit caress his armor and whisper to his spirit.

 

Anger burned at his core and as Locus gripped the hilt of his sword the energy of his body coursed from his flesh, through his armor, and burned the steel of his blade. The inscription of mantras pertaining to disciplines of mind and body glowed translucent blue while the razor edges burned with fire. The heat evaporated the blood that stained it. It was the blood of traitors.

 

He stood over their slain forms. The librarian glared down at their blackened armor of warped flesh, bone, & plate. His eyes ached as he looked at their sigils of dark devotions and the golden eye of the arch traitor staring back. He could smell and taste the flesh of various legions for each bled and spilled the essence of their gene-sires. Yet Locus could afford no time to pay close detail to the strange markings and mixed blood pool of his foes. Answers would come later. They were on the offensive aboard an enemy ship and no good would come if they slowed.

 

Librarian Locus glanced down the corridor of dark stone where the light of glow-globes burned with raging fire. Their shadows played tricks on his eyes as shadows seemed to move of their own free will. He let his mind reach out into the darkness but could not grasp anything a sane mind should commune with. Again, he looked down the hall still certain the ship was changing around him, leading him and his warriors where it wished. With a command through the vox the remaining fourteen warriors of his boarding party moved forward into darkness. They would know no fear.

 

---

 

Upon a throne of ivory Sleipnir awaited his guests. He cycled through the vox network listening as his warriors harassed and assaulted the boarders. He gave orders and heard grunts and roars in reply while others where lost to bloodlust. Too many had left their channels open to the screaming, howling, and laughing as they murdered and were murdered in turn.

 

Another message searched for him. The words were being carried through the cracks and openings of the ship to reach him. They are there my lord, rasping at your door. The voice of the ship’s mistress, or the ship itself he often wondered, whispered into his ear far clearer than any vox could convey.

 

Thank you, he whispered into the darkness of his chambers.

 

With the growl of terminator armor he rose to his feet. He fanned the cloak of fur and chainmail from his back with his armored gauntlet. His other hand, encased in a razor tipped power fist, hissed and cackled as it energized. The sound of shells loading into the built-in bolter of his gauntlet thundered like drums.

 

Finally he drew his sword from its sheath. His armored hand gripped the hilt of leather-wrapped adamantium. The leather provided from the flesh of a fallen rival struck down in the Legion Wars. He looked at the guard, platinum and gold, which had been molded into the shap of a two headed eagle. Time had seen its form beaten and changed into a twisted reflection of its former self. The blade itself had not lost its grandeur and killing edge. Its blade sharpened to a point that it reflected what little light in the chamber brightly. Its words, those transcribed along its length, carried no meaning to him any longer.

 

With a flash of speed he buried the blades tip into the stonework at his feet and waited.

 

---

 

Sleipnir watched the sons of lion breach into his lair. Their charges blew the blast doors open and they charged through the breach. Through the fire and smoke he looked upon a blue armor-plated warrior leading his brothers in jet-black. Their bolters raised and scanning for targets until their aim focused on a giant standing before a throne.

 

Several fired in bursts only to see their bolts deflected. They halted in their barrage with the raised fist of their leader. This one recognized the conversion field their foe employed. Sleipnir studied his foe in detail while bolts bursted around him. These warriors were so familiar and yet vastly different than the first legion he had remembered. Their armor was dark as night and their icons resembled those used by the warriors of Caliban. Yet there were changes and differences that developed in his exile. No longer was there a winged sword but a hooded death’s head with iron wings.

 

 Greetings, brothers! The words echoing from Sleipnir’s lips as he drew his sword.

 

He watched as the loyalists flinched at the sight of his blade. He smiled as he realized the thin-blooded descendants of the lion recognized his blade, the Sword of the Pale king.

 

Sleipnir felt the thoughts blue-plated warrior’s probe his own mind, searching for answers. He felt questions searching for answers and he gave them freely. No words came from the loyalists as the librarian’s stance changed and he began to charge forward, his own blade raised in hatred. Librarian Locus’ footsteps were echoed by others. In the corners of his eyes his peripheral vision saw monsters rise from the shadows.  The monsters had come for them again.

 

They had slaughtered many mortals and astartes in their failed assault on the Promise of Calamity’s bridge. Mutation and bio-heresy were rife through the traitor ranks yet nothing compared to these arrivals. They were far too large as their scaled flesh and metallic bones broke through and fused with their armor. That is where any similarities ended. Massive, metallic hooves and armored boots carried the brutes into battle with their untainted brethren. Some still carried bolters in their warped hands but many gnashed and sliced with claws and swords made from their own dense bones.

 

Locus’ warriors fought back to back firing into the oncoming abominations. Their bolter fire penetrated and burst through the unholy union of flesh, armor, and daemon. Few fell to the punishing salvo and drew in close enough to rend their foes with their claws.

 

The Fallen, those two words echoed with burning rage in Locus’ mind as he climbed the steps to meet his foe. They were an ancient enemy from within their own founding chapter and unknown to the rest of the Imperium. He was permitted knowledge of these secrets and knew his duty. When his mind peered into the traitor’s he saw his ancient betrayal. For that the punishment would be death.

 

His sword had come cutting down only to trade sparks with the Sword of the Pale King when they met. As he and the terminator clad lord began to trade blows and parry his mind still tried to peer into the ancient traitor’s thought. Yet there was now only darkness that threatened to pull him in. The larger traitor forced the librarian back as his sword blows pressed down on Locus.

 

The loyalists around them were being slaughtered. In close combat they could not match the brutes and their warped blades. Warriors of ascended humanity were felled by their nightmare reflection in a dark mirror. They wore the colors of several legions, the newest to their ranks still bearing the white brethren’s cross of Dorn’s sons. Locus soon found himself backed into a ring of these warp-wrought abominations surrounded by his dead warriors.

 

---

 

Sleipnir had ceased holding back. Gripping his blade two-handed he brought it down for a crippling blow. Locus had raised his force sword in defense but he had been slow. His mind wandered as he felt the death of his own warship in the void. The guns of the traitor’s battleship had sent it to oblivion. The distraction caused his sword being turned away and the traitor’s blade bit deep into armor. As the librarian stumbled Sleipnir’s sword pierced and ran through the chest of librarian, destroying his primary heart.

 

Locus sank to his knees, grabbing the tool of his murder, instinctively trying to pull it back out. Sleipnir had knelt by his foe, his own arm holding the blade in place against his dying foe.

 

You know what I am? I had let you seen where I had come from. Above the roar of beasts and dark forests safe behind one of the walls of Caliban’s many fortifications. We are truly brothers, you and I. Yet you are a puzzle but I will get answers from you.

 

Locus looked into Sleipnir eyes, like white marbles set in sunken pits against his smooth, porcelain flesh.

 

Monster. Traitor, he said.

 

He watched as the flesh around the traitors face began to crack and break. Sleipnir opened his mouth wide like that of a feasting beast. Caliban had many monsters and we are no different. His mouth began to open wider as flesh cracked peeled back. Like a serpent consuming prey larger than itself his jaw distended. Three talons of his power fist pulled the librarian head back, exposing the neck.

 

Sleipnirs teeth had bit down and dug into flesh and blood began to pool into his mouth. His eyes rolled back into nothingness as he supped on the blood of his enemy and the knowledge it contained. The thought in his mind was change. So much had changed while trapped in their exile in hell.

