Lord Perdicas, Equerry to the Tyrant Tullaris
He swung the mace like a thunderbolt in the hands of a demigod. The boom of its sudden strike, shattering armour and bone beneath it. The sound of it stole his breath away, as it always did, and left him in a kind of quiet. The dimly lit halls of the cargo freighter were still, but for the shadows that danced across the blood slick walls and the corpse riven floor. Sparks from the ruined hulk of an ancient hero sent them bounding in leaps across the ruined meat and splintered armour of rich blue and bitter iron cast about.
The quiet was fading with the ringing in his ears. His twin hearts boomed in his chest, and he felt his blood pumping, his heart rate up. He listened to his throbbing pulse and felt the ache of the wounds in his chest and arm as the ichor clot. He tensed his grip on his mace. It was good, despite the cut his arm had taken. If he’d been any slower, the golden sword he’d smashed aside would have taken off his arm. His vision widened as the blood lust faded, and he saw the warning rune flashing in the corner of his visor. He’d need to visit the Flesh Smiths for muscle weave or regrowth .
“Trai-“ He heard the voice and the hacking cough that interrupted it. A shaky hand rose from one of the broken Ultramarines slumped against the wall, his rich blue armour glazed purple in a wash of his own blood. The aquila on his breastplate was shattered and caved into his chest where the mace had struck him and thrown him back into the wall.
“Traitor” the warrior on the floor spat into his own helm. The Iron Warrior turned his head to stepped forward and looked at his broken enemy. The Ultramarine’s struggle for life was pointless. His legs were limp, probably from a broken spinal cord, and one of his arms was still clutching his bolter where it had been torn off several feet away.
The Iron Warrior kneeled before the broken man and set down the mace beside him. “I am Perdicas.” his deep voice growled. He reached forward and unclasped the Ultramarine’s helm. The man coughed and spat as Perdicas lifted his helmet away. His face was ruined features, covered in blood.
WIP Iron Warriors Lord Perdicas.
“I ... I am Junios.” His shaky hand still spasmed at his side.
“I don’t care.” Perdicas said plainly. He turned back to the warrior he’d crushed with his mace, the warrior whose golden blade had bit into his arm and chest. “But I want you to tell me who he was.”
Perdicas turned back to Junios as he gestured to the body. The Ultramarines champion wore exquisite armour of the old MK VI kind, adorned with golden braids of victory, honour markings, and white laurels of courage on his shoulder plates. Leather tassels hung from his waist across the floor, and over the bodies of those he’d slain.
“He was … He was Gerion.”
Perdicas had watched Gerion before he could reach him. The bastard had come down the corridor screaming his hatred for the enemies of the Emperor. First, he reached Squad Tetros – and cut the four Iron Warriors apart. Dual blades in his hands, one short spatha and one golden longsword, he’d moved like water. Each strike flowed into the next, a block became a strike, and a parry became a thrust. The swordsmanship was, in its lethal way, beautiful.
When he’d cut through Squad Tetros, he carved his way through the manifold cultists who had barred his path. He’d made a slaughter of the mortals that would have pleased Khorne. And after that, he faced one of the Battalion’s Blade Masters. Crol was a bitter and hateful warrior, a blunt instrument best directed rather than left to his own initiative but he’d been skilled – Perdicas could give him that at least. Gerion had cut him down anyway. The warrior had made an art of war – his blades were the sanguine brushes with which he painted the world around him.
Then Perdicas had waded through the Ultramarines, and come at him from behind. Gerion took the first blow and when the mace struck his arm, it threw him out of his element. He’d fought admirably, even changed his stance and his sword hands to make sure he made use of the longer reach with his good arm. But the sheer force with which his maul struck meant that even when the blows failed to connect with Gerion, his hands took the impact through his sword. He tired and baited Perdicas to strike. Perdicas hadn’t even realized until the blade came for him, and he barely had a moment to twist aside and take the cut through the meat, rather than the bone of his arm.
That was when the second blade had darted for his chest. Perdicas didn’t even see the blade until it was in his gut. Gerion should have killed him then. He would have killed him then. But Gerion’s crippled arm fumbled the strike and a killing blow to Perdicas’ heart merely sank into his belly. He’d smashed the butt of his mace into Gerion’s face, and then pounded his helmet into the hero’s, and in that moment of reprieve, he swung the mace like a thunderbolt in the hands of a demigod.
