text
stringlengths 27
208k
|
|---|
Brazen Claws - Notable Campaigns: War of the Beast (544-546.M32) - The Brazen Claws participated in the defence of the Imperium from the catastrophic assault of the Orks led by The Beast in the mid-32nd Millennium.Ambush at Sarum (416.M37) - Inquisitor Lord Antonius Coil of the Ordo Malleus discovered the current location of the nomadic Hell-Forge of Sarum while conducting an Exterminatus action against the Warp-tainted Hive World of Goleonda IX, and moved to see it destroyed at last. Along with warships committed from Battlefleet Reductus and several Militarum Tempestus regiments, he mobilised the aid of three Space Marine Chapters, the Sons of the Raven, Celestial Guard and the Brazen Claws, to strike deep into the perilous Golgotha Wastes against this nightmarish thorn in the Imperium's side. Within sight of the baleful world, the Imperial fleet was ambushed on all sides by the pale warships of the Renegade Warp Ghosts and corrupted Black Wings Chaos Space Marines and the horrific Daemon Engines of their Dark Mechanicum allies of Sarum. In the brutal seventeen-solar-hour void battle that followed, the Imperial fleet was encircled and slowly torn to pieces both from without and from within as Daemons ripped open passages into realspace deep onboard the stalwart vessels. Only the Chapter fleet of the Brazen Claws broke free from the trap without crippling losses, while the human contingent of the Imperium's strike forces were annihilated to the last. The ravaged Celestial Guard Chapter took nearly a standard century to rebuild its grievous losses from its stores of gene-seed, swearing bitter vengeance against the Warp Ghosts. The fleet-based Sons of the Raven Chapter, not one of whose battle-brothers escaped the deadly trap, were declared martyred and the great Bell of Lost Souls in the Tower of Heroes of the Imperial Palace on Terra tolled to mourn their passing. Eighteen standard years later, a corrupted Warspite-class Battle Barge, believed once to have been the Seraphina Carricus of the Sons of the Raven, was encountered transporting a Warp Ghosts raiding force off Mezoa XV, the withered face of Jo'sun Hernezu, the martyred Chapter's last master, worn by its revenant captain.Battle of Falax (223.M39) - The Brazen Claws entered the Peligron Cluster to besiege a Renegade stronghold on Falax. They lost three squads from their 3rd Company and a daemonic surge destroyed the mind of the Librarian leading the assault. Their complex strategy was in disarray but, due to the heroics of their Devastator Centurions, the Daemons were kept at bay. An evacuation was made possible only by the firepower of the Centurions.Crusade of Steel (900.M41) - Iron Father Kardan Stronos led the full might of the Iron Hands and Brazen Claws Chapters against the Necron dynasty of the Crimson King. Stronos refused to fall back in the face of a massive counter-attack, and alongside the Iron Hands' Garrsak Clan Company he somehow fought his way to strike the Crimson King a mortal blow that shattered the Necrons' command structure.Crusade of Vengeance (955.M41) - Despite direct orders to the contrary from the High Lords of Terra, the Brazen Claws launched a counterstrike they considered a Crusade of Vengeance into the Eye of Terror itself in response to the forces of Chaos' assault upon their homeworld of Talus IV, leaving it in ruins. The Brazen Claws' last astropathic transmissions indicated the Chapter was engaging a fleet of Iron Warriors vessels, but no other trace was heard of them for long solar decades.Broken but Unbowed (994.M41) - Once thought destroyed in the Eye of Terror, the Brazen Claws resurfaced near Cadia, battered, but still fighting their long war against Chaos, though it had cost them hundreds of casualties. It was their Chapter Master, Caul Engentre, who finally ordered the Chapter out of the Eye of Terror after a subjective twenty standard years of combat against the Traitor Legions. Engentre saw the toll that the Eye was taking upon his brothers, and decided to end their Crusade of Vengeance against the forces of Chaos. Just as the remaining companies of the Chapter were boarding their starships to leave the Eye behind, an ambush was launched and a dozen warships and two full companies of corrupted Traitor Brazen Claws jumped in-system and attacked. The result of this battle is unclear, though many Brazen Claws, including their Chapter Master, managed to escape and return to realspace. To the Brazen Claws' surprise, though only twenty standard years passed for them in the Eye, almost forty had gone by in the rest of the galaxy. Such are the effects of the Warp.13th Black Crusade (999.M41) - The entire Chapter of the Brazen Claws arrived too late to aid the defence of Cadia against the forces of Chaos during the 13th Black Crusade. Instead they diverted to the defence of the other worlds of the Cadian Gate.Fall of Medusa V (999.M41) - Some elements of the 2nd Company of the Brazen Claws led by Captain Erod took part in the campaign known as the Fall of Medusa V. They were involved in the coordination of Imperial forces in the southeastern zone of Armida.War of Beasts (ca. 001.M42-025.M42) - Three full companies of Brazen Claws were present at during the defence of the strategic world of Vigilus from xenos and Chaos forces, and participated in the quarantine of the Dontoria hive city complex.Second Relief of Mordian (Iron Crusade) (Unknown Date.M42) - As Imperial forces withdrew from the Stygius Sector during the Invasion of the Stygius Sector, the Iron Hands refused to retreat and instead gathered on Mordian, itself under siege from Chaos forces. Alongside a mere dozen or so regiments of the Mordian Iron Guard, the Iron Hands sought to reforge themselves and purge the weakness they had displayed earlier in the campaign. During the siege the Iron Hands were joined by allies enraged by the defeatism of the Imperial forces, among them the Brazen Claws, Fire Lords, Silver Skulls, Sons of Medusa, and Iron Lords in what became known as the "Iron Crusade." They arrived on Mordian to find the planet terrorised by a Night Lords warband under the command of Ahrak Deathshriek and his Raptor hordes. Deathshriek planned to use the terror his Heretic Astartes created in the Mordian population to power a Chaos ritual that would plunge the entire world into the Warp. The Iron Hands and their allies struck with customary bluntness, emerging without warning from the Warp and engaging the Traitor fleet in orbit and launching a Drop Pod assault on Mordian's capital. Clan Avernii under Iron Captain Caanok Var led the charge and Deathshriek drove his Chaos Cultists into the Iron Hands' guns. One by one, the remaining Iron Hands Clan Companies joined the battle and Deathshriek was wounded in single combat by Var. Even as the Iron Hands' drop zone came under fresh assault from the Benedictian Guard and the Cult of the Whispered Word, Renegade warlords from across the sector united in their realisation that the Iron Hands could be wholly destroyed. With the Loyalist assault faltering, Deathshriek claimed victory as he led his fleet against the Iron Hands in space, outnumbering their warships three to one. It was at this point that the Iron Hands Successor Chapters arrived. Deathshriek's armada was caught in disarray by the Loyalist reinforcements and crushed. The newly-arrived Loyalist warships rained obliteration below on the Mordian populace. The orbital bombardment seemed indiscriminate, but nothing could have been further from the truth. The tactical doctrine known as "Hammer and the Storm" had been pursued planetside as well as in the trackless void, the Iron Hands' assault calculated to stir the Renegades and Traitors into reckless deeds. What had seemed a faltering Loyalist advance had merely paused while the Iron Hands Techmarines laboured to erect void shields and reinforce the capital city's surviving bunkers. Thus the Iron Hands and those portions of the Mordian populace they deemed worthy of survival endured the orbital firestorm. Their foes, caught in the open and drunk on the prospect of their imminent victory, were not so fortunate. In a little over one solar hour's bombardment, the Chaos hold on Mordian was broken for the second time. Eventually other Imperial reinforcements arrived from Cypra Mundi and the Iron Crusade was able to not only push the Chaos forces off Mordian, but to counterattack Chaos garrisons on nearby worlds. The Iron Hands' governing Iron Council then unleashed a second phase of the campaign, with a plan to scour the surviving worlds of the Mordian System of their Chaos presence and wrest the refineries and orbital shipyards of the neighbouring Kharvos System from Chaos. At present, the campaign is ongoing. |
Brazen Claws - Chapter Organisation: The Veteran 1st Company of the Brazen Claws was known as "the Dionekean Guard." |
Brazen Claws - Chapter Beliefs: Like their predecessors, the Iron Hands, as loyal sons of the Gorgon, Ferrus Manus, the Brazen Claws are ultimately defined by their hatred of weakness of any kind.This is a hatred that extends to their own bodies, for they hold that all organic bodies, even those of a genetically-enhanced, transhuman Space Marine, are ultimately frail and subject to the weaknesses brought on by age and disease.Like their progenitors, the Brazen Claws are compulsively driven to replace their own biological flesh with cybernetic replacements, a practice that begins as soon as a Neophyte is initiated into the Chapter. |
Brazen Claws - Notable Brazen Claws: Chapter Master Caul Engentre - Caul Engentre is a hero of the Brazen Claws Chapter who has four centuries of experience in facing down the slavering darkness of the Daemon, xenos, mutant and Heretic. Engentre was present when the Brazen Claws' homeworld of Talus IV fell to the ravening hordes of Chaos. The Chapter Master had sworn a mighty oath of vengeance to pursue the forces of Chaos into the very Eye of Terror itself. It had been uttered in the ashes of his Chapter's homeworld, the oath sworn amidst the fires of their burning fortress-monastery. After twenty standard years of prosecuting their ill-fated Crusade of Vengeance against the Traitor Legions within the Eye of Terror, the Chapter had suffered the loss of at least two companies. After twenty years of hubris, pride and death, Engentre called the entirety of his Chapter to council aboard his flagship, to discuss whether or not it would be prudent to continue prosecuting their Crusade. Out of ten companies, only four hundred Space Marines of the Brazen Claws were able to attend. Engentre stared out at the gathered Chapter, at the battered warriors left. There were gaps in squads, gaps in companies, once filled by Astartes he had known and called brother. Even now, even standing at attention, they could not remain still. Their limbs danced, machinery grinding, clanking, ill-maintained. Their bodies beset by random flashes of neuronic misfire as the Eye of Terror's rampant Chaos energies slowly wore away at their minds. After much debate, and the sage advice of the Chapter's surviving captains, Engentre told his Chapter that their crusade was at an end. He then ordered his Chapter to prepare to depart the Eye for the realms of Man, though first his survivors had to survive an ambush by those two companies of their brethren they had thought lost but were in fact corrupted and transformed into Heretic Astartes.Iron Father Jurkim Bohr - Jurkim Bohr was an iron father of the Brazen Claws and later was a founding member of the Deathwatch during the War of the Beast in the mid-32nd Millennium. He took part in the search for an Ork psyker on Plaeos who could be used as the link necessary to project the Sisters of Silence's Null aura into the WAAAGH! energies of the Orks of The Beast. He later fought in the second invasion of Ullanor.First Captain Macklen Eogh - Captain of the Brazen Claws elite 1st Company.Second Captain Erod - Captain of the Brazen Claws 2nd Company. During the twenty years of prosecuting their ill-fated crusade against Chaos, the Brazen Claws had suffered terribly. After two solar decades within the Eye of Terror, Erod told Seventh Captain Imbolkh he was done, for he had no wish to die in the benighted realms of the Eye. He had no wish to die fighting their Chapter's damned war, so Erod abandoned his brothers and returned to realspace on his own.Third Captain Embrose Kalgach - Captain of the Brazen Claws 3rd Company.Seventh Captain Julas Imbolkh - Captain of the Brazen Claws 7th Company. Imbolkh once possessed fiery hair that had turned a premature grey, his face a mass of scars acquired during his time whilst fighting against the forces of Chaos during his Chapter's Crusade of Vengeance within the Eye of Terror.Eighth Captain Duro - Former captain of the Brazen Claws 8th Company. During the Brazen Claws' war of vengeance in the Eye of Terror, Duro and the 8th Company were thought lost when they followed after the 9th Company in their pursuit of a large Emperor's Children warband deep into the hellish realms of the Eye. Twenty standard years later, when Chapter Master Engentre called the entirety of the Chapter for council aboard his flagship, the lost 8th Company returned from the void, but they did not return unchanged, for they had been corrupted by the malign influence of Chaos. What occurred after the erstwhile company returned to their former brethren has not yet been recorded, though the surviving Brazen Claws were able to escape the Eye's clutches and return to the service of the Emperor.Ninth Captain Hrtel - Captain of the Brazen Claws 9th Company. Lost during the Chapter's war of vengeance in the Eye of Terror, when they pursued a large warband of Emperor's Children deep into the Realms of Chaos. They were presumed lost to the Warp.Captain and Master of the Forge Firlus Ghad - One of the few surviving captains of the Brazen Claws who took part in the ill-fated Crusade of Vengeance within the Eye of Terror. During his tenure within the Eye, he sustained horrific wounds to his throat, which required an augmetic replacement, leaving his voice awash with static.Techmarine Luveran Llir - Techmarine Luveran Llir was assigned to the 8th Company of the Brazen Claws during their crusade into the Eye of Terror. While on board the Cold Roads, the flagship of the 8th Company, Llir tried to restore the Gellar Field in the chaos that raged throughout the ship. Despite his seemingly sane appearance, his mind was caught in the storm of the insanity produced by the Warp as well and he actually turned the Gellar Field off.Solvus Tabor - Solvus Tabor was a Veteran of the elite Dionekean Guard, the Chapter's 1st Company. He protected Techmarine Llir, trusting that the Techmarine would restore the Gellar Field, only to fall with the rest of the company when Llir's perceptions were tainted by the Warp and he actually turned the starship's Gellar Field off.Vonst - Vonst is a Brazen Claw Astartes seconded to the Deathwatch. He is currently serving Watch Fortress Talasa Prime as sergeant of Kill-team Vonst. |
Brazen Claws - Chapter Fleet: Cold Roads (Unknown Class) - The Cold Roads was the primary starship of the Brazen Claws' 8th Company. It was lost during their crusade into the Eye of Terror when the Techmarine Luveran Llir, influenced by the Warp, unwittingly deactivated its Gellar Field. |
Brazen Claws - Chapter Relics: Refuge in Defiance - Refuge in Defiance is a master-crafted Astartes Combat Shield. There are few implements of war that better meld offensive might with defensive protections than the deft guard of this combat shield. The unique resonance of the protective field steadies the sword-arm or firing grip of the wearer and guides it towards his enemies. The most learned Forge Masters believe that this particular shield's Machine Spirit can sense those who have struck blows against it and it manipulates this deadly link to enhance its user's combat abilities. |
Brazen Claws - Chapter Colours: The Chapter's power armour is painted in a quartered pattern of pelagic blue and clotted red.Blue squad specialty symbols on the right shoulder pauldron designate an Astartes' tactical specialty -- battleline, close support, fire support, Veteran or command.The white High Gothic numeral stenciled in the centre of the squad specialty marking indicates squad number.Veteran Marines of the Brazen Claws' elite 1st Company are designated by a white helmet.The colour of the Aquila or Imperialis on the chest guard indicates company number in accordance to the dictats of the Codex Astartes -- i.e. white (1st Company), yellow (2nd Company), red (3rd Company), green (4th Company), etc. |
Brazen Claws - Chapter Badge: The Brazen Claws' Chapter badge is a large red talon on a field of blue. |
Brazen Claws - Canon Conflict: In the novel Phalanx by Ben Counter the Brazen Claws Chapter is decribed as having fallen to Chaos during their Crusade of Vengeance into the Eye of Terror. In reality only a small fraction of the Chapter was actually corrupted. |
Brazen Consuls - Brazen Consuls: The Brazen Consuls is a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter and successor of the Ultramarines of unknown Founding.Hailing from the rich world of Aventinium, the Brazen Consuls recruit solely from the world's nobility. Such is these people's wealth that they commit their scions to training for the Chapter from birth.Thus, Brazen Consuls aspirants are already expert fencers and precision marksmen by the time they compete to join the Chapter.They are as finely disciplined and learned in strategic wisdom and solitary survival as they are in the complex etiquettes of the banqueting hall. |
Brazen Consuls - Notable Campaigns: Third War for Damnos (Unknown Date.M42) - The Third War for Damnos began when an invasion force of the Necron Szarekhan Dynasty descended upon Damnos during the Era Indomitus. The world sent out a plea for aid once more to the Ultramarines, who at that time were engaged in a number of major conflicts of the era, including the Indomitus Crusade, the Plague Wars and the War of Beasts. With most of their strength utilised elsewhere, the Chapter had few Astartes to spare to help the besieged world. Nonetheless, the Chapter had given too much previously in Damnos' defence to abandon it and a small strike force of Ultramarines and several regiments of the Ultramar Auxilia were sent to aid it. The Chapter knew that the forces that had been deployed to Damnos would be insufficient to defeat the Necrons and so requested aid from their allies in different Chapters. Their requests were answered and when the Ultramarines arrived at Damnos they were joined by contingents from several Successor Chapters, including the Iron Hounds, Brazen Consuls and Libators. The combined might of these Adeptus Astartes, however, was not enough to defeat the invading Szarekhan Dynasty, whose forces were numberless. This was due to the undying xenos arriving in their thousands by Tomb Ships and through a Dolmen Gate to ensure they reconquered Damnos. When the Mandeville Point for the Damnos System once again flared as it opened to the Warp, the Ultramarines feared that another foe was about to join conflict, but instead it marked the arrival of reinforcements sent by the Salamanders and White Scars Chapters. They had received the Ultramarines' request for aid and proceeded to join the battle to retake Damnos once more for the Emperor from the Szarekhan Dynasty. |
Brazen Consuls - Notable Brazen Consuls: Constantius Remus Severinus (KIA) - Severinus was a battle-brother of the Brazen Consuls 6th Company, 3rd Squad. He was killed in action on the tenth solar day of the Halaheim Reclamation during the Third War for Damnos. Severinus saved seven brothers from a Wraith ambush before his death.Thysor - Thysor is a Brazen Consuls Venerable Dreadnought who served in the Brazen Consuls' 6th Company. He is among the Chapter's forces taking part in the Third War for Damnos. |