 

They hunt us. They seek us. He saw the once mighty remnants of the first were broken down and scattered. They hunted their traitor kin in the shadows and now they knew the traitors had returned. Called by the Black Templars who retreated from the Battle of the Eye.

 

They would come to seek their fallen brothers.

 

He began to laugh as the form of Mistress Scheherazade began to form the cracks in the stonework. She hovered above her liege lord. Tales to tell, my lord? she asked

 

Sleipnir wiped blood from his mouth and licked the life giving substance on his fingers. Yes, many great tales.

 

 

Notes:

Just trying to introduce a few characters of my Black Legion Warband, Sleipnir the Pale King and Mistress Scheherazade. I struggled with the origins of my Chaos Lord/Sorcerer and awhile back settled on him being a former member of the First Legion who sided with Luther. Besides a unique background this was a great way to throw in an extra dynamic that while he is in the material realm he will be hunted by the Unforgiven. Mistress Scheherazade was my idea of a unique ship captain. Everyone has something special going on with their ship crew and I wanted a ghost captain. Especially after seeing the one victorian-era looking ghost from the recent Ghostbusters movie. I really think it would look good. Just trying oh think of which mini to use to make a mini  of her. Thinking about using the Dark Eldar courtesan in a dress but will will see. Hope you enjoyed the story.

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Also I know this is rather selfish of me, but after judgement is passed this week could someone give me a few critiques for my submission this week, I was fairly happy with it until the end, which I know is horribly rushed, but i just kept coming up against blanks as to how i should actually finish  the damn thing, so any help on that front would be really appreciated. I often struggle the most with endings unfortunately 

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Thank you for your entries in Inspirational Friday 2018: The Hunt.

EesiOh’s entry was Helljumper, Helljumper, where have you been. As I was reading it I was thinking “This is great stuff, but where’s the hunt?...where’s the hunt?...where’s the- oh! There it is!”

And it was good :tu:

You asked for critique, but the only thing I’d change would be to have his weapon at the end be a large-bore stub gun (think the chunky six-shooters Goliath gangers uses ro have. Perhaps still do, I don’t know), as it fits better with the ‘hammer fanning’ (then again I do like the image of a laspistol with a hammer-action) and you could have a line about him being able to pick it up easier than an energy weapon on that world. Just one suggestion.

Since reading Ian Watson’s Space Marine I’ve always been fascinated with the Omophagea organ and wanted to do a story with it as the ‘punch line’, as it were. I figured that other Imperial forces, even Scions, likely don’t know about it or that marines can garner intel by consuming brain matter...so combine that with a bit of Terminator/Terminator 2...and What Lay Within was the result.

And I was pleasantly surprised to see the omophagea featured - a little - in Hushrong’s The First Sons. A story of one of the greatest and most famous (and in another way one of the most little-known) hunts: that of the Fallen, by the First Legion. I really like the idea of the phantasm captain and I hope we see mistress Scheherazade again.

I hereby close that topic but if anyone has more stories on that theme, at any time, please post them here with a suitable title.

And here begins our fifth challenge of Inspirational Friday 2018: Artefacts of Chaos

From the Axe of Blind Fury to the Burning Brand of Skalathrax and the Scrolls of Magnus, many are the artefacts of Chaos, as powerful as they are corrupting. The fifth challenge of IF2018 is to write a piece featuring an artefact of Chaos taken from any of the Chaos codexes current or past: the Rod of Command from Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness, the Suppurating Plate from Codex: Death Guard, the Endless Grimoire from Codex: Daemons...any and all are fine choices!

Tell us of a hunt for the artefact (by pawns of one of the Chaos Gods? Or by the lapdogs of the Corpse-Emperor?), or a tale of the one who now wields it - or is cursed by it, for surely the possession of such a powerful item comes with a price?

IF2018: Artefacts of Chaos runs until the sixteenth of March.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: Hushrong.

The winner of IF2018: The Artefacts of Chaos shall claim the Octed amulet:

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And the honour of judging the next challenge.

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EesiOh’s entry was Helljumper, Helljumper, where have you been. As I was reading it I was thinking “This is great stuff, but where’s the hunt?...where’s the hunt?...where’s the- oh! There it is!”

And it was good :thumbsup:

You asked for critique, but the only thing I’d change would be to have his weapon at the end be a large-bore stub gun (think the chunky six-shooters Goliath gangers uses ro have. Perhaps still do, I don’t know), as it fits better with the ‘hammer fanning’ (then again I do like the image of a laspistol with a hammer-action) and you could have a line about him being able to pick it up easier than an energy weapon on that world. Just one suggestion.

 

 

 

I was confused by what you meant for a second, as in my head i was sure i said Handcannon, looking back on it I said 'Drew his laspistol and dropped them with his stolen handcannon'. Apparently Tzeentch decided a laspistol wasnt enough and morphed it as he was using it :biggrin.:

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I am a huge Halo fan, and have read many of the relevant novels and anthologies. New Blood might be of interest to you if you haven't read it...it explains how in Halo 5 Buck is a Spartan IV. And what happened to The Rookie/Player Character from ODST.

 

There was also a short story where-it was heavily implied the one ODST listening to a wounded (and dying) Traitor ODST was The Rookie, that was in one of the Anthologies.

 

I enjoyed the HellJumper story. Had notes of Armor as well, how they kept getting sent back out inspite of losses (Armor takes it to rediculous, almost munitorium levels of incompetence sending out a one man company on Hot Drop after Hot Drop...God I love that novel.)

 

I'm definitely going to participate in this one. I might see if I will continue on some of my others, I get started, get distracted and when I get back to them I don't like it (the second bit where you "write the second draft with your head" is usually where I go "well okay, so they are on a enemy strike cruiser, facing down Terminators, enemy tacticals and armed crewman/acolytes, how are they going to get out in a plausible way that isn't too over the top/gauche/Deus ex machina"

 

Might be over thinking it-I don't recall Astartes ships (...or any come to think) having tractor beams or similar tech.

 

But I'm going to write an Adrastus centered story for this, as he IS The Anathame and is often sought out by those who would try and take his gifts.

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I do have a question on whether or not a certain artifact would be viable: the Blade of Antwyr. While its not mentioned in the chaos codex's although it is a chaos weapon that is used by Crowe but in the past it has been used by random heretics etc. If that doesn't work then I've got another idea in my head I can work with.
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This is tough as I enjoyed both stories. Helljumper was an interesting read with that twist at the end and What Lay Within was a thriller!

 

However, I must choose EesiOh’s entry as I just really liked that twist at the end. Desertion is heresy, right?

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I do have a question on whether or not a certain artifact would be viable: the Blade of Antwyr. While its not mentioned in the chaos codex's although it is a chaos weapon that is used by Crowe but in the past it has been used by random heretics etc. If that doesn't work then I've got another idea in my head I can work with.

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And congrats EesiOh!

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I'd like to thank my parents, god, jesus and the academy, for this win. I will treasure it always.

FINALLY I CAN CLAIM THE OCTED FOR MYSELF, FOR ME! ME! ME!

Ok but seriously, thank you for your kind words Hushrong (and yes, desertion is VERY much heresy, looking at you Carrak, I know you're out there somewhere)

​I absolutely loved the ending of your story Kierdale, I imagine thats one hell of a sight to see in your last dying moments

I promise to judge the next challenge in the most fair and balanced way, that is, the nicer you are to me, the more likely you are to win :biggrin.:

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The Robe

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“My dear friend,” the baggy skin around the bishop’s eyes wrinkled, the old flesh not quite as old as the tarnished brass of his optical implants. The lenses whirred noisily as they focused on his subordinate. “Father Rthona is simply too young.”