“Thank you.” Perdicas lifted Junios to his feet, holding onto the gorget of his armour with one hand, pinning him to the wall. “Now I want you to tell him who killed him.”
The Iron Warrior punched his free hand into Junios’ sunken chest. His fist broke through the shattered ceramite of splintered armour, and through the cracked mass of black carapace. Junios’ eyes went wide as he screamed. Perdicas’ search hand clawed into the Ultramarine’s chest. His fingers searched for Junios heart, and when they found it, they ripped and they tore the bloody mass from his chest.
“And tell your Emperor when you see him screaming through the warp.”
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Notes:
Lord Perdicas was built with a Havoc head and mace, some greenstuff to tie the cables in his head to his suit, the backpack of a Lord Discordant, a body from the new Chaos Space Marine kit (can I still call them new if all of my basic Iron Warriors are the old models?), and the combi-bolter of the Chaos Terminator kit.
I had some time tonight, so I’m trying to get ahead on painting him with lead time for my other vows in the 12 Months of Hobby and for the Liber Challenge to convert and paint a named character. The lore with this post is about twice as long as I had originally intended, so I'll need to work on keeping these lore snippets more manageable for me, and more easily readable for whoever follows. On that note, I feel really out of practice writing, so this will also be a good opportunity for practice.
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Responses:
Very very excited for what you are going to put up here! Love the lore. 
Thank you very much! I hope you enjoy what I share.
Looking forward to see where this goes. I'm a great fan also of the narrative log / in-universe depth presentation and exploration of a force style approach. And, for that matter, Iron Warriors.
And capacious historical text quoting as well - something the Heresy books have often made excellent use of themselves. You earn bonus points, needless to say, for being the only other person I think I've ever seen work Frantz Fanon into a 40k effort.
Thank you! I have really enjoyed how the Heresy books have used historical text quoting and I couldn't pass up the chance. I'm also glad to see someone caught onto the Frantz Fanon reference! There's plenty of historical criticism of empire that could be applied to the Imperium.
All up, a lot of what a log does is it creates and propels a 'feel', a 'vibe'. I hesitate to quite call it an 'aesthetic', although in a certain sense that's what it is, also.
Most people just go with pictures of miniatures - and that's something, especially if they're well crafted. Although often, in the absence of any further and more directly emotively/intellectually engaging elements, the feel or the vibe that's thus created is "these are my miniatures". Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily - it's what the forum's WIP section is for.
But the addition of some well-chosen flavour quotes , either historical / literary or produced bespoke for the occasion ... it really elevates things. All of a sudden, it's no longer (just) "these are my miniatures". It's that promulgation of vibe, with the miniatures as anchor or even adornment. The best logs manage to transcend all the way up to an effective "step into this story", or "this world".
I have a feeling, bolstered by taking a look over your still-being-added-to Liber entry and some of the people you've cited as inspiration, that this may turn out to be just such a log.
Good luck.
[also, what was the program you used for the stellar cartography ? ]
I've definitely been trying to build my forces into a narrative frame that I've tried to carve out for myself, and the narrative aspects of the hobby from modelling to gaming, to just reading Black Library books and the lore in the HH Black books have really left an impression on me.
Of course everyone has their own style, and however people want to present their work and hobby is okay and up to them. I just know how I've been inspired by some of the people on this forum (and looking over your threads in your signature I need to carve out time to check out some of yours!) and that's something that I really want to emulate and try to show through this.
The program was actually just Paint X on my macbook, with a bit of help in GIMP. I don't have access to photoshop so I've been trying to get used to GIMP but Paint X has a surprisingly great curved line tool that lets you fiddle around with it. GIMP was useful for final edits and adding text. I tried to make something more of the style of an incredible and fairly recent piece - Anatomy of an Imperial Sector, but found that there was no way I could try to imitate that style and produce good results with unfamiliar tools, and while I wanted to actually post on here. I still miss Photoshop though, so I may look into getting it.
Edited by Llagos_Tyrant, 01 October 2020 - 03:44 AM.
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