Brazen Consuls - Chapter Colours: The Brazen Consuls primarily wear brown power armour with a black helmet. The Aquila or Imperialis on the chest is white, as is the four pointed star placed on the centre of the helmet. The shoulder plate trim is black.The black squad specialty symbol -- battleline, close support, fire support, Veteran or command -- is indicated on the right shoulder plate. |
Brazen Consuls - Chapter Badge: The Brazen Consuls' Chapter badge is a black skull with a white, four-pointed star on the forehead. |
Brazen Fists - Brazen Fists: The Brazen Fists is a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter of unknown Founding and origin. Almost nothing is known about this Chapter in Imperial records, except that it has participated in the First and Second Punisher Wars against the vile Punishers Chaos Space Marine warband. |
Brazen Fists - Notable Campaigns: First Punisher War (825.M41) - The infamous Chaos Space Marine warband known as the Punishers led a massive Chaos invasion of the Kargad System. The Dark Hunters Chapter participated in the defence of their homeworld of Phobian, but were woefully outnumbered by the Forces of Chaos. The Punishers landed a quarter of a million Chaos Cultists in the first wave upon Phobian, with mighty Emperor-class Battleships to provide support. Their numbers severely depleted, the Dark Hunters were forced to pull back and made their final stand at Mors Angnar, their fortress-monastery, cradled in the rugged peaks and glaciers of the Argahast Range known as the Silverspears. The Punishers eventually surrounded Mors Angnar and fought their way within. The Dark Hunters were forced to make their final stand within the Chapter's Reclusiam, their numbers reduced to only two hundred Battle-Brothers. As the Dark Hunters faced certain annihilation, they were saved by their fellow Adeptus Astartes brethren. It took the help of six other Chapters, including the Brazen Fists, Dark Sons, Doomsayers, Shadowhawks and two others unnamed, to finally extirpate the Punishers from the system. Though the Dark Hunters emerged victorious, it was a pyrrhic victory at best. Their numbers had been greatly reduced and many of their ancient vehicles and transports had been destroyed. But the Dark Hunters would persevere, and go on to rebuild their numbers, though it would take many standard centuries to replace the lost Battle-Brothers.Second Punisher War (982.M41) - Jonah Kerne, Captain of the Dark Hunters 3rd Company led his Space Marines to the world of Ras Hanem during the Second Punisher War against the warband of Chaos Space Marines known as the Punishers. Kerne was able to hold the Forces of Chaos at bay while being assisted by the local garrisons of the Imperial Guard and the Planetary Defence Forces. The Dark Hunters even went so far as to form a temporary alliance with the Eldar of the Kaelor Craftworld, helping those xenos find an ancient artefact precious to their race in exchange for their aid in defeating the Forces of Chaos. Despite the deceptions and cunning of the Eldar, Kerne stayed true to his word and gave the artefact to the Eldar Farseer, thus committing an act of heresy. The remaining Imperial and Eldar forces were able to hold the Punishers long enough for the remainder of the Dark Hunters Chapter to arrive with Astartes allies drawn from other Chapters, including the Brazen Fists. When the war on Ras Hanem had concluded in the Emperor's favour, Jonah was taken by his Chapter back to their homeworld of Phobian. There, he was taken into custody by the Inquisition to answer for his crime. |
Brazen Fists - Chapter Colours: The Brazen Fists' Chapter colours are not listed in current Imperial records. |
Brazen Fists - Chapter Badge: The Brazen Fists' Chapter badge is not listed in current Imperial records. |
Brazen Guard - Brazen Guard: The Brazen Guard were a warband of Chaos Space Marines of unknown origin or Founding. Little else is known about this particular warband in official Imperial records. Recently, they took part in the Cholercaust Blood Crusade in the 41st Millennium. |
Brazen Guard - Notable Campaigns: Cholercaust Blood Crusade (Unknown Date.M41) - The Brazen Guard joined the massive Khornate force known as the Cholercaust which followed the path of the Keeler Comet and brought war and ruin to the worlds in its path. The Cholercaust Blood Crusade was finally stopped by a small coalition of Imperial forces on the Cemetery World of Certus-Minor. The Brazen Guard and other Traitor Marines took to the field under the command of Chaos Lord Umbragg of the World Eaters and participated in the final attack on Obsequa City. The Cholercaust suffered a total defeat and all in its ranks were slain, including the Brazen Guard, by the mysterious Legion of the Damned. |
Brazen Guard - Chapter Colours: The Brazen Guard warband's colours are not currently recorded in Imperial records. |
Brazen Guard - Chapter Badge: The Brazen Guard warband's badge is not currently recorded in Imperial records. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Brazen Minotaurs: The Brazen Minotaurs is a Loyalist, Codex Astartes-compliant Space Marine Chapter of unknown Founding and origin. Its battle-brothers are dedicated to the protection of the Sargassion Reach and the Kandoor System.Hailing from the Jungle World of Tauron, the Brazen Minotaurs are renowned for their bluntness and direct approach to warfare: for them it is not enough to simply defeat the enemy, they have to eradicate him utterly in order to prevent further attacks.Like other Chapters, the Brazen Minotaurs are often used as a blunt instrument of force who eschew the more subtle means of warfare for hand-to-hand combat where its warriors can gain much renown. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Chapter History: Though little is known about the Brazen Minotaurs in Imperial records, it is fairly known that the Chapter has had close dealings with the Raven Guard on several occasions in recent Imperial history, and despite their obvious differences in mentality, both Chapters seem to have forged bonds of loyalties and mutual support.Despite their pride and distinguished service, in truth the Brazen Minotaurs are hard-pressed. The Chapter was still recovering from the great sacrifice it had made on Empalion II when the Sargassion Reach came under attack from both the well-known xenos threat of the Orks from WAAAGH! Grakka and sustained incursions of Nurgle-aligned Chaos Space Marine warbands such as the Empyrion's Blight. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Notable Campaigns: Battle for Empalion II (Unknown Date.M41) - When the Raven Guard laid siege to an Iron Warriors fortress on the world of Empalion II the task seemed hopeless, until a force of Brazen Minotaurs arrived to assist their cousins in their hour of need. The Brazen Minotaurs sacrificed an entire company to distract the Iron Warriors as a decoy, allowing the Raven Guard 4th Company to infiltrate the Iron Warriors fortress and destroy it from within.Karos Campaign (Unknown Date.M41) - When the Ork forces of Warlord Grakka invaded the Imperial Ice World of Karos, the Brazen Minotaurs' Chief Librarian Theseon accompanied the 3rd Company commanded by Captain Daed to aid it after the Astra Militarum regiment previously sent to Karos was easily defeated by the world's harsh climate and the Orks who were immune to it. Once on Karos, the company learned the tactical situation from Lieutenant Ariseth, the highest ranking officer of the Astra Militarum regiment still left alive. Daed used this information to come up with a plan to attack Grakka's base near several venting towers. The warlord did not know that the towers led to a series of abandoned bastions and that the destruction of one would cause a series of explosions that would destroy the entire base and the Orks along with it. Daed's plan called for the 3rd Company to deploy using Thunderhawks near the base and launch a direct attack on the venting tower that Grakka used as his command post. But the company was unlikely to be able to complete this plan because it was heavily outnumbered by Grakka's Orks. Theseon was deeply troubled by Daed's plan for the company, as he knew that Grakka and Daed had clashed once before on Praxis, a battle in which the warlord had left him severely wounded and the captain had nursed a deep grudge against the Ork ever since. The chief librarian worried that Daed was letting his hatred blind him to the likely defeat of the company if they followed his plan. Once Theseon sensed an Ork Weirdboy present in Grakka's forces, he realized that the assault was even more likely to meet opposition it could not overcome. When the company had met with Lieutenant Ariseth, the Guardsman told them of the trouble his regiment had encountered when attacking Grakka's forces. It had seemed like the Orks knew exactly what attacks the Imperials were planning, no doubt because of the psychic ablities of the Weirdboy. Theseon told Daed of the presence of the Weirdboy and his other concerns about Daed's judgment, but the captain was undeterred and simply stated they needed to launch their attack even sooner with the new information. Realising he could not dissuade Daed from the assault, Theson secretly told a small number of the company's Astartes of a new plan of attack he had devised, which was to be kept secret from Daed. When their Thunderhawks neared the Ork base, Theseon surprised Daed by giving the order for their Thunderhawk to attack the unguarded venting tower the chief librarian sensed contained the Weirdboy, instead of landing near the heavily defended tower that contained Grakka. Once the Thunderhawk's attack collapsed the tower, it began an explosive chain reaction that completely destroyed Grakka and the majority of his forces in the interconnected bastions. Afterwards, Daed angrily accused the chief librarian of disobeying his orders, though the captain relented when Theseon told him it had been necessary. Daed's intense anger had allowed the Weirdboy to easily read the captain's mind and had compromised the attack plan he had devised. Theseon told Daed that with the death of Grakka the psychological scars caused by Grakka could now heal and the captain agreed Theseon had done what was necessary. After the Brazen Minotaurs crushed the remaining Ork forces on Karos, Theseon told Daed of the embattled Sargassion Reach. The 3rd Company next moved to confront the Chaos Lord Gideous Krall and his Nurgle-worshipping warband of Heretic Astartes, Empyrion's Blight.Mission to Kasharat (Unknown Date.M41) - During the war for the Sargassion Reach the Brazen Minotaurs Chief Librarian Theseon was captured by the forces of the Empyrion's Blight Chaos Space Marine warband and brought to the corrupted Mortuary World of Kasharat to be broken. A small team of Brazen Minotaurs mounted a rescue mission but would likely have failed without the intervention and assistance of a squad of Raven Guard Astartes led by Shadow Captain Aremis Koryn who deployed to the surface of the Mortuary World in advance of the Brazen Minotaurs' rescue mission and cleared the way for them. Though both Chapters suffered casualties, the mission was ultimately successful and a debt between the two Loyalist Chapters was repaid.Battle for Fortane's World (Unknown Date.M41) - The Sargassion Reach was on the brink of destruction at the hands of the foul Nurglite Heretic Astartes warband known as Empyrion's Blight when the Fortress World of Fortane's World fell to the machinations of the Archenemy. Rather than having fallen to strength of arms the bastion fell to corruption from within. Even worse, the eccentric orbit of Fortane's World would bring it within a matter of days within the outer limits of the densely populated neighboring star system of Kandoor. Unwilling to allow the sickening plague of the Traitor Legions to infest another star system, the Brazen Minotaurs' 3rd and 5th Companies laid siege to the bastion of Fortane's World, determined to cleanse it of the Traitors before they could stage an invasion of the Kandoor System and doom billions to plague and death. With time running out and the siege protracted, the enemy was able to swamp the Brazen Minotaurs with endless hordes of corrupted Imperial Guardsmen, delaying them until the planet's orbit reached its zenith and entered its neighboring system. Determined to aid their fellow Chapter, a strike force from the Raven Guard's 4th Company led by Shadow Captain Aremis Koryn came to the Brazen Minotaurs' aid. Three squads made planetfall and though they suffered significant casualties, the Raven Guard was ultimately able to infiltrate the bastion and open it for bombardment from orbit, destroying a massive Chaos army and protecting the colonists of the Kandoor System. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Chapter Combat Doctrine: The Brazen Minotaurs are only concerned with the destruction of their foes in as quick and as clean a way as possible. They prefer to meet their enemies head-on, looking them in the eyes before taking their lives. The Chapter's strategies are not subtle. They do not need to understand their enemy since such knowledge is unnecessary in order to strike him down.The Chapter possesses an unwavering and unquestioning approach to battle as it storms its way to victory after victory in the name of the Emperor. The Brazen Minotaurs always act as a fist of iron driven into the very heart of the enemy. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Chapter Beliefs: Brazen Minotaurs believe in fighting on to the bitter end, until the very last of them have fallen, despite the fact that their cause might be futile or lost. They believe that such actions are the duty of a Space Marine and are required to maintain the honour of the Brazen Minotaurs.All Brazen Minotaurs desire only to bring swift death to the enemies of the Imperium, but they have a particular relish for defeating the forces of Chaos and those who have betrayed the Emperor's trust by turning to the service of the Ruinous Powers.Brazen Minotaurs believe in facing all obstacles with unflinching determination no matter the cost, and a death earned in honest combat with the foes of the Emperor is a death to be relished. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Notable Brazen Minotaurs: Captain Lumeous (KIA) - Former captain of the Brazen Minotaurs' 5th Company who died on Fortane's World while fighting a Chaos war-engine known as a Defiler.Captain Daed - Captain of the Brazen Minotaurs' 3rd Company. The shoulders of his shimmering golden power armour are draped by the pelt of one of the hulking black lions that roam the forests of Tauron, the Brazen Minotaurs' homeworld. Daed carries a Bolt Pistol and a Tauronic Power Axe, its head finely etched with Tauronic runes and artistic flourishes. He led his company in battle against the Empyrion's Blight warband of Heretic Astartes in the Sargassion Reach, allied with a company of Raven Guard Astartes commanded by Shadow Captain Aremis Koryn.Chief Librarian Theseon - Theseon is the Brazen Minotaurs' chief librarian. He served alongside Captain Daed and the 3rd Company during the Karos Campaign and later in the Brazen Minotaurs' defence of the Sargassion Reach from the Heretic Astartes of the Empyrion's Blight.Sergeant Bardos - Bardos is a Veteran Sergeant of the 3rd Company.Veteran Sergeant Bast - Bast is a Veteran Sergeant of the 3rd Company.Targos - Targos is a Devastator Marine of the 3rd Company. He carries a Heavy Bolter into battle.Throl - A Battle-Brother of the 3rd Company.Ancient Archeos - Ancient Archeos was a Venerable Dreadnought of ancient origin, older even than the Brazen Minotaurs' current Chapter Master, a living embodiment of their link to their glorious past. Equipped with a Power Fist and the somewhat unorthodox Heavy Flamer, Ancient Archeos died on Fortane's World, surrounded by enemy casualties he had inflicted.Techmarine Archeval Zaeus - Archeval Zaeus was a Techmarine of the Deathwatch, originally hailing from the Brazen Minotaurs Chapter. Zaeus was part of a Kill-team led by Captain Polino that was sent to a Desert World contested between the Imperium and the T'au Empire. The Kill-team found that the Kroot reinforcing the T'au soliders on the planet had developed traits indicating that they had undergone hybridisation with Tyranid genes; in an engagement with the hybrids, Polino was severely injured and Festaron was killed. Making their way back to their Thunderhawk to make a stand in a defenceable position, the Kill-team was surrounded and attacked by the hybrids. Zaeus' brethren entrenched themselves in the canyon sheltering the gunship while he investigated an Adeptus Astartes signal emanating from nearby with hopes of bringing reinforcements. During the fighting, Polino succumbed to a Sus-an Membrane coma, while Ar'gan and Vortan holed up inside the Thunderhawk. Although the outpost was no longer manned, Zaeus was able to return with a small army of servitors that cleared out the majority of the hybrids with missile strikes. The surviving members of the Kill-team were able to repair the Thunderhawk and escape to report to Inquisitor Vaskiel, expecting that her response would be to subject the planet to an Exterminatus. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Chapter Fleet: Pride of Tauron (Battle Barge) - Vessel attached to the 3rd Company under the command of Captain Daed. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Chapter Colours: The Brazen Minotaurs' power armour is bronze with white painted onto the inset of the shoulder plates. The Aquila or Imperialis on the chest is also bronze.The black squad specialty symbol -- battleline, close support, fire support, Veteran or command -- is indicated on the right shoulder plate.A white Low Gothic numeral centred on the squad specialty symbol indicates squad number.The colour of the left knee guard indicates company number in accordance with the Codex Astartes -- i.e. White (1st Company), Yellow (2nd Company), Red (3rd Company), etc. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Chapter Badge: The Brazen Minotaurs' Chapter badge is a black bull's head on a white background. |
Brazen Minotaurs - Canon Conflict: Some of the more recent sources indicate that the Chapter's badge is a blue bull's head on a white background rather than black.It is unclear if this is just a variant, a mistake or a true change in the standard Chapter badge colour. |
Brazen Skulls - Brazen Skulls: The Brazen Skulls was a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter of unknown Founding and genetic origin.Its only notable engagement was when it took part in the Sabbat Worlds Crusade against the forces of Chaos in support of the reincarnated Saint Sabbat.The Brazen Skulls were eventually wiped out as a Chapter in the Sabbat Worlds by 773.M41.Despite the extinction of the Chapter during that crusade, their name, colours and heraldry were reinstated during the Ultima Founding, and thus all of their number are now Primaris Space Marines.The Brazen Skulls are determined to live up to the honour of their lost forebears and have swiftly earned a reputation for heroism, tenacity and all-consuming hatred for the forces of Chaos. |
Brazen Skulls - Chapter Colours: The Brazen Skulls primarily wear blue power armour. The Aquila or Imperialis on the chest, as well as the helmet and shoulder plate trim, were bronze. The shoulder plates were black.The bronze squad tactical specialty symbol -- battleline, close support, fire support, Veteran or command -- was indicated on the right shoulder plate.A white High Gothic numeral centred on the squad specialty symbol indicated squad number.The colour of the left knee guard indicated company number in accordance with the Codex Astartes -- i.e. White (1st Company), Yellow (2nd Company), Red (3rd Company), etc. A white High Gothic numeral centred on the left knee guard also indicated company number. |
Brazen Skulls - Chapter Badge: The Brazen Skulls' Chapter badge was a large bronze skull centred on a field of sable. |