“Bishop Omoius,” the deacon protested, “he is an orator supreme. A firebrand. He has done great work in his parishes.”

His parishes,” the bishop scoffed, his gnarled hands, knuckles swollen with gout, clutching the arms of his throne as the claws of his cybereagle did the back of that same chair. “Gutters and sumps.”

“Where faith means life,” deacon Fana pointed out.

“You would raise him up from the sumps?”

“He has earned it,” Fana looked evenly into the other’s ruby-lensed eyes. He remembered when they had been fitted in the face of the late bishop Diaseu. Omoius had inherited them along with his office.

“Does he even know how to preach to those who are clean of body? To those untouched by taint?”

“Let him. I tell you that in raising him up you will elevate our sect above our rivals here on Usita Minoris. Majoris, even…”

“How can you be so confident of this youth, deacon?”

“He is touched, bishop Omoius. I can feel it. Fate rests upon his shoulders.”

* * * * * * * * *

With the closing of the sacristy’s door, the hymns of the choir and the footfalls of the leaving worshippers faded. Rthona turned to find Fana smiling at him.

The junior priest bowed his head, his hands rising to form the Aquila over his chest. The deacon returned the gesture before clapping his hands together, the thick rings upon his hands clinking as he did so. He embraced his protégé before stepping back to look at him after his first service in his new position.

How the young man had survived the hellhole he had been born into, Fana would never know, nor how he had remained untouched by taint – chemical that seeped down from the hive’s manufactorums or physical from the genetaint that plagued most of those who lived beneath The Line. That Rthona was blessed was clear, in Fana’s eyes. Tall, long of limb, if a little on the thin side – a richer diet up here would soon see that fixed. Sharp grey eyes that took in everything quickly – no doubt a survival instinct from his early years. A shaven scalp, as their sect preferred, hid alopecia born of malnutrition. He had a hawk’s nose above a mouth whose only blemish was a scar two centimeters long, stretching up toward his eye on the left side of his lip; another souvenir of his youth. That he had but one – visible at any rate – scar was again a blessing. If he was to rise higher in the hive he would likely need surgery to correct that flaw, for those in the lofty floors of Jonophen held that flawless appearance reflected the purity within.

“Well done! Well done, my boy!” Fana beamed, looking toward the door and the sound of the leaving congregation. Even now he could hear man of them remaining to add their voices to the servitor choir. And those who had already left far outnumbered those who had attended this church in the past.

“Your oratory! Your eloquence! Your rhetoric! You played their heartstrings like a harp. Your telling of saint Ranenia’s suffering had them in tears. I saw several flagellating themselves. Outstanding.”

Rthona bowed once more, allowing himself only the slightest of smiles. Always so modest. Yet his brows rose as the deacon’s smile diminished in brightness. Fana’s eyes had moved from the door to Rthona’s robes.

“You have a silver tongue, my young protégé, but it is clad in robes ill-befitting your new station.”

The junior priest looked down at his garments. Their sect was far from the most prominent in Jonophen, and provided its priests with only the amulet of office they wore. Their priestly vestments they had to furnish themselves with. The sharp wrinkles in Rthona’s were the least of its blemishes. Stains, hastily stitched tears. And the quality of the materials... They divulged his origins, which were best kept secret, in the deacon’s view.

“Before Candlemass, secure yourself some finery accoutrements, my boy.”

“But deacon Fana,” the youth began to protest and Fana knew what was about to be said. He reached out a hand as one of the chapel’s offertory servitors walked by. He deposited a fistful of Thrones upon the sacristy desk. One of the coins rolled across sheaves of hymns, spiraled and toppled onto one side, the embossed image of the Master of Mankind, encased in the Golden Throne, stared up at the priests.

“The Emperor provideth.”

* * * * * * * * *

Blood mixed with the foul water in the puddle as the ganger’s head hit the ferrocrete. He did not rise. Water, falling in contaminated rain from the cracked pipes two hundred meters overhead, dripped upon the body.

Father Rthona stood over the man. He looked at his knuckles, the skin split and bleeding. How long had it been since he had hit anyone? He unclenched his hands. They shook.

Movement drew his attention back to the ganger’s intended victim. She too was visibly shaken and either tears or the falling runoff had streaked her once fine makeup down her cheeks. She reminded him of ladies who had worked the alleyways in the district he had grew up in. The vivid, overdone makeup designed to attract attention, to hide blemishes. He blinked away the memories and was about to offer her a hand, to help her rise, but watched as she crawled over to the ganger, prized the stiletto from his hand and plunged it into the unconscious man’s neck. Before his chest ceased rising and falling, the girl had disappeared.

Rthona looked down at the dead man. He had done nothing to stop her. He had simply watched as she had cut his thread. Such killings had been a daily occurrence below The Line, but he thought he had risen above such acts. He grimaced, anger growing. Is this how they were? In the day they would fill his pews, singing of the Emperor’s Light and the Manifest Destiny of Mankind...yet in the dark they would slay each other. Even here?

Rain fell upon him and he raised his head, looking to the pipes far above. What about up there?

A cough and the sound of shuffling feet drew his attention to the alleyway to his right and by habit he raised his fists once more.

A hunched figure emerged, clad in a poncho so stained one could only hazard a guess as to what its original hue might have been. Long-fingered hands rose up from within it in a placating gesture and from within the darkness of the hood came a hoarse voice.

“Peace, peace, stranger. Let there be no more killing tonight.”

Father Rthona stepped away from the dead ganger. He cast a glance over the colours, the fake leathers, chains and iconography. He had not yet been long enough in these parts to have learned the native gangs’ names and customs. “I did not slay him.”

“Indeed you did not. She is gone. And by dawn I think it best you and he too.”

Rthona looked off into the shadows of the hive night, down the way the girl had run away.

“Comuppance. Comeuppance. Fate will deal with her,” the hunched figure muttered, following his gaze. “And I will deal with him, then you.”

The priest narrowed his eyes at the wretch. He had not lowered his fists.

“I know places to dispose of the body,” the other explained. “His clothes I will take.”

“Will his comrades not kill you, in mistaken revenge?”

The hunched figure gave a dry, rasping cough. “I will remake them. Gothylus, tailor,” it announced, extending a hand toward him, and another toward the building behind the priest. In the darkness he had not noticed the buildings about him. It was a small shuttered shop.

He licked his split knuckles and winced, smiling as the pain brought back old memories, and gave a bark of laughter at his situation.

“What amuses you, stranger?”

“I was looking for new clothes.”

* * * * * * * * *

And rise he did, until he sat within an office that had an actual window. Through that thick glass he looked out over the jungles of his world for the first time. The vivid green bewitched and entranced him as much as the blue sky did. And his church was one of splendor, seating tens of thousands with yet more standing, craning their necks to hear his words and for a glimpse of him as he stood beneath the ornately painted apse, in a gilt pulpit, clad in the finest of robes.

Even years after deacon Fana had secured him transfer after transfer, each time rising higher in the spires of Jonophen, he had returned to the tailor he had met that fated, bloody night. Gothylus had always welcomed him, hearing of his sermons and other exploits no matter the distance that separated them, and weaving the finest robes that he could afford. And as he rose in status, so grew his coffers and the finery of his accoutrements.

Other exploits. Counsellor to Rogue Traders; confessor to Jonophen hive’s premier Navigator house – they spoke to him of the horrors that taunted them as they sailed the sea of souls and he blessed them, warding them with faith; soothsayer to officials of the Lord Governor’s court; socialite.

“How many sermons this month, deacon Rthona?”

Rthona looked from his chair – a chair of wood gifted him by a comely daughter of a baron in the Lord’s court, across his large desk and into the ruby eyes of his superior.

“Twice daily, bishop Fana,” he smiled, his fingers playing with the pearl-trimmed sleeves of his robes.

“How many by you, deacon Rthona?” the other pressed. The brass augmentation on his face made his expression as cold as the metal it was made of.

“Our sect flourishes. It grows by the day. I have taught my junior priests well, have I not?”

“So they preach while you...?”

“I have many callings.”

“Your calling is the church, deacon Rthona.”

“And so many would have my spiritual counsel, bishop Fana. Perhaps in your own office, plagued by inactivity, you cannot comprehend the demands upon me. Always so many good deeds to do, yet there is only one of me.”

* * * * * * * * *

“What is that image, bishop Rthona?”

“A fish, bishop Fana.”

“A twisted facsimile!” Fana coughed wetly, looking at the squirming icon, its multihued scales and the large eye upon its side, “I find it abhorrent! And what is it doing upon those gaudy robes of yours, Rthona? Above the Aquila, even!”

“It is an ancent symbol of faith, Fana.”

“Not of our sect!”

“There is much that can be learned from the old ways, Fana.”

“You would seek to teach me? I who taught you everything!” The old priest’s voice was twisted with spite now.

“Not everything. My success has brought me into contact with so many new and varied teachers,” Rthona looked not at his once-superior in his throne, the broken cyber-eagle collecting dust as it hung over Fana’s shoulder, but at his own robes, admiring the way the candlelight caught the shimmersilk sleeves, the silver brocade, his wide belt of gold-trimmed azure.

“Teachers!” the elder spat. “How you manage to keep all your lovers and bastard friends satisfied I have no idea!”

Rthona’s eyes wandered across his tunic. He frowned as he looked upon the Aquila pendant upon his chest – his first and only gift from Fana all those years ago and his key to the priesthood - so at odds with the regalia he now more. “Always so many good deeds to do, yet there is only one of me. It is true that the days pass in a blur, old friend. I am here, I am there. I am with her, I am with him, I am with them. I advise mercantile barons while give counsel to Lords while I whisper sweet nothings in the ears of ladies and preach to the masses in churches across Usita’s Twin Worlds.”

He looked, finally, from his robes out the window behind the older bishop, to the twin moons, the smaller making its way across the larger. As the great eye upon the side of the fish embroidered with such care by Gothylus upon his vestments. A good omen.

“As my tailor weaves my robes, I weave the faith and the fate of the masses, Fana.”

Bishop Fana,” the elder spat, his ocular implants whirring and struggling to focus on the other.

“Then address me too as bishop Rthona.”

“I know not why the governor saw fit to grant you such a title. It is not his power. There should not be two of us.”

“He saw fit when I persuaded him to grant us his patronage. He raised us to prominence. He signed the decrees outlawing other sects of the Imperial Creed. At my bidding.”

A smile then appeared on the younger priest’s face. A warmth he had not shown his old mentor in a great many years. “But I do agree with you on one matter, Fana. We do not need two bishops.”

He withdrew a scroll from his voluminous sleeve and let gravity unravel it from his hand. A warrant of excommunication and execution.

“And the lord governor agrees too.”

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Two, then four then eight, so had his realities multiplied as the pressures and demands upon him had grown. And he had accepted them, fitting his ambition. One hundred and twenty eight saw him leading his cult’s spread across the sector while he sat upon the theocratic-turned throne of his world, the twisting of his own body hidden by the Robe. And so on it went, his soul stretched thinner yet unable to stop weaving his heresy lest the thread of each reality snap.
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The Robe

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“My dear friend,” the baggy skin around the bishop’s eyes wrinkled, the old flesh not quite as old as the tarnished brass of his optical implants. The lenses whirred noisily as they focused on his subordinate. “Father Rthona is simply too young.”

“Bishop Omoius,” the deacon protested, “he is an orator supreme. A firebrand. He has done great work in his parishes.”

His parishes,” the bishop scoffed, his gnarled hands, knuckles swollen with gout, clutching the arms of his throne as the claws of his cybereagle did the back of that same chair. “Gutters and sumps.”

“Where faith means life,” deacon Fana pointed out.

“You would raise him up from the sumps?”

“He has earned it,” Fana looked evenly into the other’s ruby-lensed eyes. He remembered when they had been fitted in the face of the late bishop Diaseu. Omoius had inherited them along with his office.

“Does he even know how to preach to those who are clean of body? To those untouched by taint?”

“Let him. I tell you that in raising him up you will elevate our sect above our rivals here on Usita Minoris. Majoris, even…”

“How can you be so confident of this youth, deacon?”

“He is touched, bishop Omoius. I can feel it. Fate rests upon his shoulders.”

* * * * * * * * *

With the closing of the sacristy’s door, the hymns of the choir and the footfalls of the leaving worshippers faded. Rthona turned to find Fana smiling at him.

The junior priest bowed his head, his hands rising to form the Aquila over his chest. The deacon returned the gesture before clapping his hands together, the thick rings upon his hands clinking as he did so. He embraced his protégé before stepping back to look at him after his first service in his new position.

How the young man had survived the hellhole he had been born into, Fana would never know, nor how he had remained untouched by taint – chemical that seeped down from the hive’s manufactorums or physical from the genetaint that plagued most of those who lived beneath The Line. That Rthona was blessed was clear, in Fana’s eyes. Tall, long of limb, if a little on the thin side – a richer diet up here would soon see that fixed. Sharp grey eyes that took in everything quickly – no doubt a survival instinct from his early years. A shaven scalp, as their sect preferred, hid alopecia born of malnutrition. He had a hawk’s nose above a mouth whose only blemish was a scar two centimeters long, stretching up toward his eye on the left side of his lip; another souvenir of his youth. That he had but one – visible at any rate – scar was again a blessing. If he was to rise higher in the hive he would likely need surgery to correct that flaw, for those in the lofty floors of Jonophen held that flawless appearance reflected the purity within.

“Well done! Well done, my boy!” Fana beamed, looking toward the door and the sound of the leaving congregation. Even now he could hear man of them remaining to add their voices to the servitor choir. And those who had already left far outnumbered those who had attended this church in the past.

“Your oratory! Your eloquence! Your rhetoric! You played their heartstrings like a harp. Your telling of saint Ranenia’s suffering had them in tears. I saw several flagellating themselves. Outstanding.”

Rthona bowed once more, allowing himself only the slightest of smiles. Always so modest. Yet his brows rose as the deacon’s smile diminished in brightness. Fana’s eyes had moved from the door to Rthona’s robes.

“You have a silver tongue, my young protégé, but it is clad in robes ill-befitting your new station.”

The junior priest looked down at his garments. Their sect was far from the most prominent in Jonophen, and provided its priests with only the amulet of office they wore. Their priestly vestments they had to furnish themselves with. The sharp wrinkles in Rthona’s were the least of its blemishes. Stains, hastily stitched tears. And the quality of the materials... They divulged his origins, which were best kept secret, in the deacon’s view.

“Before Candlemass, secure yourself some finery accoutrements, my boy.”