Breacher Charge - Breacher Charge: A Breacher Charge is a powerful electronic explosive charge, similar to a Melta Bomb, which is too bulky and cumbersome to easily throw like a grenade. Breacher Charges are primarily employed to destroy armoured emplacements and fortifications and to breach the hulls of enemy starships during void boarding actions.Breacher Charges pose some risk to their user at close range, but are extremely destructive in skilled hands. These powerful weapons were primarily employed by Legion Breacher Siege Squads during the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy eras during the late 30th and early 31st Millennia. |
Brian Craig - Brian Craig: Brian Craig is an author for Games Workshop's Black Library imprint. |
Brian Craig - Warhammer 40,000: Pawns of Chaos (2001, ISBN 1-84154-141-9) |
Bright Lance - Bright Lance: The Bright Lance is one of the most powerful heavy weapons in the arsenal of the Craftworld Aeldari and is an equivalent of the Imperial Lascannon in utility and power.It can be added as an optional weapon to Wraithlords, War Walkers, Falcons, Wave Serpents and Vypers. It operates in the same manner as a Lascannon, firing a concentrated blast of coherent light that is primarily intended to destroy enemy vehicles.The Bright Lance is a far more efficient weapon than its cruder, Human-made counterpart, in part due to its use of psychically-grown crystals to serve as a lasing matrix. It also possesses greater accuracy than a Lascannon and can penetrate any form of armour that is less than a certain thickness. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Brimlock Dragoons: The Brimlock Dragoons are the regiments of the Imperial Guard that hail from the Imperial world of Brimlock. Regiments drawn from this world are known to have a preference for operating as mechanised infantry, deploying in Armoured Fist squadrons. Multiple Brimlock Dragoons regiments fought in the Damocles Gulf Crusade, the first military conflict fought between the Imperium of Man and the rapidly expanding Tau Empire in the Lithesh Sector of the Ultima Segmentum in the galaxy's Eastern Fringes during the late 41st Millennium. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Regimental History: The Civilised World of Brimlock is a world defined by heavy industry and manufacturing located in the Ultima Segmentum. This world is at a late Industrial Revolution-era level of technology, with the rich living well and the millions of workers manning semi-automated production lines. Some of these workers are literally born and die there. The poorest of Brimlock's populace live in slums known as "rookeries." Some workers work on the outside of large dirigibles which float over the planet's hive cities. Brimlock is a planet that is particularly famous for producing ornate rifles and other high-quality military equipment.Brimlock is the administrative and military centre of its star system. The other planets in the Brimlock System are "tribute worlds" which fall under the control of Brimlock's Planetary Governor. The tribute worlds provide material and a tithe of men to fight in the Brimlock Auxilia. One of these planets was renamed Marguerite by the Brimlocks after they conquered it in honour of the patron Imperial Saint of Brimlock, St. Marguerite ("Blessed Marguerite" is a common oath on Brimlock, alongside "God-Emperor"). The inhabitants of Marguerite are commonly known as "margoes." Some within the Brimlock System consider this term purely descriptive, but most use it to be mildly derogatory. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Regimental Recruitment: As a highly populated planet, Brimlock is able to provide several million men to the Imperial Guard each standard year. These men are volunteers, driven by poverty or a sense of adventure, though Brimlock could choose to conscript men in times of crisis. These troops are organised into regiments normally between five and ten thousand men each. Due to Brimlock's high manufacturing capacity, all regiments begin as Armoured Fist units, fully equipped with Chimeras and other armoured transport vehicles. Over the course of a regiment's existence, these may be destroyed or break down, leaving the regiment to go into battle on foot as regular infantrymen. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Auxilia Troops: The Brimlock Auxilia are troops drawn from the tribute worlds and vary in terms of troop type and combat ability. The troops drawn from Marguerite are very similar to Ancient Terra's Ghurkhas. However, instead of carrying a kukri (a Nepalese knife with an inwardly curved edge, used as both a tool and as a weapon), they use a heavy chopping blade that curves inwards called a falcata (actually of pre-Romanii Iberian origin from Ancient Terra). Marguerite Auxilia are nicknamed "fell-cutters" after this blade and, in contrast to the low opinion that most Brimlockers have of margoes, the "fell-cutters" have a fearsome and savage reputation amongst the regular Brimlock regiments. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Horse Dragoons: Brimlock provides regiments of armour, artillery and sappers (nicknamed "beards" due to their tendency to have profuse facial hair). Brimlock also provides regiments of Rough Riders known as "Horse Dragoons" (but typically referred to as simply "Dragoons"). These specially mounted horse cavalry squadrons can fight as regular infantry but prefer to fight as cavalry troops. They are typically equipped with Autopistols and explosive lances. The Horse Dragoons wear gold and silver ceremonial armour and are nicknamed "tin bellies" by the regular infantry. Brimlock cavalrymen are typically highly religious and are devout followers of the doctrines of the Imperial Cult. They are also highly disciplined and consider themselves an elite unit. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Regiment Numbering: As is common to all Imperial Guard regiments, Brimlock regimental numbers are always recycled. When a new regiment is raised, it is given the number and the colours of a previous regiment that has been retired (or in most cases, annihilated). The regiment takes the colours with it on campaign until it finally loses so many men that the regiment is consolidated into another or dissolved entirely. When Brimlock regiments are consolidated, the lowest regimental number is retained and the higher number is retired. As lower numbers are also given out first to new regiments, low regiment numbers such as the Brimlock 1st are constantly used. At the point that a regiment is dissolved, the regiment's colours are returned to Brimlock in the company of a few of the most decorated officers and men of the regiment (known as a colour-guard).Once a regiment leaves Brimlock, only the members of the colour-guard ever come back. It is a high honour in a Brimlock regiment to be part of the colour-guard and competition to become part of this esteemed formation can be intense. Its men are feted or promoted after their return to their homeworld and either become the core of a new regiment or, if they are too old or injured, they become magisters (teachers) at the officer schola. Along with experience, military strategy and knowledge of different foes, the colour-guard also bring more mundane items with them. One of these is tanna, a Valhallan beverage which was brought back to Brimlock by a returning colour-guard. Tanna is now a popular drink on Brimlock and their regiments spread it to wherever in the galaxy they are assigned. Brimlock troopers also use tanna to stain helmets and uniforms as improvised camouflage. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Combat Doctrine: While the Brimlock regiments vary their strategy to the tactical demands of the campaign, they prefer to operate from fixed, defensible bases. A typical Brimlock campaign will begin with the landing of one or more Deployable Outpost Vehicle (DOV) from orbit at a suitable location. These vehicles will then be deployed into a standard pattern fort in about a day, providing the regiments deploying from orbit with a secure headquarters and base of operations. Once that is done, they will proceed to carry out the overall campaign objectives. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Notable Dragoon Regiments: Brimlock 4th Dragoons - The Brimlock 4th participated in the Damocles Gulf Crusade in 742.M41. They also participated during this campaign in the action known as Operation Hydra.Brimlock 8th Dragoons - The Brimlock 8th was assigned to the 4621st Imperial Army, XI Corps during the Taros Campaign, to reclaim the Imperial desert Mining World of Taros from the Tau Empire and its Kroot and human (Gue'vesa) allies of the Taros Planetary Defence Force in 998.M41. The XI Corps was to assemble after the X Corps had departed and act as a second wave for the invasion. The 8th Dragoons was selected because of the reegiment's experience in fighting the Tau in the Damocles Gulf. The 8th was wiped out when its transport convoy was attacked and destroyed by a Tau battlegroup led by the Lar'shi'vre-class Cruiser Io'Tar.Brimlock 17th Dragoons - The Brimlock 17th participated in the Damocles Gulf Crusade. Around 750.M41 on the world of Sy'l'Kell, an armoured column of the 17th was ambushed in transit to the front lines from their landing zone by a small force of three Kroot kindred of a mercenary Kroot Carnivore Squad. Scores of Imperial Guardsmen were killed in the opening moments of the ambush. The column was continuously harried by the kroot warriors until it finally linked up with a detachment of Space Marines from the Scythes of the Emperor Chapter. By this time they had lost 30 Dragoons, 2 scout vehicles and their Commissar was severely wounded. Augmented by additional Imperial forces, the Kroot withdrew, and the Scythes Astartes pursued them to enact their fiery wrath upon the perfidiousxenos. Unfortunately, they were led into a cunning trap, as the Kroot were now augmented by Tau armoured vehicels which proceeded to decimate the column. The Imperials -- mortal and Astartes alike -- died to a man.Brimlock 19th Dragoons - The Brimlock 19th participated in the Damocles Gulf Crusade. Following the conclusion of this campaign, they were left behind in Tau space after the Imperial Crusade forces withdrew to redeploy against the new threat posed by the Tyranid Hive Fleet Behemoth. According to Tau propaganda, the regiment had supposedly surrendered after all of their Commissars had been killed in combat (allegedly) and was allowed to settle a world under the control of the Tau. Private Jeakim Slovaz, listed as 'Missing In Action' during the Damocles Crusade, continued to broadcast this propaganda decades after the conflict and was eventually declared Excommunicate Traitoris by the Imperial High Command. |
Brimlock Dragoons - Trivia: The Brimlock Rough Riders known as the "Horse Dragoons" are based on the seventeenth century's English Civil War's New Model Army cavalry rather than the reckless and aristocratic British cavalry of the same name who fought in the Napoleonic and Crimean Wars of the nineteenth century. |
Bringers of Decay - Bringers of Decay: The Bringers of Decay are a special formation of Chaos Space Marines found within the Black Legion who are wholly dedicated to the service of the Chaos God Nurgle.The Plague God has a strong following within the Black Legion; his putrid touch is evident throughout the ranks of its warriors. Under the dominance of the Chosen of Abaddon lieutenant Skyrak Slaughterborn, the current Lord Corruptor of the Legion, the Nurglites have converted many to their cause.In battle, the Bringers of Decay are Abaddon the Despoiler's plague carriers and heralds of contagion, often appearing before other warbands of the Legion on the field to sow infection and sickness. This could also be why many other warbands of the Black Legion will have little to do with the Bringers of Decay, repelled by the blessings of the Plague God they bear, and the pervasive stench that follows them. |
Bringers of Decay - Sources: Black Legion: A Codex: Chaos Space Marines Supplement (6th Edition) (Digital Edition), pg. 65Codex Heretic Astartes - Chaos Space Marines (8th Edition), pg. 19Codex Heretic Astartes - Chaos Space Marines (8th Edition) (Revised Codex), pg. 19 |
Bringers of Enraptured Joy - Bringers of Enraptured Joy: The Bringers of Enraptured Joy are a nomadic Genestealer Cult. During the Era Indomitus, far-ranging patrols from the Deathwatch watch fortress Castilos Nullifact in the northern Segmentum Ultima found evidence of a mobile Genestealer Cult travelling between fringe worlds aboard a fleet of voidships and posing as Rogue Traders. They set off on the trail of these so-called Bringers of Enraptured Joy, and fought several battles against the monstrously corrupted settlements the xenos-worshippers had seeded in their wake. |
Bringers of Judgement - Bringers of Judgement: The Bringers of Judgement are a Loyalist Space Marine Chapter and a successor of the Dark Angels, created during an unknown Founding. |
Bringers of Judgement - Chapter History: The Bringers of Judgment are possessed of a fanatical zeal that gives the other Unforgiven Chapters pause. When they encounter rebellion, they deem the entire world guilty. In their view, weakness in even one citizen indicates weakness in the entire population, and the punishment for weakness is death.The many atrocities they have committed have drawn the ire of the Inquisition, though this has not dissuaded them from their genocidal course of conduct. |
Bringers of Judgement - Chapter Colours: The Bringers of Judgement primarily wear white power armour with gold as a secondary colour on their helms, shoulder pauldrons, vambraces and gauntlets. The Aquila or Imperialis worn on the chest guard is also gold.The Bringers of Judgment are known to decorate their greaves and sabatons with golden flame iconography, representing their fiery and zealous nature.The black squad tactical specialty symbol -- battleline, fire support, close support, Veteran or command -- is indicated on the right shoulder pauldron. A red coloured lozenge (diamond) is centred upon the squad specialty symbol while a white High Gothic numeral is prominently displayed upon it.The left shoulder pauldron displays the Chapter's iconography.It is unknown how the Bringers of Judgement indicate a battle-brother's company assignment. |
Bringers of Judgement - Chapter Badge: The Bringers of Judgement's Chapter badge consists of a black scale centred upon a field of gold. This symbol represents the Chapter's mission to balance the scales of justice and render their unforgiving retribution upon those whom stray from the light of the Emperor. |
Broken, The - Broken, The: The Broken was a warband of Chaos Space Marines that was once the Viridian Consuls Chapter, a Second Founding Successor Chapter of the Ultramarines.They were corrupted by Chaos after entering the Eye of Terror in 321.M37 as part of the Imperial Abyssal Crusade. It is unknown what horrors they endured during their sojourn in the Eye, but by the time they made their way back into realspace, they had become the warband of Heretic Astartes known as The Broken.The Broken were encountered by the Ultramarines Chapter in the late 41st Millennium as they investigated the space hulk designated Fury that broke from the Warp close to the Agri-World of Iax.As the Ultramarines ventured deeper into the space hulk, they were horrified to learn that their foes were once a Loyalist Chapter derived from their own parent Legion.The Broken are believed to have been eradicated by the Ultramarines and their allies amongst the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Inquisition during this campaign. |
Broken, The - The Abyssal Crusade: Following the Ecclesiarchal Purges of 321.M37, a dozen star systems were engulfed by Warp Storm Dionys, its echoes rippling along the spiral arms of the galaxy as it raged through the Empyrean. Records of mutation and Chaos Cultist activity quadrupled virtually overnight. Worse yet, it was not only the citizens who were affected by the sudden influx of Chaos.Many of the Space Marine Chapters with homeworlds affected by the Warp Storm found that the secret imperfections in their gene-seed were writ large upon their new recruits, giving rise to a wave of disturbing manifestations both physical and psychological. The Viridian Consuls were one such Loyalist Chapter of Astartes that was affected by this Warp Storm.When the Ecclesiarchy heard of this sinister turn of events, Saint Basillius the Elder demanded that all those Chapters of the Adeptus Astartes whose homeworlds had been touched by the Warp Storm be rendered unto his judgement. Such was the Living Saint's influence with the High Lords of Terra and the Inquisition that within a standard year this had come to pass. After a series of stringent tests and prognostications, hundreds of Chapters were deemed unaffected by the Warp Storm but no less than thirty were found wanting.The Judged, as these fallen Chapters came to be known, volunteered for a redemptive Penitent Crusade. The most militant of their number demanded the right to purify their tainted flesh in the fires of battle, to make a noble end from tragic misfortune. To the surprise of his closest advisors, Saint Basillius agreed to this proposal. He saw it fitting to send the accused into the Eye of Terror, taking the fight for the Imperium's future to the Daemon Worlds inhabited by the Traitor Marines.Representatives from each of the doomed Chapters held an emergency Council of Dismay to discuss the proposed crusade. After scant solar hours of debate, they acquiesced to Basillius' demands, for they believed that martyrdom was preferable to an existence of suspicion and doubt. The last few days of 321.M37 saw a solemn procession of strike cruisers and battle barges pass through the Cadian Gate into the Eye of Terror, relay systems dormant and heraldic colours obscured by black mag-plates.One by one, the Chapters of The Judged disappeared into the iridescent dust nebulae that surrounded the Eye. As the Space Marine flotilla entered the Eye of Terror, they were set upon by a massive Chaos warfleet. The resultant battle was so fierce that the warships of The Judged were forced to retreat and were scattered to the furthest corners of the Eye.After many Terran centuries within the Eye fighting the Forces of Chaos, the Viridian Consuls began to lose all hope and felt that they had been forgotten by the Imperium they served. By that time they had encountered and taken possession of a large space hulk designated Fury. Some of their number, including their own Chapter Master Phrynon, lost faith in the cause of the Emperor and turned to the veneration of the Dark Gods.The rage they felt at their banishment paved the way for the worship of Khorne whilst their despair attracted the baleful attentions of Nurgle. Embracing the teachings of Chaos, Chapter Master Phrynon began to corrupt his own troops, trying to break the Astartes' faith in the Imperium by torturing them through diverse means.For his efforts Phrynon was granted ascension to daemonhood and became a Daemon Prince. He shed his mortal name to become "The Witness," a title taken in mockery of the Imperial justice that had condemned the Viridian Consuls to this fate. Having been broken both in mind and body before succumbing to the corrupting influence of Chaos, the remaining Astartes who became a part of the new warband took the name of "The Broken." |