“But deacon Fana,” the youth began to protest and Fana knew what was about to be said. He reached out a hand as one of the chapel’s offertory servitors walked by. He deposited a fistful of Thrones upon the sacristy desk. One of the coins rolled across sheaves of hymns, spiraled and toppled onto one side, the embossed image of the Master of Mankind, encased in the Golden Throne, stared up at the priests.

“The Emperor provideth.”

* * * * * * * * *

Blood mixed with the foul water in the puddle as the ganger’s head hit the ferrocrete. He did not rise. Water, falling in contaminated rain from the cracked pipes two hundred meters overhead, dripped upon the body.

Father Rthona stood over the man. He looked at his knuckles, the skin split and bleeding. How long had it been since he had hit anyone? He unclenched his hands. They shook.

Movement drew his attention back to the ganger’s intended victim. She too was visibly shaken and either tears or the falling runoff had streaked her once fine makeup down her cheeks. She reminded him of ladies who had worked the alleyways in the district he had grew up in. The vivid, overdone makeup designed to attract attention, to hide blemishes. He blinked away the memories and was about to offer her a hand, to help her rise, but watched as she crawled over to the ganger, prized the stiletto from his hand and plunged it into the unconscious man’s neck. Before his chest ceased rising and falling, the girl had disappeared.

Rthona looked down at the dead man. He had done nothing to stop her. He had simply watched as she had cut his thread. Such killings had been a daily occurrence below The Line, but he thought he had risen above such acts. He grimaced, anger growing. Is this how they were? In the day they would fill his pews, singing of the Emperor’s Light and the Manifest Destiny of Mankind...yet in the dark they would slay each other. Even here?

Rain fell upon him and he raised his head, looking to the pipes far above. What about up there?

A cough and the sound of shuffling feet drew his attention to the alleyway to his right and by habit he raised his fists once more.

A hunched figure emerged, clad in a poncho so stained one could only hazard a guess as to what its original hue might have been. Long-fingered hands rose up from within it in a placating gesture and from within the darkness of the hood came a hoarse voice.

“Peace, peace, stranger. Let there be no more killing tonight.”

Father Rthona stepped away from the dead ganger. He cast a glance over the colours, the fake leathers, chains and iconography. He had not yet been long enough in these parts to have learned the native gangs’ names and customs. “I did not slay him.”

“Indeed you did not. She is gone. And by dawn I think it best you and he too.”

Rthona looked off into the shadows of the hive night, down the way the girl had run away.

“Comuppance. Comeuppance. Fate will deal with her,” the hunched figure muttered, following his gaze. “And I will deal with him, then you.”

The priest narrowed his eyes at the wretch. He had not lowered his fists.

“I know places to dispose of the body,” the other explained. “His clothes I will take.”

“Will his comrades not kill you, in mistaken revenge?”

The hunched figure gave a dry, rasping cough. “I will remake them. Gothylus, tailor,” it announced, extending a hand toward him, and another toward the building behind the priest. In the darkness he had not noticed the buildings about him. It was a small shuttered shop.

He licked his split knuckles and winced, smiling as the pain brought back old memories, and gave a bark of laughter at his situation.

“What amuses you, stranger?”

“I was looking for new clothes.”

* * * * * * * * *

And rise he did, until he sat within an office that had an actual window. Through that thick glass he looked out over the jungles of his world for the first time. The vivid green bewitched and entranced him as much as the blue sky did. And his church was one of splendor, seating tens of thousands with yet more standing, craning their necks to hear his words and for a glimpse of him as he stood beneath the ornately painted apse, in a gilt pulpit, clad in the finest of robes.

Even years after deacon Fana had secured him transfer after transfer, each time rising higher in the spires of Jonophen, he had returned to the tailor he had met that fated, bloody night. Gothylus had always welcomed him, hearing of his sermons and other exploits no matter the distance that separated them, and weaving the finest robes that he could afford. And as he rose in status, so grew his coffers and the finery of his accoutrements.

Other exploits. Counsellor to Rogue Traders; confessor to Jonophen hive’s premier Navigator house – they spoke to him of the horrors that taunted them as they sailed the sea of souls and he blessed them, warding them with faith; soothsayer to officials of the Lord Governor’s court; socialite.

“How many sermons this month, deacon Rthona?”

Rthona looked from his chair – a chair of wood gifted him by a comely daughter of a baron in the Lord’s court, across his large desk and into the ruby eyes of his superior.

“Twice daily, bishop Fana,” he smiled, his fingers playing with the pearl-trimmed sleeves of his robes.

“How many by you, deacon Rthona?” the other pressed. The brass augmentation on his face made his expression as cold as the metal it was made of.

“Our sect flourishes. It grows by the day. I have taught my junior priests well, have I not?”

“So they preach while you...?”

“I have many callings.”

“Your calling is the church, deacon Rthona.”

“And so many would have my spiritual counsel, bishop Fana. Perhaps in your own office, plagued by inactivity, you cannot comprehend the demands upon me. Always so many good deeds to do, yet there is only one of me.”

* * * * * * * * *

“What is that image, bishop Rthona?”

“A fish, bishop Fana.”

“A twisted facsimile!” Fana coughed wetly, looking at the squirming icon, its multihued scales and the large eye upon its side, “I find it abhorrent! And what is it doing upon those gaudy robes of yours, Rthona? Above the Aquila, even!”

“It is an ancent symbol of faith, Fana.”

“Not of our sect!”

“There is much that can be learned from the old ways, Fana.”

“You would seek to teach me? I who taught you everything!” The old priest’s voice was twisted with spite now.

“Not everything. My success has brought me into contact with so many new and varied teachers,” Rthona looked not at his once-superior in his throne, the broken cyber-eagle collecting dust as it hung over Fana’s shoulder, but at his own robes, admiring the way the candlelight caught the shimmersilk sleeves, the silver brocade, his wide belt of gold-trimmed azure.

“Teachers!” the elder spat. “How you manage to keep all your lovers and bastard friends satisfied I have no idea!”

Rthona’s eyes wandered across his tunic. He frowned as he looked upon the Aquila pendant upon his chest – his first and only gift from Fana all those years ago and his key to the priesthood - so at odds with the regalia he now more. “Always so many good deeds to do, yet there is only one of me. It is true that the days pass in a blur, old friend. I am here, I am there. I am with her, I am with him, I am with them. I advise mercantile barons while give counsel to Lords while I whisper sweet nothings in the ears of ladies and preach to the masses in churches across Usita’s Twin Worlds.”

He looked, finally, from his robes out the window behind the older bishop, to the twin moons, the smaller making its way across the larger. As the great eye upon the side of the fish embroidered with such care by Gothylus upon his vestments. A good omen.

“As my tailor weaves my robes, I weave the faith and the fate of the masses, Fana.”

Bishop Fana,” the elder spat, his ocular implants whirring and struggling to focus on the other.

“Then address me too as bishop Rthona.”

“I know not why the governor saw fit to grant you such a title. It is not his power. There should not be two of us.”

“He saw fit when I persuaded him to grant us his patronage. He raised us to prominence. He signed the decrees outlawing other sects of the Imperial Creed. At my bidding.”

A smile then appeared on the younger priest’s face. A warmth he had not shown his old mentor in a great many years. “But I do agree with you on one matter, Fana. We do not need two bishops.”

He withdrew a scroll from his voluminous sleeve and let gravity unravel it from his hand. A warrant of excommunication and execution.

“And the lord governor agrees too.”