Broken, The - Fury Comes to Iax: Four thousand standard years after The Broken took command of the Fury, the space hulk was detected by the augur array of one of the many void stations guarding the Agri-world of Iax in the far distant Realm of Ultramar. A patrol ship was sent to investigate the matter, but failed to return, as it was caught in the gravity-well of the enormous space hulk, which over the centuries had grown to become the size of a small moon.As per procedure, Iax's void-control alerted the nearest Ultramarines vessel, the strike cruiser Rex Aeterna. While monitoring the situation, Iax's security officers received a garbled vox transmission: a single, short phrase in archaic High Gothic, repeated over and over as if it was whispered by the darkness itself, "Insanista in tenebris."Commanded by Captain Caius Galenus of the Ultramarines' 5th Company -- also known as the "Black Company" for their distinctive black pauldron trim -- the Rex Aeterna was promptly rerouted to the Iax System. After identifying the space hulk for what it was, the only recently promoted Captain Galenus deemed it prudent to relay the information to Macragge, for he had correctly anticipated that both the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Imperial Inquisition would take a keen interest in the space hulk.The former because it might house some invaluable archeotech, the latter because its Warp-taint might well endanger the spiritual and physical integrity of the worlds the Fury would pass while in realspace.Lacking any true experience in inter-adepta politics, Galenus preferred to defer the matter to his Chapter Master, Marneus Calgar. In the meantime, the Rex Aeterna would investigate the crash-site of the surveillance vessel on the slim chance that one of the crew might yet be alive. This meant landing on the surface of the space hulk itself.In order to acquire more data on the nature of the threat the hulk presented, Captain Galenus authorised the deployment of a single squad of Space Marines to investigate the crash-site and the nature of the space hulk itself. Terminator Sergeant Caius Starn, formerly of the 5th Company before being promoted to the 1st, volunteered his squad for that mission.While the initial reconnaissance quickly determined that there were no survivors, the Veterans of 1st Company -- which was still recuperating from the blow dealt to it by the Tyranids of Hive Fleet Behemoth -- found progress difficult and slow.The surface of the Fury was a mangled landscape of voidship wrecks and asteroids, the low gravity powerful enough to trap metallic dust and smaller debris in clouds of micro-particles that disrupted both Auspex-scans and communications. Despite the precautions they took, the Rex Aeterna soon lost contact with the four-man Terminator Squad as they ventured deeper into the space hulk.In the meantime, on Macragge, Calgar had received Galenus' message. The nature of the event was such that he had immediately ordered news of Galenus' discovery to be relayed to both the Forge World of Gantz and the Inquisitorial Fortress on Talasa Prime.Both the Mechanicus and the Inquisition had soon after dispatched their own envoys to push their respective agendas. Calgar knew the first envoy, Magos Explorator Fane, from his previous dealings with the Mechanicus. But the second, an Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus who introduced himself as Lazarus Drake, was unknown to him.Given the sheer size of the Fury, Calgar had ordered the Ultramarines' 7th Company out of reserve and Captain Ixion was already transferring his men and their equipment to the mighty battle barge Octavius, the most powerful vessel in the Ultramarines' fleet. Together, the Chapter Master and Captain Ixion would lead the 7th alongside Drake's Inquisitorial warband and Magos Fane's Skitarii to the Iax System. Chief Librarian Varro Tigurius, the Chapter's second-in-command, also accompanied the expedition, as his knowledge of Imperial history and his precognitive abilities would prove invaluable.By the time the Octavius reached the Fury, Sergeant Starn's mission to the hulk had yielded some rewards. The Terminators had successfully penetrated the space hulk, finding a deep chasm which -- with the proper equipment -- might be a point of ingress into the space hulk's core. On one of the corridor's walls, they had also discovered a withered inscription identifying this part of the wreck as a former Imperial vessel, the Centurius Sol.Unfortunately, while venturing deeper into the heart of Fury, Sergeant Starn was lost when a portion of the ancient deck collapsed under the weight of his Terminator Armour. Captain Galenus had then deployed a second team to the Fury’s surface led by Techmarine Salvator to reestablish contact with the lost squad by erecting a communication beacon.Through Inquisitor Drake's contacts, the Ultramarines were able to quickly determine that the Centurius Sol had been allotted to Battlefleet Obscurus at Cypra Mundi before being lost in the early 41st Millennium. This confirmed their worst fears -- that the Fury had emerged from the Eye of Terror. |
Broken, The - Mystery Deepens: As both Inquisitor Drake and Magos Fane argued over the expedition's fate, Sergeant Starn, once feared lost, found his way back the Fury's surface. In the palm of his Power Fist he held a curious object he had discovered deep in the bowels of the space hulk -- a Mark V Heresy Pattern Power Armour helmet of the Adeptus Astartes.The helmet was truly ancient, its original livery long erased by the passage of time, but its discovery could mean only one thing: that Space Marines had been -- and maybe still were -- on the Fury. Yet again Inquisitor Drake's techno-savants proved invaluable, as the helmet's production stamp and number allowed them to trace the helmet back to its original owner.With no means to determine if these mysterious Astartes were the remnants of some faithful Chapter's lost detachment, or the harbinger of something far more sinister, Marneus Calgar formally took command of the mission. His first orders were for the full mobilisation of the 5th and 7th Companies and the awakening of their Dreadnoughts. The Astartes cyborgs' brute strength would be sorely needed to clear the Fury's surface and establish a forward base of operations on the space hulk.Led by Sergeant Starn, an expedition composed of the Ultramarines, the servants of the Mechanicus and the Inquisition would venture deeper into the labyrinthine corridors of the space hulk and pierce its mystery.Marneus Calgar decreed that he would lead 5th Company's men and their Captain whilst Captain Ixion and his 7th Company would remain on the surface of the hulk and secure the base. Tigurius would stay on the Octavius and command the fleet while using its powers to forewarn them if the Fury was about to disappear into the Warp again.As the Imperials cleared the upper levels of the hulk and made their way deeper into the Fury, installing vox-relays every few Terran miles within the massive vessel's interior to maintain communication with their fleet, Marneus Calgar could not shake a sense of grim foreboding. Darkness was surrounding them, the space hulk's metallic dust clouds and radiation levels playing havoc with their Auspexes and even the targeting systems of the Space Marines' Power Armour.Cut off from quick reinforcements, navigating the dark corridors only by sight, and relying on their built-in illuminators to shed light on the path ahead, left the party extremely vulnerable. Both Inquisitor Drake and Calgar understood that the further they travelled within the hulk, the harder it would be to withdraw. They feared that an enemy might be monitoring their progress and would strike once they had been lured deep enough that easy retreat was no longer possible.At the same time, the further the Imperial party ventured into the vessel, the more signs of deliberate alterations of the hulk became apparent. The interior of the space hulk was clearly inhabited, and even the oxygen levels in the interior's atmosphere approached breathable levels. The Imperials were clearly not alone.As they ventured deeper into the hulk, Magos Fane requested that he be allowed to lead a detachment of his Mechanicus personnel to investigate a chamber from which his superior Augurs had detected the power output of several systems that were still operational inside the hulk. With the Chapter Master's permission, Fane left the main body of the Imperial column.While his adepts began to work on several cogitators still drawing power, an urgent transmission for Inquisitor Drake was relayed by the Octavius. Consultation of the Inquisitorial archives had yielded its reward.Drake's archivists had informed him that the mysterious Space Marine helmet Starn had found within the space hulk was nearly three Terran millennia old and belonged to the Viridian Consuls Chapter. That Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes had been declared lost in the Warp in the wake of the infamous Abyssal Crusade. As a gesture of trust between them, Drake shared this information with Calgar, who promptly asked Tigurius to gather further intelligence on the matter.Magos Fane then presented the results of his own inquiry. Fane and his Adepts had recovered a digital map that laid out the system of tunnels that comprised the upper levels of the Fury. These tunnels were extensive and had been carved out through the bulk of the massive voidship over the course of several Terran centuries. Magos Fane intended to study the rest of the data and the neighboring compartments of the hulk, but Calgar refused.He ordered the Magos to copy the map and rejoin the main Imperial column, denying him additional time in the Cogitator chamber. Frustrated by this decision to short-circuit his exploration, yet unwilling to openly disobey the Chapter Master, Fane programmed his best Artisan, Alt-seven, to return to the chamber and investigate the rest of the data and especially the hidden chamber they had discovered behind the Cogitator stations when an opportune occasion arose. |
Broken, The - The Fury Awakens: The lookouts of the Ultramarines stationed on the surface of the space hulk unexpectedly reported movement outside the base perimeter. Two-man teams of Scouts from the 10th Company equipped with Sniper Rifles had taken up overwatch positions and were surveying the surroundings. Brothers Malthus and Huthor were the first to spot the attackers.First in the dozens, then in the hundreds and finally in their thousands, the smaller figures rushed the Scouts' position, forcing them to retreat. The attackers were visibly coordinated for as they gave ground, the two Scouts found themselves outflanked. The enemy rushed on, looking to engage in close combat.The two Scouts quickly identified the enemy as Adeptus Mechanicus Murder Servitors. Reaching for his Bolt Pistol, Brother Malthus felled many of the deadly cyborgs with headshots, while Brother Huthor's Combat Shotgun prevented them from closing. But once the Murder Servitors were upon them, Brother Malthus was injured by a vicious stab, the blade visibly coated in some kind of poison powerful enough to overcome the improved healing factor of their Astartes physiology.Only the timely intervention of a Tactical Squad from the 7th Company prevented the two Scouts' death. Other teams of Scouts reported hostiles closing in on the Ultramarines' base from all directions.Captain Ixion mounted a tenacious defence, disciplined volleys of bolter-fire mowing the mindless Servitors down like wheat in a field, but still the cyborgs launched themselves at the base defences. Even the heavy weapons of the Devastator Marines of the 9th Company proved powerless to stop the enemy tide from eventually reaching the Ultramarines' lines.Captain Ixion of the 7th Company had little choice but to call in air support from the Ultramarines' complement of Thunderhawk gunships. Overwatch Flight, a trio of Thunderhawks, launched from the Ultramarines fleet above the space hulk, and flew over the enemy's ranks.The flight was tasked with identifying and eliminating the enemy positions. After a first strafing run with Hellstrike Missiles, the three Thunderhawks readied for their second pass when one of their number was hit by fire from Heavy Arc Rifles carried by enemy Kataphron Battle Servitors and lost.Forced to disengage, the two remaining Thunderhawks returned to the Rex Aeterna for rearmament, promising to return in greater numbers. Meanwhile, the Ultramarines found themselves pitted against what they now assumed to be the creations of the Dark Mechanicus. Nine battle-brothers were severely wounded by the potent neurotoxins coating the servitor's blades, two of them succumbing to it before Apothecary Rannick could stabilise their condition.The remaining seven wounded were quickly transferred to the Octavius’ Apothecarion by Thunderhawk extraction. It was only with the battle well underway that Librarian Belisar of the 7th Company revealed to Captain Ixion that the enemy they faced were not servants of Chaos, but forces of the Martian Mechanicus, tremendously old, but untainted by the corruption of the Dark Gods.Elsewhere, Senior Artisan Alt-seven and his small party continued to explore the Fury. His orders were to gather enough data and return to Magos Fane before his absence was noticed by the rest of the Imperials exploring the space hulk. In the course of his wanderings, Alt-seven detected a code signature that had been active for two thousand Terran years. He ordered two of his accompanying Skitarii to investigate the chamber from which the program had originated.Elsewhere, Alt-seven continued to analyze the traces of an ancient battle within the hulk that he had discovered. Letting his auto-senses range over the area, he detected signs of Warp-damage, as though some gigantic force had taken the very fabric of the space hulk and shaken and twisted everything slightly out of frame. But there was more.As the Tech-priest looked closer, he saw that some of the damage was explosive in nature; hull plates that were torn and blackened as well as buckled, and here and there a line of shell holes in the plasteel -- large impacts that had to be the work of Bolter fire. Interspersed with these traces were other relics of past conflict; including the long, searing furrows of Arc Rifle blasts.There had clearly been a battle fought on the Fury long ago, a combat between his own Adeptus Mechanicus and the Adeptus Astartes. Alt-seven knew Magos Fane needed to be informed of what he had learned. But while the mission lasted he had been ordered to maintain Vox silence. It would have to wait. Impatience seized him as he realised there had been no word from the two Skitarii; they had been swallowed up by the darkness ahead.Suddenly, Alt-seven felt as if his brain had been filled with insects. Staggering at the sudden onset of the mental assault, he entered the next chamber and found the two Skitarii standing motionless without reacting to his presence. They stood before a vast, looming spire of wire-wrapped mechanica. The vid-screens on the pillar snapped into momentary life and displayed a haze of static.Reams of cable ran serpentine all around a floor from which billowed up a slowly boiling fog of vapour. The great pillar, composed of interwoven components of all kinds and drawn from many different eras, rose before them like some unquiet blinking icon, fifty Terran feet tall, a machine tree with limbs of cable and wire and plasteel supporting struts that rose up to grasp at the tall ceiling overhead.Alt-seven called up his internal vox in an attempt to contact Magos Fane, but the techno-tree that stood before him took control of his augmetic components. Alt-seven's cybernetic hardware became useless as his mind was invaded by foreign code. The Mechadendrites attached to his body and those of the Enginseers who had accompanied him fell limp with metallic clangs.Alt-seven's mind became a whirring blaze of uploading data, his head shaking on his shoulders as it flooded him. His warding incantations and protective protocols were swept aside like so much chaff, and a massive, blinding, enveloping stream of data coursed through him, realigning all his thought processes, rerouting programs, rewriting the sacred base code that made him who he was. It was over in only nanoseconds.The Mechanicus agents accepted the commands of their new master, who had finally shown them the true meaning of perfection. Elsewhere within the hulk, Marneus Calgar reviewed the reports of contact with an unknown enemy while most of his Ultramarines were still fighting the apparently Renegade forces of the Adeptus Mechanicus.The Chapter Master inquired of Magos Fane if he knew anything about these Dark Mechanicus forces that they had encountered. Fane objected that he and his techsorcist had detected no malign code that would indicate that the Heretek forces of the Dark Mechanicus were present on Fury.Faced with the Chapter Master's ire, Magos Fane revealed his duplicity and told Calgar and Inquisitor Drake all about the secret mission he had tasked Alt-Seven with and that whilst he had detected some traces suggesting an Adeptus Mechanicus presence aboard the Fury, he had no means of predicting their reaction. As Alt-Seven had not yet submitted his report, Magos Fane regretted he could not shed any light on that matter.Inquisitor Drake accused Fane of withholding vital data, but their quarrel ended abruptly when Chief Librarian Tigurius contacted Calgar. Tigurius informed his Chapter Master that power readings inside the Fury were rising quickly, the energy signature consistent with Imperial Geller Field technology. The Fury was obviously preparing to make a Warp jump!Located roughly 6 Terran miles inside the space hulk, Calgar, Inquisitor Drake, Magos Fane, Captain Galenus, the 5th Company and the remaining Inquisitorial and Mechanicus forces had no hope whatsoever of escaping the Fury in time. But those Ultramarines on the surface were not so trapped.With a heavy heart and yet without hesitation, Calgar ordered Captain Ixion to evacuate the space hulk. Tigurius was left in command of the mission whilst command of the Chapter would be passed on to Captain Severus Agemman, the commander of the Ultramarines' elite 1st Company.Not knowing if they would survive entering the Warp or be able to return, Calgar bid is old friend to stand by Agemman's side and advise him as well as he had Calgar. Calgar opened a last Vox-channel to Brother Honorus, the former Captain of 5th Company, now interred within a powerful Castraferrum Pattern Dreadnought.Too bulky to follow them down the deep chasm and narrow corridors of the hulk's interior, Brother Honorus had been standing guard over the expedition's exit route. Calgar ordered him to make all haste to the surface and evacuate as well, an order the Dreadnought tried to fulfill, but he arrived too late.At the same time Tigurius detected the rise in energy from the space hulk, the Mechanicus phalanxes broke off their attack. Unexpectedly freed, Captain Ixion and 7th Company quickly embarked upon the arriving Thunderhawks. They would have to leave most of their ammunition and materiel on the Fury, but that prospect pained the seasoned Captain less than the feeling of abandoning his brothers and his Chapter Master.With the Octavius' augurs carefully monitoring the space hulk's rising energy levels, Captain Ixion reluctantly departed on the last Thunderhawk to fly out. With barely sixty solar seconds to spare, the Octavius and her accompanying vessels reached minimum safe distance. With the last words of Tigurius to his trapped brethren -- "Courage and honour" -- still ringing in their ears, the Ultramarines trapped on the Fury braced themselves for Warp-translation before the space hulk disappeared from the Iax System in the blink of an eye, its destination unknown. |
Broken, The - The Lost Cathedral: With something approaching relief, the members of the Imperial expedition remained alive and unharmed following the space hulk's translation into the Immaterium. The hulk's Geller Field was obviously strong enough to keep the denizens of the Warp at bay, for no Daemon manifested itself, ready to tear them apart. The translation itself had been mercifully quick, though it had changed the mission's parameters.With the space hulk clearly controlled by an unknown and hostile faction, the Ultramarines needed to seize whatever served as a control centre for the hulk and guide the Fury back to Imperial space. This meant venturing even deeper into the hulk's interior. Even as he gave his orders, Marneus Calgar could not shake the feeling that his forces were being herded somewhere, like animals to the slaughter, even though 5th Company had yet to meet the unseen enemy.The further the Imperials advanced, the more Calgar's experienced eyes could discern the tell-tale signs of conflict. Some walls were pock-marked with small holes, clearly the impact and detonation craters of Bolter weapons. In some instances the party even found spent bolt-casings littering the ground. Had the Viridian Consuls and the Adeptus Mechanicus fought each other? And if the answer was "yes", why?Another concern was that the Imperial column stretched out though the hulk's depths for the better part of nearly two Terran miles. This left it clearly vulnerable to attack. Marneus Calgar consulted his downloaded map to find any area within the hulk large enough to present decent lines of fire should the worst unfold.The map indicated that if the Imperials ventured further along the corridors they were bound to emerge in a great hall of some kind, a suitable location to rest and reevaluate their present condition. Calgar decided to grant the Terminators who had been taking point for the Imperial party some rest and ordered Captain Galenus to designate one of his squads to carry out reconnaissance of the chamber ahead.What the scouting party discovered took them by surprise, for whilst the temperature had been steadily rising before, the newly-discovered chamber was ice-cold. Some micro-climatic quirk had even produced a steady fall of snow. At the heart of the chamber, the reconnaissance squad found a structure, obviously man-made, although it lay partially in ruin. Thick columns and walls of carved stone were still standing, an unbroken Gothic arch allowing entrance to the great edifice.With no enemy found within, the squad gave the all-clear before venturing deeper into the chamber. Their next discovery was more unsettling. Some four hundred Terran yards from the structure, there were eight human bodies, all standing locked in ice. They were the size of Space Marines and still wearing their power armour.Beneath the ice, the Chapter badge could still be seen: an Ultima icon like the one worn by the Ultramarines, bisected by a sword and flanked by two wings of flame, on a green background -- the heraldry of the Viridian Consuls Chapter.Faced with these new revelations, Marneus Calgar, Inquisitor Drake, Magos Fane and their respective retinues quickly gathered at the building's entrance. Magos Fane's scans indicated that the rock used to erect the strange building within the chamber had not been mined in the Ultima Segmentum, as its molecular composition was similar to the rock found at four quarries within the Segmentum Obscurus.The closest match was an old mine in the Dartaris System, not far from the Cadian Gate. He added that while the rock itself was several billion years old it must have been mined only at some point in the previous five millennia.The building had obviously been desecrated, even though the remnants of an Imperial Aquila were discernible on the arch's front. The keen eyes of Chaplain Murtorius were the first to note that the form of the Aquila was not the standard Imperial icon, but the Imperialis symbol beloved of the Adeptus Astartes, an Aquila centred on a skull, though the skull had been blasted to nothing.In the rubble gathered at the base of the great arch, Chaplain Murtorius further discovered the remains of Imperial statues: an angelic wing and a bolter-fragment whose votive scroll read Imperator Fidelis. Not a phrase a Heretic would tolerate on his ship.Understanding started to dawn upon Calgar and his officers. The structures within the large chamber were the ruins of the Viridian Consuls' place of worship, the heart of their Chapter cult, a true Imperial cathedral taken with them during their Penitent Crusade into the Eye of Terror.The hall they were standing in must have once been the cargo hold of one of their battle barges. The eight dead Space Marines supported this theory, but there was no indication of what had killed them. Nor was there any evidence of who had desecrated their sacred space. |
Broken, The - Fate of the Viridian Consuls: Almost on cue, the scout party reported contact with a lone Space Marine -- visibly injured -- approaching their position near the eight dead Viridian Consuls. His pauldrons were dirty but one displayed the emblem of a sword. Believing they had located a survivor, the Ultramarines did not open fire at once but let him draw closer. It was only when the unknown Astartes had halved the distance between them that it became obvious he had been corrupted by Chaos.His entrails spilled openly from a deep wound in his abdomen, a dark red smear on the dirty green of his Power Armour. The arm he was clutching, mimicking a wound, was no arm at all, but a slimy tentacle, coated in some kind of transparent fluid which proved to be acid. Worst of all was his face, the lower part of his Mark V Heresy Pattern helmet replaced by insectoid mandibles.Upon seeing this abomination the Ultramarines opened fire, cutting the Heretic Astartes down. A roar of rage answered from the darkness and soon the scouting party faced heavy return fire.After requesting support from their brethren, the Tactical Squad of 5th Company moved to hold their position. They accounted well for themselves until Marneus Calgar personally led a demi-Company to their aid.With the Chapter Master's arrival, the remaining corrupted Chaos Space Marines retreated back into the dark, giving the Ultramarines the time needed to analyze their foe -- their first unwitting contact with The Broken. The signs of corruption were obvious and written large on their former brethren's bodies, the curse of mutation running rife among them.The original heraldry of the Viridian Consuls had been subtly altered, the Ultramarines' own sigil having been inverted to form an Omega, an ancient Terran symbol for the end of all things. Some of the corpses also displayed the mutational "gifts" of the Plague God Nurgle, having been transformed into the feared Plague Marines.Others wore the blood-encrusted crimson armour of the Khornate Berserkers usually encountered amongst the World Eaters Legion and other servants of the Blood God. To see Heretic Astartes dedicated to two separate Chaos Gods fighting side-by-side outside of large campaigns such as the Black Crusades was extremely rare -- and disturbing. |
Broken, The - Into the Heart of Darkness: In the wake of this encounter, Marneus Calgar realised that the oppressive atmosphere of the space hulk was beginning to affect him. He and his warriors were on edge, their words often harsher than intended, as if the darkness surrounding them was slowly creeping in, nurturing the embers of hate and sharpening the pangs of desperation.Perhaps the Viridian Consuls been brought low in this same way, affected by the Warp-tainted essence of the hulk. The intensive training and psychological programming of Calgar's Space Marines and Inquisitor Drake's retinue kept the whispers of darkness at bay, whilst Magos Fane's soldiers and Adepts were too far from human to be affected. But if the fate of the Viridian Consuls was a lesson, it would not take long for one of their number to fall prey to it.While Inquisitor Drake and the Lord of Ultramar were planning the expedition's next move, Magos Fane had other preoccupations. His trusted right-hand, Alt Seven, had returned. Though Calgar noticed that the little party was one Skitarii short, he did not press the matter when Alt Seven explained that the cyborg had fallen through the deck plating.Secretly contacting his superior by means only open to the Adepts of the Machine God, Alt Seven informed Magos Fane that he had established contact with the Adeptus Mechanicus faction present on the Fury.Magos Fane was thus the first to learn the true identity of the Fury, its purpose, its long history and its importance to the far-off lords of Mars. Although motivated by their own agenda, the goals of the Mechanicus and the Ultramarines were aligned: to seize control of the Fury’s main reactor and steer it back into the Imperium. Yet now Magos Fane had become a spy for the Renegade members of the Adeptus Mechancius living on the space hulk.Whilst the wounded Space Marines were treated by Apothecary Philo of 5th Company, Calgar and Drake discussed their options. With the Ultramarines trapped between two enemy forces and in hostile territory, establishing a base at what they were already referring to as the "Lost Cathedral" made little sense. Although the location was easily defensible, it was also too far from their true objective.The only alternative was to press on, venturing deeper into the heart of the space hulk. Calgar conceded the point to Drake that his retinue were far better employed as scouts than his own troops. The Chapter Master allowed the Inquisitor and his Acolytes to lead the way, taking point for the Imperial column. As the Inquisition forces departed, the Ultramarines burned their dead and held a commemorative service under the guidance of Chaplain Murtorius.As the Inquisitor and his small retinue of Astra Militarum and Adeptus Arbites veterans ventured further into the darkness, they moved forward with caution, for each chamber of the titanic space hulk seemed to possess its own ecosystem. After leaving behind the Lost Cathedral, the temperature began to steadily rise as did radiation levels.In some parts of the labyrinth network of corridors and halls, an unaugmented man would have been irradiated to death in only a matter of solar minutes. Calgar's Space Marines could easily ignore this threat with their transhuman physiologies, but Inquisitor Drake's Acolytes could not. Several times, the insistent pings of the Imperials' Auspex indicating lethal ambient radiation levels would force them to double-back and seek an alternative route.The small party was attacked twice by the creatures that dwelt in the dark bowels of the Fury, great slug-like beasts of slime and filth whose bodies were coated in the same highly concentrated acid as the tentacles of the fallen Viridian Consuls. Bolters proved next to useless against the beasts, so the Inquisitor's retinue had to rely on their Frag Grenades and their sole Flamer to defeat the hungry abominations.Each of these encounters led to the death of more Acolytes, but Drake would not relent. The Inquisitor maintained regular communication with the Ultramarines Chapter Master over the Vox as the Mechanicus Tech-priests continued to establish communications relays through the hulk's depths to guarantee a modicum of coordination between the Imperial forces.With the inquisitorial retinue roaming ahead, the main column was advancing slowly. Distrusting the Mechanicus-faction within their ranks, Marneus Calgar covertly ordered Captain Galenus to watch over them. Although the short Vox-exchange was held on an encrypted channel, the looming presence of Space Marines in cobalt-blue Power Armour at the end of the column was an obvious reminder of who truly commanded this expedition.Perhaps surprisingly after his former rebuke, Magos Explorator Fane proved far more conciliatory than anticipated. When his adepts detected a new power-surge in the Fury's sytems, the Magos immediately approached the Chapter Master to warn him of this unexpected development: the space hulk's Geller Field-generators and engines were powering up to full power, the tell-tale sign of an imminent realspace-translation.As the Fury emerged from the Warp, the Imperial expedition bent all their resources to finding out where the space hulk's erratic course had taken them. Consulting with Brother Ulfius, the Librarian attached to 5th Company, Calgar wanted to know if his psychic talents could tell them more about their location.Despite his best efforts, Brother Ulfius was unsuccessful, the reality so permeated with the taint of the Warp that his psychic screening was inconclusive. Drawing upon his considerable experience, Magos Fane knew of only two locations where this was the case. Given the time spent in the Warp, only one of them could be considered. His expertise was categorical. The Fury had taken them within the Eye of Terror. |
Broken, The - Enemy of my Enemy: Far above, a second column of humanoid figures arrived on the surface of the Fury and began to follow the Ultramarines' trail into the space hulk's interior. They were the same foe which had forced the Ultramarines' 7th Company to swiftly retreat from the space hulk's surface.The columns of Renegade Mechanicus troops followed the path Calgar's expedition had taken into the hulk. Quite unexpectedly, they were met by the heavily armoured form of Brother Honorus. Too slow to reach the extraction point, the Dreadnought had reverted to his last standing order, determined to defend his brothers' only egress point at all cost.Lying in wait at one of the corridors' many turns, Brother Honorus rushed into close-combat, his armoured sarcophagus and frame impervious to the Skitarii's melee weapons and the short-range fire of their Galvanic Rifles. Brother Honorus used every choke point to his advantage, and retreated down the corridor, unleashing maximum havoc on the Mechanicus troops. To further delay the enemy advance, the Dreadnought collapsed the entire corridor upon his foes, buying his brothers as much time as he could.Ultimately, Brother Honorus realised his second life was forfeit. As the Renegade Adeptus Mechanicus brought up Kastelan-class Robots to clear the debris and deal with him, Brother Honorus knew his time had come. Although the valiant former captain of the 5th Company acquitted himself well, ultimately he was pressed back to the chasm leading into the Fury’s inner levels and fell to his long-delayed death.Blissfully ignorant of the events unfolding several kilometres above him, Marneus Calgar kept his thoughts to himself. While the column came under attack several times by local fauna, the vigilance of Captain Galenus and his Astartes made sure that they never posed a serious threat to the Imperial forces. Yet, invariably, these attacks slowed their advance and were accompanied by casualties.At the same time, the Chapter Master pondered the words broadcast by the hulk at the very beginning of the mission, Insanista in tenebris. Insanista was generally translated from High Gothic as "insanity", a meaning that seemed more than accurate given the maddening variety of micro-ecosystems and baleful creatures the Fury harboured -- former Viridian Consuls included.And yet, Calgar pondered the words more than he should have. As they ventured deeper into the space hulk, his humours became increasingly unbalanced, he could see it in his own actions and that of his men. Anger was quick to blossom and clouded his ordinarily focused mind for longer than it should, as the hulk's Warp-taint was clearly beginning to affect him. With a sudden realisation, Calgar knew he had to consider the message in its original context of the 36th Millennium when the Viridian Consuls had first been lost in the Warp.Four thousand Terran years before, "insanista" had carried an alternate meaning, that of the blind fury that swallowed the warrior in the fit of battle. Perhaps the taint lurking at the heart of the Fury was the touch of the Blood God.If so, this meant that whatever the Ultramarines and their allies would encounter at the heart of the space hulk would fight tooth and nail to oppose them. The pragmatic Calgar decided he needed to reevaluate his mission parameters, for their venture might just have become a suicide mission.The scout-party under Inquisitor Drake soon reached the heart of the hulk, metal giving way to red stone at the junction between the asteroid initially colonised by the Adeptus Mechanicus and the space hulk that had formed around it. At the end of the corridor, a sculpted arch of red stone opened into the dark. The arch itself was festooned with a multitude of skulls, thousand of them forming the pillars of the archway into darkness.Drake saw that a great many species had "contributed" to this macabre edifice, the long, elongated skulls of the Eldar and the brutishly thick heads of Orks lying next to predominantly human and T'au skulls. Here and there, the tell-tale augmented skulls of a Space Marine or a Heretic Astartes could be found. All of the skulls bore the baleful rune of Khorne upon them, confirming Calgar's worst suspicions.The true horror awaited on the other side of the archway. As they moved through the unguarded entry, the Inquisitor and his remaining Imperial veterans were greeted by a breathtaking sight. Before them stood a gargantuan cavern, a hall so big that it defied comprehension, a hollow world more than a mere interior. By the Inquisitor's estimations and readings the ceiling must have been a Terran mile and a half up, with the total length of the cavern perhaps three miles in length.What from a distance had looked like darkness was in fact filled with light as a shallow lake full of bioluminescent algae stretched before their feet. The lake was riddled with pieces of broken machinery and masonry, collapsed walls and crosses welded from broken girders and stanchions. On each and every one of them, a Space Marine had been crucified.Drake counted scores, even hundred of crosses while the men of his retinue -- all battle-hardened veterans who had seen the ugliest things the galaxy had to offer -- made the sign of the Aquila or averted their gaze. But Inquisitor Lazarus Drake was made of sterner stuff. All the crucified Space Marines were still dressed in portions of ancient marks of Power Armour, its original color long obscured by spilled vitae and other bodily fluids and moss. Big bolts of crude metal affixed each corpse to its cross by each limb.In some cases the Space Marines had been disemboweled, their innards spilling from their abdomen, either dead or deep in their Sus-an coma, others had been visibly dismembered and then put back together, a grim mockery of their former form now rotting away beneath the gaze of their brothers.All of the crucified Astartes were unhelmed. On the closest faces Drake could still see the horror in their eyes, the captives screaming in silence, their tongues plucked from their mouths and their vocal cords likely severed. Inquisitor Drake had discovered the fate of the remaining Viridian Consuls.From the middle of this grim forest of the impaled an island rose from the lake, its shores broken like that of an island battered by the elements on some Ocean World. Unable to ascertain if the island was made of dark stone or metal, the Inquisitor's gaze was drawn to the mighty keep rising from its highest reaches. The fortress' walls rose up like sheer metallic cliffs, their outer layers now stained with filth.At their top, medieval battlements had been hacked from the metal, the work crude but obviously functional. Towers rose from these battlements, some of which bore the aspect of the serrated prows of Imperial starships, while others seemed to have been built out of Imperial shipping containers, the big metallic boxes used as the fortress' bricks.From the battlements banners of crimson and green rippled in a hot wind. Each was made of skin, their poles of human bone. The symbols they carried were varied. The most common was the skull-rune of Khorne and the three wounds of Nurgle as well as the same sigil borne by the Astartes slain at the "Lost Cathedral," an Omega bisected by a sword and flanked by wings. The rune of the Blood God adorned the keep's gate, a hundred feet high, dabbed in blood and surrounded by skulls.More skulls littered the floor, much like the currents of a mighty ocean would have deposited fields of sea-shells at the bottom of a beach. Drake's psychic senses detected the great malevolence that radiated from the keep. Here, then, was their true enemy. Here the Broken had built their fortress, watching over the corruption and torture of their former brethren.Where Drake's group had been small enough not to attract much attention, the main Imperial column did not fare as well. Time and again, the Ultramarines were attacked by the denizens of the Fury, grotesquely mutated Chaos Spawns or packs of almost feral Broken Heretic Astartes attacking the column in waves.Soon, every Space Marine of the expedition sported some wound or damage to their armour. The noble cobalt-blue of the Chapter was stained with blood and pus from their kills, or burned by the acidic touch of the mindless beasts attacking them. Nevertheless, every battle-brother reverently cleaned his left pauldron -- the one bearing the sigil of Ultramar.Only brute force kept the column advancing, Marneus Calgar and his two Honour Guard and Starn's Terminators fighting at its head. Even before reaching the hulk's main chamber where the true battle would be fought, the Ultramarines were running low on ammunition. Ever a pragmatist, their Chapter Master ordered his battle-brothers to rearm their Bolters with bolts taken from the slain Renegades. Purified by a short prayer from Chaplain Mortorius, 5th Company and its attached elements continued their advance against the odds.As the column neared Inquisitor Drake's coordinates, Brother Ulfius came before Marneus Calgar, and warned him that he had psychically sensed a presence approaching the rear of their column. Auspex readings confirmed that a large force was closing on the Imperials. Fearing an ambush, Marneus Calgar made for the rear of the column and ordered Captain Galenus and his Command Squad to take point. When Calgar reached his destination, he found Brother Ulfius and Magos Fane already waiting for him. 5th Company's 2nd Squad under Sergeant Gaden dutifully covered the rear with their Bolters. But the enemy was nowhere to be seen.Magos Fabe initiated a private exchange with the Chapter Master and confessed that since Alt-Seven's return, he had been in contact with the other Mechanicus elements present on the hulk. The Ultramarines had falsely assumed them to be members of the Dark Mechanicus, but in truth this faction was composed of Martian Renegades, a sub-cult of the Adeptus Mechanicus that had developed in isolation for several thousand Terran years.Although its tenets were a far cry from Martian orthodoxy, these Mechanicus forces were undeniably loyal to Mars and the Omnissiah and free of the taint of Chaos. Their leader, Magos Dominus Hagnon-Cro, wished to conduct a formal parley between himself and the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines. Although reluctant, Calgar agreed to the meeeting. But before leaving the column alone he ordered Sergeant Gaden to kill Magos Fane at the slightest hint of treachery. |