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Two, then four then eight, so had his realities multiplied as the pressures and demands upon him had grown. And he had accepted them, fitting his ambition. One hundred and twenty eight saw him leading his cult’s spread across the sector while he sat upon the theocratic-turned throne of his world, the twisting of his own body hidden by the Robe. And so on it went, his soul stretched thinner yet unable to stop weaving his heresy lest the thread of each reality snap.

A fantastic entry, as per usual

would you accept Joseph Rthona and his technicolour scream coat as an alternate name? :biggrin.:

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I love the acceptance speech, Eesioh!

 

Haven’t written a lick yet. Struggling over what artifact my warriors from either the Emperor’s Children (Cult of Golden Tears) or Black Legion (The Splintered *warband name still a WIP) would be after. I even opened up the glorious 3.5codex to see if there were any hidden treasures I never knew of.

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Yikes! I'll see if I can pump something out by tomorrow night (US Central Time). Real life decided I shouldn't have fun or free time for the past week.

 

Now where did that Axe of Blind Fury go...

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The Murder Sword not the Axe of Blind Fury.

 

They laughed as they murdered.

 

As they brought bolter and chainsword down upon the descendants of their hated kin they truly laughed and roared with feral glee.

 

The exile of those who swore fealty to the Arch-Traitor Horus had become one of unending hell. Days had become months. Then months turned into years. Those years had stretched into eternity. It was an eternity of endless toil within the Eye of Terror.

 

Now they were free. Broken loose and rampaging for the sake of bloodletting akin to the ancient titans of old relishing escape from their prison. Free to punish and torment the world that had imprisoned them.

 

Sathariel bellowed from his skull-carved helm as he brought his sword down, two-handed, on the Black Templar at his feet. His eyes rolled back into their sockets as he heard it scrape against pierced armor and bludgeon sickly-wet on flesh and bone.

 

The release of blood and taking the life of hated foes was euphoric to his warped senses. The warriors in his charge barely comprehended the battle surrounding them as they were lost to bloodlust and others too busy picking apart corpses.

 

They had made advances through the offspring of the Seventh Legion’s vessel. Their boarding pod burrowing deep within the Loyalty In Brotherhood’s reinforced armor. Over fifteen minutes of savageness, built upon their eagerness and desire to shed throne-loyal blood saw their advance reach deep into the ship’s armory.

 

They had already swept through the Hall of Veneration where the machine cult had made their lair. They took no joy in smashing aside machine men with no souls left in their husks. The priests and their skitarii died first as they brought their armor piercing weapons to bear. They crumbled beneath the strength of the astartes like the ship slaves massacred before them.

 

The servitors, still slaved to their tasks, were spared for they posed neither threat nor game. Few would be struck down in disdain as the Heretic Astartes moved on to their next target.

 

They stormed through corridors and blasted hatches open seeking more lives to reap. Sathariel herded his warriors more than commanded them. Many had followed their dark patrons and were lost in their servitude to the War God and the Prince of Pleasure.

 

They merely sought skulls to collect for some unseen throne or wantonly battle to feel the heightened sensations of combat and death. They were a blunt instrument that he would guide brilliantly as he led them to the arming chambers of these Black Templars that had sought to contain them.

 

Their arming chamber was a large hall with inlets set for individual squads. The armor and weapon racks were empty in each as all brethren prepared to fight against the returned traitors. Several squads had rerouted and regrouped in this hallowed site to repel the heretic boarders.

 

With their swords and bolters chained to their wrists they would push back against the heretics and grind them into oblivion. For them Emperor they shout. For Dorn and the Emperor’s Champion they howled as they charged with swords raised and bolters firing.

 

Several shots felled several of Sathariel’s warriors as his horde begins to rush into combat, a twisted imitation of their loyalist kin. There was no unified war cry but devotions to dark gods sung and feral roars vocalized through vox grilles.

 

A tide of black and gold collided against a tide of black and white and bloodshed erupted violently as hated foes tore into one another. The deformed claws of a heretic tore through cabling and armor as a Black Templar wass torn limb from limb. A Black Legionaire adorned with a rune of a crude skull mumbled praises to its god as a long sword pierced armor and sever its twin hearts. Such scenes of death played again and again within the arming chamber as two forces desperately sought the others destruction.

 

Sathariel merely killed loyalists in his path amongst the melee. A warrior brought its chainsword down and the Black Legionaire blocked with sharpe edge of his blade. Twisting his combat stance he brought his weapon low before driving it into the bare face of the Black Templar.

 

The warrior stumbled back before another blow punctured the soft armor of his midsection. The Black Templar was brought low onto his knees before the sword dug deep into his neck carving deep into his chest. The arterial blood spray misted Sathariel’s black armor before it was absorbed into the plating.

 

Another warrior rushed forward. His armor pockmarked from duels and battle damage earned through decades of service. A now blood-soak white cloak trailing behind him and a pointed cross painted on his corvus mark helm. The extra adornment on his shoulder plates bearing their cults symbol marked this warrior a rank above his peers.

 

There would be no formal declaration of a duel as the battle raged around them. Their own battle commenced as sword clashed with sword. Sathariel could feel the blade vibrate with every block against his sword and laughed. He scanned his opponent’s armor seeking a name. Sculpted with silver over a golden, rolled out scroll he found the name of his opponent, Barrkir.

 

Today will be a good day to die, Barrkir he announced gleefully from the vox hidden behind the clenched jaw of his skull helm. The warrior before him would not be baited nor bothered to trade insults with a traitor. To the Black Templar there was merely another heretic to be cut down before him. And he would not fail his chapter or his lord.

 

As their warriors died around them they continued to exchange slashes and blows. As Sathariel blocked a downward cut he spun on toe and heel of his armored boot to swing around and doive his sword into Barrkir’s shoulder pad piercing the emblem and forcing the warrior down on its knees. Before the Black Legionaire could laugh he felt the heated blade of his enemy drive clear through the front and back of his armor.

 

With a blood soaked pull the sword was wrenched free and struck again. The shock of being wounded so and then the speed of the loyalist’s second thrust took the breath from his punctured lungs. He fell to his knees choking on blood flooding his system. He dropped his sword as he reached for the seals of his helm. Barrkir would be the one to pry the helm from his head and Sathariel’s armored fingers fumbled as his body was shutting down. His warped organs began to desperately try to repair the damage to his body.

 

He fell onto his hands, his head down and mouth covered with blood. The cuts into his abdomen continued to bleed as his body failed to clot the blood streams. He watched as it pooled around his blade and as his sight became faint he saw it being absorbed.

 

The world around him slowed. The battle came to a halt. As he turned his head to look up he could see the Black Templar frozen with its sword raised ready to come down and remove his head. Then he heard a voice so familiar yet foreign to him at once.

 

Do you wish to live forever?

 

Yes he replied with hate for his would-be executioner in his eyes. He then turned to look for the source of the voice. He saw nothing but the battle trapped in time around him.

 

He reached for his sword, taken from a tomb on an Eldar world trapped within the Eye of Terror. It was a beautiful thing of silver and deadly curves that ended in a forked tongue that had taken the life of mortals and daemons all the same.

 

Sathariel held in his hands a daemon weapon whose blood debt had been paid. He whispered the name of the Black Templar, Barrkir, Sword Brethren and Huscarl. The daemons barter had been made, the blood of its wielder and the name of a soul to reap and consume in exchange for its power. It’s malevolence cackled at the thought that one day it would consume Sathariel as well.