Broken, The - Conclave: The figure that awaited Calgar was that of a heavily augmented human. His lower limbs had been replaced by four arthropod-like legs, very much like those of a spider. These made the Magos Dominus taller than the Chapter Master had expected. Mechadendrites and other additional limbs had been added to its upper torso, some of them hidden by a ragged robe of Martian red, the sacred color of the priesthood of the Omnissiah. While the Magos hid its weapons so as not to provoke Calgar, the Chapter Master's heightened senses easily perceived them, recognizing the bulky form of an Arc Pistol and the characteristic hum of a Plasma Weapon.Whoever this Hagnon-Cro was, he had come garbed for war and was better armed than most of his Mechanicus counterparts. More important, one of his many limbs held a staff of office bearing the pure, unaltered form of the Cog Mechanicum. Sensing no corruption in him, Calgar stayed his hand and let the cyborg Tech-priest talk.Hagnon-Cro greeted the Chapter Master with the detachment so typical of the senior Magi of the Martian priesthood. Within the first solar minute of the parley, Magos Dominus confessed that he had been forced to kill Brother Honorus, a loss Hagnon-Cro professed to deeply regret, as he regretted ordering the attack on the positions of 7th Company. It took all of Calgar's self-control not to activate the Gauntlets of Ultramar and bash the Magos' skull in.Believing his continued survival after this admission was permission to continue, Hagnon-Cro explained how he and his followers had originally been sent into the Eye of Terror to capture a living planet and bend it to the will of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Marneus Calgar easily saw through his lies. While Magnon-Cro and his people were members of the Dark Mechanicus, they were indeed Renegades, seeking to regain control of the artefact they had created. For millennia they had toiled upon its soil, the currents of the Warp and the planet's gravity slowly turning it into the Fury, a maneuverable space hulk.In the wake of the Abyssal Crusade, the corrupted remnants of the Viridian Consuls had attacked them, conquering the interior of the space hulk, forcing the Magos' followers to move to the outer layers. Both the Martian Renegades and the Broken lacked the strength to completely annihilate each other and claim the Fury as a whole.The unexpected arrival of the Ultramarines had threatened this balance of power. Believing the scions of Guilliman to also be corrupted Space Marines, the Renegade Mechanicus forces had attacked before recognising their error. Hagnon-Cro now intended to convince Marneus Calgar to join forces with his Renegades and defeat the Broken once and for all.The Chapter Master easily discerned the falsehood in the magos' words. Whilst Hagnon-Cro's reaction to the Ultramarines' arrival might have been an honest mistake, Marneus Calgar did not believe for one solar second that the Magos Dominus' true intention was to defeat the Broken and destroy the Fury as he claimed. The untimely arrival of the Ultramarines merely had upset the fragile balance of power that existed on the space hulk -- both factions were too weak to simply annihilate one another and claim the Fury as their own.As much as he abhorred it, the discussion with the Magos Dominus was wielding its fair share of mission-sensitive information. While the Broken posed a threat, they were not numerous enough to eradicate the Dominus' own forces, which gave Calgar an estimate of their true numbers. Second, the Magos Dominus was able to confirm that the Renegades they had encountered thus far were indeed remnants of the Viridian Consuls and that they were still led by their former Chapter Master who had been elevated to the rank of Daemon Prince by his dark patrons.Most importantly, Marneus Calgar had learned the true intentions of this Daemon Prince, "The Witness" -- to lure the Ultramarines into the heart of the Fury, defeat Calgar and present him as a dark offering to his baleful gods. The Ultramarines were marching into a trap.Despite his misgivings, Calgar knew he had little choice in the matter. The grim mathematics of war predicted the Ultramarines' defeat. Even if he agreed to the Magos' proposal of joining forces, the chances of victory were slim at best. Since the days of their Primarch, the Ultramarines' motto had always been "Courage and Honor", as the Chapter was convinced that those two qualities were sufficient to overcome any foe. Now, Marneus Calgar was about to betray that credo. Praying to Roboute Guilliman for forgiveness, Calgar entered into a devil's bargain with the Renegade Tech-priest.The Chapter Master's decision to ally with those who had previously been their enemies did not sit well with the officers of the 5th Company. Chaplain Morturius was especially vocal about his distaste, but Marneus Calgar did not break his word once given.As a gesture of good faith, the Ultramarines let the Magos Dominus' forces lead the way. For almost a solar hour, several hundred Weapon Servitors, Skitarii, Sagitarii, Kataphron Battle Servitors and Kastelan Robots filed before the Imperial column, the Ultramarines not breaking up their firing positions as their "allies" passed by.In truth, Marneus Calgar did not trust Magos Dominus Hagnon-Cro. Having atrophied over the millennia, the tactical acumen of Hagnon-Cro was a far cry from that of the Lord of Ultramar. The Renegade Magos wanted to assail the central keep frontally, an undoubtedly costly venture.However, thanks to Inquisitor Drake's forward position, the Ultramarines already had eyes on their target, an advantage the Magos Dominus lacked. Still undetected, Drake's team had discovered a secondary entrance away from the Blood Keep's primary gate. This was a possible ingress into the keep for a small party.Marneus Calgar chose not to share this information with any Mechanicus-representatives, as even Magos Explorator Fane's Tech-priests had visibly passed under the authority of Hagnon-Cro. The Ultramarines agreed to spring the trap and to turn it against their opponents. While 5th Company under Captain Galenus supported Hagnon-Cro's frontal attack, Marneus Calgar would lead a small team in a decapitation strike against The Witness.As the keep no doubt harboured all the essential systems required to control the Fury, Inquisitor Drake's infiltrators would follow in Calgar's wake and try to destroy the space hulk before Hagnon-Cro could seize control of it. While this surely meant death, none of the Ultramarines flinched at the prospect. |
Broken, The - Assault on the Blood Keep: Four maniples of Kastelan Battle-automata to the front, the Renegade Mechanicus forces entered the central chamber -- locally referred to as "The Skull Chamber" -- and fanned out. Arrayed against them, the hordes of Chaos brayed their anger.They were mostly Chaos Cultists, the cannon-fodder of the Dark Gods' armies, but at their head their champions, the Renegade Space Marines of the Broken, held the foe at bay. Still hidden, Inquisitor Drake's small party observed as both sides faced each other.The Ultramarines emerged as well, lead by Marneus Calgar and the towering form of Sergeant Starn's Terminators. The hard march through the Fury’s interior had cost the Astartes dearly and only sixty Space Marines remained ready for the fight. The Ultramarines deployed on the advance's left flank, adopting a checkerboard formation, Tactical Squads at the front and Devastator Squads at the rear.At the sight of the crucified Viridian Consuls, shouts of anger and cries of outrage erupted from the Ultramarines' line. Anger filled Calgar's twin hearts, a wrath of the kind he didn't knew he could still feel. "Taste the anger. Savour it. Feel the thrill of rage..." whispered a voice in his head, but the Chapter Master quickly silenced it with his iron will.He called out to his brothers to stand fast and ignore the dark whispers filling their heads. Calgar's piercing eyes easily located the postern gate Inquisitor Drake had first detected and the Chapter Master personally briefed Captain Galenus on his part in the battle to come.As soon as the battlelines were drawn, the Chaos horde surged forward. As they ran at their enemies, the Khornate worshipers brayed their obscene slogans and their hate of their enemy. The Renegade Mechanicus line held their position, discharging their weapons at the approaching mass of warriors. Fully half of the Chaos force disappeared in the actinic blue-white glow of electric discharge, but the remainder continued to advance.Without sparing their crucified former brothers a single glance, the Renegade Space Marines of the Broken urged their followers on and returned fire with their desecrated Bolters. Sporadic Bolter fire claimed the lives of a few Skitarii, but ultimately made little dent in the Mechanicus' line.Where the Magos Dominus' forces stood their ground, the Ultramarines chose to advance. Staying true to their initial battle plan, the Ultramarines adopted an echelon formation and redeployed on the Renegade Mechanicus' left flank. The Devastators of the 9th Company unleashed a volley from their heavy weapons. Seconds later, the Tactical Squads of 5th Company -- led by their captain -- clashed with the enemy.After a brief hand-to-hand combat where the Ultramarines proved their undeniable superiority over their merely mortal opponents, the first wave of the enemy's advance was broken. They had not even made it to within a hundred Terran yards of the Mechanicus-line. But the second wave was already in-bound, and this one was far more numerous and better organised.The second wave's mortal warriors wore defiled suits of military-issued Carapace Armour and carried more long-range weapons than the first. These troops still possessed the remnants of their Astra Militarum training, as they were disciplined enough to advance in sections. As each section moved forward, the others laid down coordinated suppressive fire.Where the first wave of attackers had been composed entirely of normal humans, this one included slathering Chaos Spawn, other mutant beasts, and even daemons. Rushing ahead of their support troops, a trio of Bloodletters mounted on fire-breathing Juggernauts advanced with murderous intent. At three hundred yards from the Ultramarines' and Mechanicus' position, the human soldiers halted and allowed the Daemons and mutants to rush the enemy lines and absorb most of the Mechanicus' fire.With savage glee, the trio of Bloodletters entered the fray, cleaving wildly with their Hellblades. Each of their swings felled several Skitarii. One of the Bloodletters was engaged by a towering Kastelan, the robot seeming to hold its own against the minion of the Blood God. With the Mechanicus' line disrupted, the Khornate Renegades unleashed their own charge.The success of their charge had taken the Khornates by surprise, leaving the Ultramarines unengaged. While the enemy was shifting its line to compensate, Magos Dominus Hagnon-Cro urgently contacted Marneus Calgar, bidding him to engage the enemy unless his own forces were overwhelmed. Seeing an opportunity to put his plan into action, Calgar passed battlefield control to Captain Galenus.With the Terminators still in reserve and his own Honour Guard at his side, Calgar slipped away while the 5th Company drew the enemy's attention. Activating the interconnection of their targeting reticules -- so that no two Space Marines would pick the same target -- Captain Galenus deployed his warriors in echelon-formation, maximising their field of fire.Since the days of Guilliman, discipline and organisational skills had been the hallmarks of the XIIIth Legion. Now, this discipline was used to bleed the enemy. Short, controlled bursts of bolter-fire hammered into the Khornate line, mowing down Traitor Guard troopers like wheat before the scythe. Every shot taken resulted in a kill. Not a single bolt was wasted. Wherever an enemy officer was spotted, coordinated heavy weapons' fire from the Devastators annihilated their Command Squad or cracked open the Power Armour of Aspiring Champions.With pin-point accuracy, a missile from a portable Missile Launcher unseated a Bloodletter, the minor Daemon vanishing in a great explosion. To conserve their ammunition, the Ultramarines favored single shots or three-round bursts, and even with this restraint, after the first two volleys they had turned the enemy line into a mire of steaming blood and ripped-off body parts.Despite the losses they had inflicted upon the enemy, the foot-soldiers of the Broken still outnumbered the Ultramarines at least ten to one. The slaughter on their right flank also diminished the pressure directed against the Renegade Mechanicus. From his position in the rear of the Ultramarines' formation, Marneus Calgar saw Hagnon-Cro himself wading into the fight, smashing the skull of a Bloodletter with his energised staff of office. Only four Kastelan-class Robots still stood tall, but their efforts were enough to hold the line.As the enemy's numbers dwindled, the Mechanicus' line reorganised itself. Having slaughtered all who faced them, the Ultramarines were free to take stock of the ammunition they had expended and count their wounded. First Sergeant Greynius went from squad to squad, compiling a report for his captain. None of the Ultramarines had fallen and only a few nursed minor wounds. Just as the fighting was ebbing down, the great gates of the Blood Keep opened again and a second army, even vaster than the first one stepped onto the battlefield. |
Broken, The - Confrontation: With wild abandon, packs of slavering Flesh Hounds of Khorne galloped across the Skull Chamber and threw themselves at the Ultramarines. Even though dozens were felled by the Ultramarines' overwatch fire, scores more made it to the Ultramarines' line, their powerful fangs able to carve even through ceramite.For the first time since battle had been joined, the Terminators were called upon to intervene, charging into the melee that had engulfed the foremost squads. Storm Bolters roared their own fury into the face of the hunting beasts. With great swings of their Power Fists, the Terminators helped their beleaguered brothers out.The Terminators' timely intervention helped to turn the tide, their intimidating presence stalling the enemy's advance and allowing the beleaguered Tactical Squads to withdraw. The Flesh Hounds were all dead, but they had taken a toll. Apothecary Philo was forced to bend over three slain brethren, retrieving their gene-seed with his Narthecium, ignoring the shots that whined past and clipped his armour.The lull in the battle only granted the Ultramarines a moment's respite. More of the Broken emerged from their fortress, directing the lesser warriors toward their Loyalist counterparts. One squad of Chaos Space Marine Havocs established a firing base and soon let loose with their Heavy Bolters while the bulk of the enemy's force advanced, waving their blasphemous banners and icons while hurling insults at their foe.Calgar understood that no conventional victory could be achieved, for the Broken were only toying with them. Still undetected, Inquisitor Drake and his small retinue were eager to join the fight, but Calgar ordered them to stand down. Calgar meant to upset the enemies' calculations here, on the field of battle, before they moved towards the fortress' postern gate. Put simply, the Chapter Master intended to kill more of the Chaos scum than "The Witness" intended to lose.As Brother Sergeant Starn's Terminators fell to serve as a reserve once more, Marneus Calgar watched with approval as Captain Galenus detached four brethren of 9th Company with Melta Guns and Missile Launchers to reinforce the Imperials' harried left. He had known scenes like this since he was a boy, centuries of carnage which his cold intellect dissected and analysed. He was able to identify the weak spots that were going to arise in the next few solar minutes of battle, and he was already planning for what moves needed to be moved after them.The Chapter Master issued his own stream of orders, as squads peeled off by fireteam from right to left, shifting the line sideways to block the enemy's path and goad the Broken to attack them rather than the diminished line of the Renegade Mechanicus. Standing tall atop mounds of dead, Hagnon-Cro's Battle-Automata and Skitarii were still in the fight, but the Magos Dominus had lost a third of his troops.Unless the Ultramarines focused the enemy's attention on themselves, the Mechanicus forces would soon be outflanked, as there was only a slim line of skirmishers left on the Mechanicus' right flank.Calgar was about to call up the Magos Dominus on the Vox when a strange sight stopped him. From the entrance to the great Skull Chamber at the rear of the Renegade Mechanicus forces, a new body of figures was marching out: columns of fresh Skitarii in scarlet cloaks, fast moving Sagitarii, yet more Kataphron Battle-Servitors and another maniple of Kastelan Robots.Hagnon-Cro was letting his front line bleed so that he could launch a surprise attack with his fast-arriving reserves. It was as well done as Calgar had ever seen, and he made a swift mental reappraisal of the Magos Dominus tactical abilities. The creature was able, cunning and ruthless. He would prove a worthy foe, if it came down to a last struggle between them.Quickly modifying his initial plan, Calgar contacted the leader of the Renegade Mechanicus forces and bid him to redirect his reinforcement. With the Ulramarines' movement to the left and away from the Blood Keep, they had created a gap between themselves and the Mechanicus lines.The enemy had stretched himself thinly as well, goaded into attacking Captain Galenus and his men. Using the Ultramarines own exposed flank as bait, the Magos Dominus could deliver a punishing counterattack. In this way, the Broken's second army could be thrown back.While difficult, 5th Company and Captain Galenus performed this delicate manoeuvre superbly. Confident that their fellow warriors would keep the Mechanicus forces occupied, the second Chaos army took the bait. But in the left rear of the Renegade Mechanicus line the reserve was building up, maniple by maniple. Calgar noted it with approval. There was one thing about Mechanicus troops; they could be counted upon to stand and fight, and die where they stood.The Ultramarines allowed the enemy to close, their lines reforming as they readied themselves to receive the enemy's charge before the Adeptus Mechanicus' countercharge hit home. While the Ultramarines chewed them up from the front, fast-striding Kastelan Robots and rumbling Kataphron Battle-Servitors sped ahead of the main Mechanicus forces and hurtled into the exposed flank of the enemy formations.The Chaos regiments tried to swing round to meet them, but that only confused their ranks more, and soon their battle-line devolved into a brawling, packed mass that the troops of Hagnon-Cro sliced into.The enemy advance was thrown into utter confusion, and into that confusion, 5th Company poured a torrent of fire, their line now well beyond the foremost enemy ranks. A terrible slaughter ensued, and the battlefield, which had begun to seem fluid, snarled up once more. Calgar watched it happen, saw how the Chaos forces were now irretrievably embroiled in a bitter close-quarters fight on both the centre and right of their formations. Knowing his moment had come, the Chapter Master gave the order to fall back.Both Chaos armies were now engaged against the troops of the Renegade Mechanicus while Calgar's own brothers were free of that murderous embrace. It was now or never. Calgar contacted Inquisitor Drake, ordering his Acolytes to make for the postern gate. The Chapter Master's own strike force would join them there, Brother Starn's Terminators rumbling into motion, moving as quickly as their cumbersome armour allowed.Leaving command of the remaining Ultramarines to Captain Galenus, Calgar ordered him to screen their movement and keep the enemy from following. Calgar then joined the six Space Marines making their way for the Blood Keep's postern gate. The final confrontation with the leader of The Broken drew near.Undetected by both Calgar's hand-picked veterans and Inquisitor Drake's small party, a third group rose from their hiding place. The small knot of figures wore robes that might once have been scarlet, but were now ragged and faded by hard service. They moved with the singular ease of those whose legs were not made of flesh and blood, following discreetly in the Ultramarines' wake. |
Broken, The - Inside the Blood Keep: For the Ultramarines Chapter Master, it was hard to walk away from a fight, as hard a thing as Marneus Calgar had ever known. Drake and his five surviving retainers soon joined the Ultramarines, barely able to keep the punishing pace at which the Astartes moved.Were it not for the presence of the lumbering Terminators, the Chapter Master and his two Honour Guards would easily have outpaced them. As their internal Plasma Reactors spiked into the red from the exertion, Brother Starn's Terminators stayed at the rear of the small company.As they approached the Blood Keep, Calgar had the party stop. With a strain in his voice that even the Inquisitor had no difficulty in making out, the Lord of Ultramar asked Drake to use his psychic abilities to scry the way ahead. Despite the veil of rage and despair that infested Fury like a disease and the tumult caused by the many deaths in the battle for the Skull Chamber, Drake's psychic inquiry discerned a baleful power in the mighty fortress.Waves of hatred radiated from it which Inquisitor Drake felt as any other man would feel the sun's heat on his face. Though by no means deserted, the massive citadel did not teem with life-signs as did the battlefield beyond. Calgar's plan had worked: most of the enemy forces had indeed been drawn out into the larger battle, but the resolve emanating from the minds still inside the Blood Keep gave away their true nature. They were Heretic Astartes of the Broken.Though he had been subtle enough to avoid detection, the dark presence inside the citadel felt Drake's psychic probes. Its counter-lunge sent a spike of pain into the Inquisitor's mind. Such was the pain that Drake had to stop for a moment and collect himself, for seldom had he touched such a powerful mind before.With the enemy likely alerted as to their presence, Drake informed Calgar that while the walls were almost unguarded, most of their enemies on the inside had gathered in a central location, around a single, directing presence, a psyche of immense power.Calgar acknowledged the fact without further comment. Events were unfolding as he had anticipated. In the end, it would be the outcome of his duel with The Witness that would decide the fate of the Ultramarines aboard the Fury. Cold resolve guided his steps forwards, for the Chapter Master had long ago made his peace with the Emperor. If he was to die today, so be it.They splashed through the shallow, sucking expanse of the grim fortress' moat, the water rising no higher than the Astartes' knees, though it reached well over Drake's thighs. Even through his sealed armour, the touch of the stuff felt unclean and the Inquisitor felt a shudder of disgust crawl up his back.They carefully approached the moisture-covered and slimy exterior walls of the Blood Keep. The walls were an eclectic mix of stone, steel and ferrocrete, all festooned with green moss which seemed to writhe in unsettling patterns, giving the battlements a crawling aspect.Drake thought he saw bloodshot eyes there, embedded in the very walls, and pink-grey tendrils uncurled to grasp feebly at the humid air. More rose up under his feet, and he crushed them beneath his boots as he splashed along in the wake of Marneus Calgar. When Kastiro, one of his own Acolytes stumbled, those foul tentacles sought to latch onto him, entangling his hands and his weapon.Seeing the danger, Brother Antonus, one of the Terminators, swiftly but delicately picked up Drake's struggling retainer and ripped him free of the earth's foul clutch, his servo-augmented strength easily lifting the fully equipped man. Even without any defenders, the Blood Keep sought to actively kill them.As they reached the postern gate, the Imperial party saw that it was in fact far larger than they had anticipated. It was around twenty-five Terran feet high and half as broad, welded steel reinforced with bands of adamantium, all caked with filth and fecund growth like running sores. Runes were engraved across it, as was the eight-pointed Star of Chaos and the antler-like rune of Khorne.The Chapter Master eyed the gate before him, saying nothing, his party assembled behind him. Without warning, he charged forward and slammed the Gauntlets of Ultramar into the huge door with two vast hollow booms. The entire structure quivered, and they were all deluged in falling muck and fragments of broken masonry that tumbled from above.The Gauntlets of Ultramar shook and shimmered as Calgar slammed them again and again into the gate, lightning bolting out of them in a corona of flaring discharges. The disruptor fields that encased the gauntlets made the metal of the gate melt and run, molten rivulets pouring bright and steaming down to the ground, the structure groaning and shrieking in a howl of overstressed alloys and rending steel.The massive gauntlets struck the tall gateway again and again, until it buckled under the relentless blows. Within a few solar minutes, the gate lay in sundered, steaming ruins, the hot metal spitting and creaking as it cooled in broken pieces on the wet ground.All pretense of stealth abandoned in the wake of their break-in, the small party finally entered the Blood Keep. Across the vast courtyard they had entered, they could see the keep's defenders mustering for a counterattack. A shimmering volley of Lasgun-fire zipped through the party, one shot fizzing off Calgar’s ornate shoulder-plate, leaving a smoking dot of black carbon behind.Guided by Drake, the Ultramarines dashed forward, angling their progress towards the towering spire that emerged from the middle of the keep's other towers. There was real fighting then, as several squads of Chaos troops began to converge on the interlopers. The Ultramarines stood back to back and let loose, superbly placed volleys of Storm Bolter fire keeping the enemy at bay. The roadways and streets of the Blood Keep, so empty a few solar minutes before, were filling rapidly.Scores, even hundreds of enemies came streaming out of the shadows, not only cultists, but tall Chaos Champions of the Broken as well. Some of the latter screamed challenges that were barely rational speech, their power armour decorated with the skull-rune of Khorne as well as their own defiled badge.Most of the Champions were brought down by well-aimed shots, but even shattered by gunfire, they kept trying to crawl into contact with the Ultramarines. One had his helm blown off to reveal the pale, noble features of a Space Marine, hardly different from that of the scions of Guilliman, before being decapitated by a sweep of Brother Morent's Power Axe.Calgar's group reached the base of the tall blade-shaped tower, and there they found huge, double hatchways yawning open, and beyond, a wide staircase going up into darkness, fashioned out of immense blocks of unmortared stone. Drake noticed that the spire was once the prow of a Strike Cruiser, now half-buried by other debris.Without his Chapter Master having to order him to do so, Brother-Sergeant Starn and his Terminators peeled off from their group and took position at the base of the staircase: they would keep the enemies in the courtyard from following and could be trusted to fight to their dying breath. Only the Chapter Master, his two bodyguards and the five men in Inquisitor Drake's retinue began the ascension of the staircase, their common enemy already awaiting them.Outside the fortress, the main battle raged on. True to his word, Captain Galenus commanded 5th Company and the Devastators of 9th Company with great efficiency. His main concern was ammunition expenditure. He possessed only four remaining magazines for his Bolt Pistol, a total of eighty rounds, after which he would have to depend upon his chainsword. Though casualties were mounting, almost half of 5th Company, forty-six Ultramarines, were still standing.Unfortunately the Ultramarines had been forced to abandon the bodies of eight of their brethren on the field, their precious gene-seed lost to the Chapter unless they could claim victory. With fresh regiments of enemies trying to hem the Imperials in, Galenus had no choice but to detach 3rd Squad to serve as a rear guard, effectively buying time to reform his company with the lives of his brothers. Yard by bloody yard, the Ultramarines withdrew, keeping the enemy at a distance where their firepower could inflict maximum damage.The Ultramarines intentionally distanced themselves from their allies, seeking to close on the postern gate of the Blood Keep through which Marneus Calgar had penetrated the Broken's fortress. Galenus was sure that Calgar would need him before it was all over, and he did not intend to let the Lord of Macragge down. |
Broken, The - The Reckoning: A sense of urgency filled the Chapter Master of the Ultramarines as he ascended the massive staircase with even strides, his Honour Guard on either side. Inquisitor Drake and his men struggled to keep up with the pace set by the three Space Marines' enhanced physiologies. Far below, the sound of the fighting echoed up the tunnel-like space, as Brother Starn and his 1st Company brethren fought to hold the doors against the enemies rushing in from the courtyard.Each step of the titanic staircase was almost a yard high, clearly designed for Astartes. With detached interest, the Inquisitor noted that the further they ascended, the more the composition of the staircase changed. From roughly hewn stone, it shifted to steel alloy, and cabling ran alongside the stairs in thick snakes, clamped to the walls and ceiling.The staircase was also free of the fungal growth which infested the rest of the Fury. Other dark entrances, passageways and conduits led off the staircase, and the thrum of power grew under their feet. A few ceiling plates had buckled and fallen onto the steps below, and massive cables hung free of their brackets, but otherwise the keep's surroundings were in good repair.The staircase opened out onto a vast space like the narthex of a cathedral, a towering emptiness lit by guttering torches and flickering lumens which sputtered and winked high above them. Huge doors were set in a dull bulkhead, still bearing the ancient emblem of the Cog Mechanicum which had now been defaced and almost erased. In its stead, the Broken had carved a central rune, that of the Blood God and seven versions of the tripartite fly of Nurgle.The thick doors were indeed blast doors of the kind used to separate the critical compartments within a large voidship. As the party drew closer to them, vast hordes of fat black flies lifted up and began buzzing in a shapeless cloud. Only then could the Imperials see that the entire bulkhead had been anointed in bright-red blood, from which the flies fed.Lesser men would have squirmed in horror at this sight, but Marneus Calgar was undeterred. He stood still for one moment in an attempt to raise Galenus on the Vox and order him to disengage from the battle and link up with Brother-Sergeant Starn, but he could not get through. Even contact with the Terminators had been lost. They were alone.As he readied to penetrate what he supposed to be the throne room of "the Witness", Calgar turned to Inquisitor Drake . While the Chapter Master intended to face the leader of the Broken alone, his companions would help Drake fight through the enemy to the central controls of the Fury. His task was to destroy the space hulk by any means necessary. Otherwise all their sacrifices would be in vain.As he had done before, Calgar strode forward and smote the glistening, fly-spotted doors with one of his energy-wrapped fists. To his surprise, the great doors swung open unhindered, trailing streamers of slime and blood behind them. The Chapter Master entered a vast hall bathed in the red light of flickering flames and emergency lumen. An enormous expanse opened out before them, perhaps four hundred yards long and half as wide, the roof looming up into impenetrable creeping shadow.On both sides, enormous pillars as wide as a Dreadnought reared up, green with bubbling rot, and beyond them were banks of Cogitators and vid-screens, many dead, others flashing with mechanical and electronic life. The light of the flames created dancing shadows around them while the red lighting gave the false impression that everything within was splashed in gore.Like the nave of a cathedral, or the baroque interior of an ancient voidship, the way stretched out before them, and at the end of it a dais rose up to a mighty throne, made of skulls and other bones, held together with skeins of decaying flesh, boiling with putrescence. The very air dripped with malice and anger, the stench of an unquiet grave.From this macabre throne, a towering figure of black and scarlet rose. Its great wings extended thirty feet across, and out of the stench and the darkness two eyes burned, blacker than the darkness surrounding them. In a cruel voice, "The Witness" welcomed Marneus Calgar to his dominion and called him brother. Such was the malice radiating from the Daemon Prince that despite their Ordo Malleus training, Drake's men began to cry out in terror or fall to their knees and pray to the God-Emperor.Having toyed so long with its prey, the Daemon Prince's gaze fell upon Calgar with undiscerned hunger, for here was the prize "The Witness" had sought for his restored glory: the corruption or death of a fellow Chapter Master, a Chapter directly born of the First Founding.The thing that had once been Chapter Master Phrynon of the Viridian Consuls was strangely talkative, raging at his Chapter's betrayal by an uncaring Imperium of Man. The Daemon Prince explained how their desperate struggle had lasted centuries before recognising that the Emperor was a false god and that His dream was doomed to fail.For his part, Calgar couldn't have cared less for the tales of self-justification the master of The Broken was spinning, for he knew he was staring at the very incarnation of evil. The Ultramarines Chapter Master confronted the creature with words of righteousness and valor, berating Phrynon for having let himself succumb to the dark temptations of Chaos rather than die fighting as a Space Marine should. This seemed to anger The Witness even more, his flesh glowing red, his body radiating hatred and heat. The Daemon Prince heaved his immense, smoke-wreathed blade into the air, ready to strike at Calgar.More a symbolic act than a true attack, the Ultramarines Chapter Master saw the blow coming. Raising one of his fists and the Gauntlet of Ultramar it was wielding, Calgar met the blow. The shockwave caused by the two weapons' impact was enormous, strong enough to knock the other Ultramarines off their feet. Calgar himself was forced down to one of his knees, the Witness' hellish blade sliding along the thick armour of the Gauntlets and sheering away the built-in Bolter whose ammunition began to cook and explode between the two combatants.Facing such a mighty weapon as a Gauntlet of Ultramar, even the Witness' daemonic blade was no match and it broke in two. Roaring the name of his Primarch, Marneus Calgar raised his other fist and unleashed the fury of his remaining Bolter at the Witness, forcing the creature to take a step back. Throwing away the shards of its blade, the Witness extended his claws, gnashed his fangs and beat his wings as a wild animal ready to charge. The true fight had begun.The Daemon Prince charged, both gigantic fists sweeping low, thundering into the Chapter Master and flinging him against the throneroom's far wall. His Artificer Armour sizzling and helm badly dented, Calgar was still lying on the floor when the Witness reached him. Putting one of his great forked hooves upon Calgar's backpack, the Witness pinned the proud Chapter Master to the deck, and declared that how he would now offer to Calgar the same choice he had faced as the leader of the doomed Viridian Consuls -- kneel before the Chaos Gods, the true masters of all creation, or perish in the name of Khorne and Nurgle.Seeing the Daemon Prince standing over the Chapter Master, Inquisitor Drake mobilised his psychic gifts and reached out for Brother Ulfius' mind. Brother Ulfius, he implored the Ultramarine Librarian, you must come to us, all of you. He is going to die here. Calgar needs your help.Still dazed by the Daemon Prince's blows, the Chapter Master forced the hooved foot away and rose unsteadily to his feet. His ancient armour might have been broken and blood flowed freely from his many wounds, but the Lord of Ultramar was far from vanquished. |