 

The world began to return to its former self around him. The battle recommenced as threats howled and weapons raged once again. And Barrkir’s blade bit deep into the deck of the ship. Wide eyed the warrior pulled his sword back as he scanned for his foe. The figure of Sathariel in his blood drenched armor seemed to sway as it now stood several paces away from the Black Templar.

 

Barrkir began to raise his sword before the Sathariel leapt at the loyalist, the released form of his daemon weapon hammering down onto the Black Templar warrior. With each block and parry Barrkir’s sword began to chip and crack until it shattered beneath the might of the heretic’s blade.

 

As Sathariel closed in on the Black Templar the remains of the loyalists blade dug into the Black Legionaire’s side. Barrkir looked into the now black orbs of Sathariels eyes before the daemon sword pierced his armor and his hearts. The blood of his boody was greedily being consumed by the blade as it murdered its victim.

 

As the life drained from Barrkir Sathariel whispered again to the Black Templar; Today will be a good day to die.

 

 

Notes:

Ok, this was rushed but happy to get it out. Couldn't decided between trying to figure out how to make Axe of Blind Fury work for my Black Legion army. Didn't like where I was heading with my Cult of Golden Tears assaulting the Inquisition looking for the Intoxicating Elixer. It sounded like a movie about criminals fighting their way into a police station to raid an evidence room for drugs. This story was going to be about the Black Mace that my armies have been using since it came out in 6th. Basically, Sathariel was armed with a war hammer that would have changed into the Black Mace when he would trade his soul for it to save him after he had been run through twice. Thought it would be cool to find out they were carrying the relic instead of being Indiana Jones looking for it. Didn't like it so I went with the idea that he has the Murder Sword and knowing the name of his foe and trading his blood and soul for its killing prowess was something he would do to finish more difficult foes. Hope you all liked it.

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Thank you for your entries in Inspirational Friday 2018: Artefacts of Chaos.

Well, rather surprisingly we only had two. Dozens of items from codexes across the years...yet only two members were inspired to write about them. I hope our new topic will prove more enticing. :smile.:

Hushrong, thank you for your Murder Sword. I do love a nice deal with the devil. And the Templars are the chosen foe of my Psychopomps too, so it was doubly fun to read! I like that the pact was offered to Sathariel at the moment when he would be most likely to accept it – indeed when he really had little other choice. And I hope we’ll , sometime in the future, hear about when he has to pay the ultimate price.

I was inspired by the Impossible Robe in the current Codex: Chaos Daemons and so wrote The Robe about a rising priest in a sect of the Imperial Creed whose contacts, distractions and ambitions grow as his status and obligations do. Aided by a mysterious tailor, he manages to juggle them all on his path to power.

I hereby close that topic but if anyone has more stories on that theme, at any time, please post them here with a suitable title.

And here begins our sixth challenge of Inspirational Friday 2018: The Night Lords

The VIII Legion. The sons of Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter. During the Great Crusade they were renowned for their extreme warfare, their terror tactics, that would see uprisings quelled before they fully ignited; enemies slain in their beds the night before battle; men, women, children, none were sacrosanct in the eyes of the 8th. They did what needed to be done, believing they did what was necessary. Dirtying their hands with deeds and methods their brethren in other legions shied from.

The first recruits of the legion that would later be known as the Night Lords came from the prisons of Terra itself, these `Night’s Children` making perfect, ruthless Astartes recruits. And upon the reunion of the Emperor with Curze they became these children became lords and their father taught them the ways with which he had brought his cruel justice to their new homeworld of Nostramo. The philosophy of terror. Obedience via fear. Sudden, swift and decisive strikes. Extreme, merciless violence committed unseen but with the results left for all to discover. And as the legion crusaded it began to receive new recruits from Nostramo – which had in the Night Haunter’s absence descended once more into a hive of criminality and visciousness – and so its ranks were filled with those who fed upon fear.

In the 41st millennium the Night Lords are fractured, operating as scattered warbands – as are all the traitor legions of old -, yet unlike many who swore fealty to the pantheon, a great many of the Night Lords despise the taint of Chaos and shun the gods of Chaos, respecting only power, temporal and material.

IF2018: Night Lords runs until the sixth of April.

Tell us a tale...30k, 40k or bridging the eras...of the VIII Legion.

Let us be inspired.

And who shall judge this new challenge? That decision lies with our current judge: EesiOh.

The winner of IF2018: The Night Lords shall claim not the Octed amulet:

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...but the Amulet of Night Incarnate:

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And the honour of judging the next challenge.

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It is I, you're terrible yet merciful god, here to pass judgement upon the sacrifices that have been wrought in my name. I am most displeased at the quantity of tributes, however their quality sates me for now.

 

In all seriousness though, cheers to Kierdale and Hushrong for actually submitting stories, everyone else, subtract 5 points

 

Kierdale, I really enjoyed the, for lack of a better term, uniqueness of the cloak, unfortunately Chaos artifacts seem to either be weapons or sorcery amplifiers, so it was nice to see something different. The story overall was magnificent, but at this point that basically goes without saying

 

Hushrong, I love the idea of weapons that have a cost associated with there usage, and hate the black templars with a rage that makes even Khorne himself tell me to calm down, so your story checked two big boxes for me. 

 

Ultimately there can be only one winner, and in this regard im torn, but Ultimately I think the uniqueness of Kierdale's artifact edges him out. So without further ado I present Kierdale his octed. wait for applause to die down I'm looking forwards to this upcoming challenge, I was planning on reading Red Tithe again anyway, but now this will give me a good reason to in preparation for writing about one of my favorite traitor legions (STILL WAITING ON THAT TAU CHALLENGE THOUGH) 

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Congrats Kierdale!

 

Awesome entry and I’m excited to try and write something about the Night Lords. They were part of my first army alongside Iron Warriors. Reason being is that I want to write stories for either My EC or BL army...but I think I have something.

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A Confession

 

When I was a mortal I killed and murdered in the name of a street and a hab-block from where we gangers dwelled and claimed.

 

It was then that Legion came for flesh stock. As our gangs waged our alley wars the Night Lords descended from those raining skies. With the sound of thunder and with the impact that shook Nostramo they landed amongst us.

 

The ones who ran and fled were shot in the back. I will never forgot the first time I had heard such a round fire and the wet, exploding mess it did to unarmored mortals. Those that cowered and shriveled were put to the sword. Those of us that stood our ground were taken away.

 

In their apothecarions I was broken down and dismantled in body and mind. I endured their tortures and I survived their trials. In time my flesh was reconstructed and myself reborn.

 

In midnight clad I killed and murdered in the name of the Emperor and our Imperium with its endlessly expanding borders.

 

We were heralds of the simplest message; to defy the Emperor was to bring upon oneself an agonizing death. Our Legion excelled at such grim punishments. Worlds that would openly turn from the Emperor or resist his pleas of unification were to be made an example of and we made certain their screams were heard loud for all to hear.

 

One world would suffer under our flensing blades and their mutilated corpses put on display. Such samples made other worlds snuff any thought of resistance or sedition.

 

Events would alter destiny as we would turn from the emperor alongside our kin. I treasure this irony and what you call betrayal. We slaughtered our throne-loyal Legion brothers upon the sands of Istvaan V. Under the rainfall of their ashes we set out to bring down the false emperor’s Imperium.

 

Free of our bonds the Legion killed and murdered those too blind to see their own shackles. We took what we willed and for a brief moment we were not unlike the gods of old. It was we that had built the Imperium and had kept it in line, why should we not enjoy the fruit of our labors?

 

However, Horus fell and our sacrifices were for naught. I still recall seeing the Imperial Palace crumbling and burning and the Vengeful Spirit take flight as we fled. We were driven back and hounded by the throne-loyal until we claimed Tsagaulsa. It would be our sanctuary, our Palace of Bones, and where our legion was scattered.

 

The Primarch had been slain by the blade of an assassin. I remember our orders to halt our patrols and abandon posts beforehand. With his tormented life ended his hated legion splintered. When the sons of Guilliman descended upon us it was the hammer that shattered us completely. Again we fled as a palace burned. Again they hounded us and we escaped to the last place they would not dare follow, into the Eye of Terror.

 

I, once a killer and murderer, now fought to survive. The legion was dead. So many of my brothers were gone. And for once I longer had purpose.

 

I have seen things no mortal can even dream. Within the Eye I saw all their nightmares made manifest. A world that moaned and wailed in agony as the Rot God’s minions burrowed deep into its continents of flesh. A dragon, formed by the shambling souls of those whose lives had been lost in the warp, consumed a flotilla of escort ships. Yet the most worrisome were our rebellious kin who had dwelt in this hell far too long in reverence of their new deities.

 

The sons of Cyclops had been plagued by flesh change in their earlier years but now it seems some welcomed it. Their changes spurred on by the use of beloved sorcery. Those of the XIV had become even more foul. I had seen them on Terra and I could smell the decay of their flesh but now they were something too far gone. The World Eaters seemed to have changed the slightest in their blood frenzy but now they devoted it all to some unseen War God. Few of the others had changed as well, the IV still bitter as their iron. The XVII seemed to flourish in this hell. I did not see the XX but they were rumored to be there. My own legion had blended so well alongside the myriad renegades that had forsaken their legions. I like to think we were once mighty but we had been broken.

 

Yet I do not think we were as broken as the once glorious XVI. Without their gene-father they were a truly wretched thing, barely a shadow of their former selves. The other legions plagued them. Slaughtering their warriors, claiming their ships & arms, and bleeding them dry the Sons of Horus knew no mercy. None vexed them as great as the III Legion.

 

Their legion had splintered yet somehow their former bonds kept them together to form an empire in the Eye. They were truly twisted and lost in their debased pleasures. And their loathing of the XVI led them on a war of genocide. They were so close as the XVI Legion danced on the edge of a blade. Their dominion would have been total had not the Despoiler returned commanding the Vengeful spirit.

 

Then like a dark tide his new legion rose. They conquered those who resisted with prejudice, showing no mercy. I had seen the warlords they laid low adorn the banners of their elite killers. They embraced those who locked arms with theirs as brothers. In time their allies came to wear their black. The Black Legion many called out in mockery such as the warriors of the Lord of Hosts.

 

Those same warriors had come to bring him my head.

 

In my crumbling armor I had become a raider and a scavenger to survive alongside my few remaining brothers and the rabble we had collected in our exile.

 

And we lived off the fat we trimmed from the Lord of Host’s outposts and small fleets. Raiding and razing them. His pocket empire was easier to pick at as they were loosely aligned warbands compared the Black Legion’s unity. They communicated less, coordinated less, and were easier to plunder without immediate repercussions.  Yet they had laid out the most enticing ambush that I nearly damn myself for not seeing.

 

My ship had been crippled and listing in the waves of the Eyes. Their ships far outnumbered my strike cruiser and they circled and closed in.  When their guns had silenced I knew they would finish this execution personally. Boarding torpedoes, dreadclaws, and assault craft invaded my ship spilling out warriors bearing the colors of the exiled legions. They wanted to take my ship, to reclaim their looted materials, and to take the head that was demanded by their lord.

 

The emperor was a false idol and my Primarch had rotted. There would be no soul I would bend my knee to. The Lord of Hosts knew this but I think he cared little. He merely wanted me dead, a small thorn plucked from his paws. Yet things would change.

 

There was no call made for aid or salvation yet the first dark warship appeared seemingly from nowhere. And it was not alone. The new arrivals tore into the Lord of Hosts’ fleet crippling some and sending other fleeing. Their Lord of Hosts’ warriors aboard my ship must have snarled before their spirits left them at the sight of the new aggressor. The Vengeful Spirit had come.

 

I had hated that warship ever since I saw its majesty tuck its tail and run from Terra. Now, I welcomed it as my ship welcomed aboard the black clad warriors of its warband. They tore through my assailant’s like fury incarnate. Within an hour all boarders had been killed. Their flesh was to be harvested, their armor & arms reclaimed, and their severed heads to be delivered to the Lord of Hosts.

 

And that was when I saw Abaddon. His warriors surrounded my bridge where my few remaining brothers stood with me. He entered and carried himself like the warrior we remembered from war long past. He bore rents in his armor from battle and blood from those he had killed purging them from my ship. His golden eyes did not blink and he smiled.  He began to name my warriors, addressing each, and when he had called Headsmen Rohrt Mctar’rl I found myself kneeling at his feet. I do not know what came over me but I found myself kneeling before the Despoiler.  He released an amused breath of air and ordered me to rise.

 

Abaddon, the former first captain of the XVI Legion. Abaddon, second to Horus the Warmaster. Abaddon, whose name was myth before his return. Abaddon, Lord of the Black Legion. This figure of great renown addressed me as brother as he gripped my wrist in a warriors greeting.

 

That is why I serve him. That is why I will fight and I will die for him. He is no warlord hiding behind his forces, whipping them forward to claim glories for him. He is our brother and leads from the front with talon and sword raised. With his own blood covered hands he will strangle whatever life is left of your false emperor and take the Imperium that is owed to us.

 

Now clad in the black armor of past shame and defeats I am reborn anew and I wage the Long War against your Imperium. That is my purpose and sacred task.

 

I can see that look on your face even with my eyes shut, blinded by the high beam glow-globes of your chamber. I can also feel the pain you are starting to sense. Your head feels like it is splitting and your teeth feel as if they want to pull apart in every direction. And you may have stripped me of my armor, you inquisitorial soul, but you failed to silence the transmitter it’s machine-spirit has been broadcasting.

 

That is the sensation of teleportation you are feeling.

 

You are about to be boarded.

 

 

My first draft was originally of a former Night Lord, now in Black Legion colors, telling his life's tale to his victim. An assassin that had been captured and literally pinned to a chair for six days being tortured as the NL/BL merely hummed until on the seventh day he told his tale. It would be later revealed that the head restraints on the assassin kept their head in place much like a device in brain surgery...because the BL were trying to brainwash the assassin for their use. So you would learn the top portion of the skull had been surgically removed. As the character dipped his finger into the assassins brain matter to do something force lightning-esque it would have ended with something like "you will serve the Black Legion as well" but I didn't like it and didn't get far.

 

Then I tried to write a story about a heroic last stand on Tsaguala. If you haven't read the ADB NL Trilogy look away for a minor spoiler and go read those books. But I really enjoyed the portion where Talos told Variel that 'all of Guillimans sons' had come for them when Tsaguala fell. It just seemed weird to have a Night Lord pull off a heroic last stand. So that got scrapped before it even happened. Although, I'm pretty sure a sweet novel could be written about that battle from all sides.

 

So I ended up writing something taking inspiration from some recent Black Legion books by ADB. I have also always wanted to use a start of "I was this, I was that, and now I am something else" in my story so I was happy to do that with the italicized segments. Hope you all enjoy this.

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