Broken, The - To Save a Chapter Master: Ordered by their dark master not to intervene in the duel, the Witness' court of debased Renegades, Khornate Berzerkers and Daemons cheered at every blow their champion landed. Inquisitor Drake tore his eyes from the desperate fight to discreetly scan his surroundings. The throne room was far more than just a mere residence or ceremonial prop, it was also the control centre of the entire space hulk.Although desecrated and tremendously ancient, the baroque consoles and machinery of the hall were still what was keeping the Fury whole and under control. Meanwhile, Marneus Calgar's two Honour Guards were ill at ease, but their lord had ordered them to follow Drake's lead and not to interfere in the duel.As he located what he took to be the controls to the Warp-Drive, Lazarus Drake gave the two Ultramarines the order to clear a path towards the tall console with the column of lights and diodes located mid-way through the hall.Mirroring their lord's battlecry, Brother Ohtar and Brother Morent charged to their left, yelling their Primarch's name. Too focused on the duel before them, the first Chaos Space Marines were cut down before they had even realised what had happened. Four further former Viridian Consuls were slain before the rest of the Broken took action.Drake's Acolytes began laying down covering fire with their bolters, and two were cut down by the Broken's return fire. The remaining three Acolytes went to ground, seeking cover behind one of the hall's great pillars as they hurled their last Frag Grenades into the middle of the hall.Advancing closely behind the two Honour Guards, Drake reached the console, a cluster of levers and spilled cables, as the venerable machine had been gutted by a sword and left to rot. After he cleared away the organic murk that covered the monitors, Drake was delighted to recognise indicators for power levels, coolant injectors and drive initiators. He had been right, this was the space hulk's primary control centre.Thanking the Emperor and the Omnissiah for their guiding hand, Inquisitor Drake intoned the first verses of the Prayer of Awakening, a prayer he believed he had forgotten long ago but whose words quickly rose to his mind. With the Machine Spirit of the console adequately raised, Drake grasped one of the big levers and pulled it down, disabling the failsafe preventing the Plasma Reactor's overload.Then he began feeding even more power to the reactor. Warning runes began to burn yellow, then an angry red as the enormous power source at the Fury's heart began to reach critical mass.At the same time, far below the Witness' throne-chamber and on the battlefield outside, Captain Galenus had rallied the survivors of 5th Company around him. The company had lost half its previous number, including Apothecary Philo, to a devastating charge of Juggernaut-mounted Bloodletters. Two dozen Space Marines of the line gathered around their captain, Librarian Ulfius and Chaplain Murtorius, who was bleeding profusely from multiple wounds.But the 5th Company's standard still flew, firmly grasped by Ancient Ameronn. Captain Galenus himself carried the precious Progenoid Glands of twenty-six slain brothers, all those Apothecary Philo had been able to retrieve before he was slain.Unknown to the Inquisitor far above, his psychic plea had been heard and Captain Galenus was trying to lead the remnants of his company to their aid. Galenus made the hard choice and called for the wounded to stay behind and buy them some time while the able-bodied Astartes would follow him into the Blood Keep.Meanwhile, the duel between the Chapter Master and the Daemon Prince ground on. Calgar had several fractures in his arms and sternum, but thanks to his transhuman physiology, they were already healing. His first wounds had stopped bleeding but he had earned several new cuts from which his blood still seeped freely. His armor was in even worse shape.The most pressing matter was the coolant leak in his dorsal power generator. Should it overheat, he would have no power left to fuel his armour or even the Gauntlets of Ultramar.Yet the Witness had not survived unscathed. The creature that had been Chapter Master Phrynon was limping badly, Calgar having stripped his left leg almost entirely of its blasphemous flesh. Several powerful punches had torn the thing's armour apart at the abdomen from where demonic ichor flowed freely, the Daemon's innards exposed to the chamber's stale air.His autosenses damaged and malfunctioning, Calgar ripped his battered and dented Corvus Pattern helm from his head. His skin was now exposed to the Blood Keep's dangerous ionising radiation so he would have to move fast, as even his immune system could not stave off the effects of radiation sickness forever.The Witness knew this as well and smiled through his fangs. Calgar dimly noticed the violence that had engulfed the hall, Plaguebearers and Khornate Berzekers battling Brothers Othar and Morent who were still shielding Inquisitor Drake and the alcove in which he worked.All his attention fixed upon Calgar, the Daemon Prince ignored their surroundings and the din of battle. Yet again the Witness spoke, offering the Chapter Master the same choice: death or servitude to the Dark Gods. Aware that he needed to buy his companions more time, Calgar let the creature talk, spitting bloody phlegm on the floor.Still refusing to bend the knee to this abomination, Calgar charged the Witness, but this time he opened a priority Vox-link to Brother-Sergeant Starn and his Terminators, calling upon them to join him at the top of the tower.Calgar opened up with his remaining bolter, blasting at his enemy as he advanced. Calgar landed a blow, but the Daemon's great claws grabbed him by the shoulder, effortlessly hefting him from the ground. Dangling helplessly at arm's length, the Chapter Master raised his other fist, unleashing the last of his stream of bolts into the creature's face before the gauntlet's Bolter clicked empty.The Daemon Prince smiled through broken fangs and a gouged eye, obviously savoring the moment of the kill. Even as his face became the fang-filled snout of some great beast that began snapping ever closer to Calgar's face, the Witness never took his eyes off his target. It would prove to be his undoing.With the characteristic bang and the ripple of electric fire that charcaterised close-range teleportation, four Ultramarines Terminators appeared at the creature's back. With Warp-energy still dancing around their Terminator Armour, Brother-Sergeant Starn and his warriors opened up with their Storm Bolters. The deluge of large calibre projectiles ripped into the Witness, shredding his wings and back.With a roar of pain that forced its followers to look up, the great Daemon turned, knocking one of the Terminators to the side with his outstretched arm. Focused upon this new threat, the Witness let go of Calgar who rose to his feet.This last ordeal had obviously been too much for his already damaged armour's reactor which began to splutter. Calgar watched as the three remaining Terminators charged the Witness, their Power Fists leaving marks on the thing's flesh and armour.The Witness fell to his knees and Calgar saw his chance. Without hesitation, the badly wounded Chapter Master launched himself onto the Daemon Prince's back. Using the remains of its wings to maintain his grip, Calgar reached for the creature's head. The Gauntlets of Ultramar closed around the daemon's horns.Calgar began to pull, fueling his failing muscles with all the rage and hatred he had previously so carefully kept under control. In a violent explosion of bone and daemonic ichor, the Witness' head was abruptly wrenched from its torso. Almost instantly the thing's body collapsed as its spirit fled back into the Warp and Calgar crashed to the ground, angling his fall so as not to be crushed by his opponent's corpse. |
Broken, The - Endgame: The sudden death of their leader marked the end of the Broken's cohesion as a military force. Those warriors furthest along the Path of Blood launched themselves at the Ultramarines Terminators in a reckless fury, but were promptly gunned down. The merely Human Renegades began to flee the throne room, rushing down the stairs in a desperate attempt to save their lives.Blocked by their traitorous comrades who had been battling Sergeant Starn's Terminators, none of them made it out of the tower before Captain Galenus' group of 5th Company survivors killed them all on their way to the Chapter Master.Still outside the central tower, Brother Ulfius was contacted by Inquisitor Drake, who told him of the outcome of the duel and the activation of the self-destruct sequence that would soon see them all die. He bade the Ultramarines to make haste for he feared that Calgar might still die from his wounds before the Fury's reactor consigned them all to a fiery grave.As they approached the first steps of the titanic staircase, the leader of 5th Company could see the foremost elements of the Renegade Mechanicus entering the Blood Keep, obviously seeking the same destination. With their common enemy vanquished, the truce between the Ultramarines and the Renegade faction of the Mechanicus had come to an end. Magos Dominus Hagnon-Cro now sought his prize.In the throne room, every survivor was gathered around the bleeding Chapter Master. Brother Othar, his armour similarly scorched as that of his master was begging Calgar to dun a reclaimed helmet so that he might be protected from the baleful radiation, but the Chapter Master refused.Either way, he would die long before radiation-poisoning became an issue. Calgar could feel his body trying to undo the damage done to it, but hindered by the radiation and unsupported by his Artificer Armour's reserves of stimulants the process was taking longer than he was used to.The sombre mood was lifted when Captain Galenus voxed ahead that the Mechanicus' forces were starting to enter the Blood Keep as well. Faced with a purely military problem, Calgar's mind immediately began to reflect on their situation.Calgar asked Galenus how many Ultramarines were accompanying him. When the captain responded that only nine Space Marines were still alive in his group alongside Librarian Ulfius and Techmarine Salvator, the news shook Calgar to his core, though he remained outwardly impassive.When Captain Galenus' small group reached the top of the tower, Brother Salvator immediately began work on Calgar's suit of battle-plate, nursing a flicker of life back into the battered suit of armour. Calgar was adamant on standing -- and dying -- alongside his brothers, a glorious last stand against the Mechanicus forces.Several levels below where the remaining Ultramarines mustered for their defiant last stand, Magos Explorator Fane was fulfilling the will of his new master: rerouting the Plasma Reactor's controls to the secondary chamber he and his Adepts had infiltrated in Calgar's wake. They had fought against their fair share of Chaos worshipers, but ultimately the Adeptus Mechanicus would reclaim the Fury for their own purposes.With his role in this grand game of duplicity fulfilled, Magos Fane communed with Hagnon-Cro, calling upon him to honour the bargain they had struck -- the continued survival and well-being of the Ultramarines.Far above, Inquisitor Lazarus Drake raged at losing control over the Fury’s most important systems. With sudden clarity, Marneus Calgar realised that he had been tricked into doing the Mechanicus' dirty work. From the very moment the Ultramarines had landed on the space hulk they had been played by Hagnon-Cro -- even the attack on 7th Company had been no misunderstanding but a ploy to keep their forces small enough to still fulfill their allotted task without threatening the Renegade Mechanicus' strength.Knowing that he had been beaten, Calgar ordered his men to stand down as the Mechanicus forces advanced. For the second time, Marneus Calgar would parley with the Magos Dominus and confront him with his revelations. In order to save his brothers' lives, and thanks to the intercession of Magos Explorator Fane, a deal was soon struck between them.The Magos Dominus would take control of the Fury whilst the Ultramarines would be given a life-sustaining wreck and marooned in a star system in close proximity to the Cadian Gate, a system well-patrolled by the ships of the Imperial Navy which would eventually locate them and initiate a rescue.Marneus Calgar agreed to the deal, but he added one condition: that the crucified Viridian Consuls, those loyal Space Marines who had stayed true to the vocation of the Adeptus Astartes, would be granted the Emperor's Peace and a decent funeral.Having retrieved their fallen brothers' precious gene-seed, the surviving Space Marines erected two great pyres, one for the fallen Ultramarines and one for their long-lost Successor Chapter before being led to the surface and turning their back on the Fury and its occupants forever. |
Broken, The - Warband Beliefs: After fighting the forces of Chaos for many Terran years in the Eye of Terror, the Viridian Consuls lost all hope and felt betrayed by the Imperium who they believed had sent them into the Warp rift only to die.That anger and despair ultimately drove The Broken to turn to two of the major Chaos Gods to seek succor in their angst: Khorne and Nurgle.The Broken accepted Khorne as the manifestation of their anger towards the Imperium that had betrayed them. Nurgle represented the sense of hopelessness and despair that had come upon the Viridian Consuls as they fought within the Eye.Despite their veneration of the two Ruinous Powers, The Broken seem to hold Nurgle in somewhat higher regard and devote themselves to his worship more fervently.Those Astartes of the Virdian Consuls who refused to accept the Chapter's turn towards Chaos were crucified alive, Nurgle's maggots gnawing within their rotting innards while the Plague God refused to let them die. |
Broken, The - Notable Broken: The Witness (Chapter Master Phrynon) - Formerly the Chapter Master of the Viridian Consuls, the noble Astartes once known as Phrynon led his Chapter alongside the other Space Marine Chapters of "The Judged", whose gene-seed was deemed to be impure by Saint Basillius the Elder, the corrupted Living Saint who initiated the infamous Abyssal Crusade. After centuries of warfare against the servants of Chaos within the Eye of Terror, Phrynon lost hope for his Astartes' redemption. He and some of his fellow warriors felt as if they had been abandoned by the Imperium to die a worthless death. Phrynon then began corrupting his fellow Space Marines, seeking to convert them to the service of the Chaos Gods since the Emperor no longer cared for them. Those that did not accept the new truth either fled or were killed. As a reward for his corruption of his own Chapter, Phrynon eventually was allowed to ascend to become a Daemon Prince of the Dark Gods known as "The Witness." The Witness met his end when he confronted Chapter Master Marneus Calgar in the heart of the space hulk Fury. Though Calgar was wounded and exhausted by the relentless battles against the space hulk's corrupted inhabitants, he was able to slay The Witness with the help of the Terminators of the Ultramarines' 1st Company. |
Broken, The - Warband Colours: The Broken warband's colours were red and green. |
Broken, The - Warband Badge: The Broken warband's badge is a subtle but meaningful alteration of their former heraldry. The Viridian Consuls' badge was an Ultima icon like the one worn by the Ultramarines, bisected by a sword and flanked by two wings of flame, on a green background.The Broken inverted the Ultima to form an Omega, a symbol signifying the end of all things and the finite nature of existence. |
Broken Triplets - Broken Triplets: The Broken Triplets is a Hold World of the Trans-Hyperian Alliance of the Leagues of Votann. The Broken Triplets are actually a trio of worlds found in the galactic core where the three planets were smashed together during some ancient catastrophe, and the colossal quantities of debris from their demise still whirls and ricochets in a vast cloud to this day, trapped by the gravitic anomaly that caused the disaster.Few other peoples could consider such a devastating region home, yet the hold of Nôthka's Kindred -- Sunder Stair -- sits at the heart of the anomaly behind a breathtaking bulwark of interwoven force fields. These both shelter the immense void station that serves as the hold and also maintain clear space lanes for its voidcraft to take in and out of the system. Not only do the Kin of Sunder Stair enjoy the natural defence of the ruin-belt -- which would swiftly cripple invading voidcraft -- but they have also spent Terran centuries mining the exposed innards of the Broken Triplets. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Bronislaw Czevak: High Inquisitor Bronislaw Czevak was a distinguished and controversial member of the Ordo Xenos active in the Moebius Sub-sector during the second half of the 41st Millennium. After almost 400 standard years of service to the Imperium and the Inquisition, and already suspected by some of corruption, he disappeared during an archeotech reclamation on the planet Darcturus.Except for a short interval, he was missing for some 30 standard years and was presumed dead. He secretly resurfaced in the first century of the 42nd Millennium having spent much of the intervening time as a prisoner in the Black Library, the secret Aeldari craftworld that is hidden in the Webway and acts as their repository for Chaos lore.He eventually acquired a new retinue of Acolytes, and has since embarked on a self-imposed mission as a freelance agent, working to thwart Chaos and champion the cause of the Imperium of Man. He directs his main efforts against the Chaos Sorcerer Ahriman, who is his prime opponent and nemesis.Imperial authorities regard him at best as a Renegade in possession of dangerous but valuable knowledge, and at worst as a Heretic and Traitor liable to be summarily executed.Throughout the galaxy, Traitors, Chaos Cultists, Heretics, Imperial opportunists and many aliens crave his knowledge of the Black Library and its lore, while the Aeldari Black Council has likely condemned him to death, considering the same knowledge too dangerous to be held by an untrustworthy Mon-keigh. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Origins: It is not known where or when Czevak was born and raised. He attended a Schola Progenium called the Schola Byblos, which indicates he was the orphaned son of Imperial servants who died for the Emperor's cause. As he does not possess psychic ability, is not gifted physically, and is only an average fighter, he was presumably selected to become an Acolyte of the Inquisition due to his heightened survival instincts, his razor-sharp intellect, and his keen curiosity.Czevak served as an Acolyte to Inquisitor Furneaux of the Ordo Xenos and eventually achieved the status of High Inquisitor (equivalent to an Inquisitor Lord), who served primarily in the Moebius Sub-sector.He was considered a learned and opinionated proponent of the Thorian philosophical sect of the Inquisition.However his unconventional views, which some of his fellow Inquisitors considered to be of the Radical persuasion, prevented him from becoming the Grand Master of the Inquisition's Moebian Conclave, even though he was its senior-most member.After almost 400 standard years of service to the Imperium, Czevak had undergone extensive rejuvenat treatments that kept him alive long past the human body's natural lifespan.By the late 41st Millennium he was little more than a dessicated frame held together by a specially constructed cryogenic suspension suit. A blister helmet concealed an implanted bionic controller for the suit as well as his hairless scalp and deeply lined face.However, his intelligence, curiosity and argumentative, opinionated manner had remained as sharp as ever, coupled with his accumulated vast knowledge and experience. |
Bronislaw Czevak - The Aeldari Connection: During his long and distinguished service as an alien hunter for the Imperium Czevak came into close contact with the Aeldari many times, and established a relationship with them, especially the leading Aeldari of the declining Iyanden Craftworld.Notable among them was Iqbraesil, one of the Iyanden Farseers. These contacts were apparently officially sanctioned or tolerated by Inquisition authorities, at least at the start.At some point, while Czevak was the Aeldari's guest in Ilyanden at Iqbraesil's invitation, he was treated to a unique spectacle. In an unheard-of gesture, the Aeldari allowed him and members of his entourage to witness a performance by the Harlequins -- this honor, however, as well as his whole interaction with the Aeldari, may have been part of their plans to manipulate him.Czevak learned a lot about Aeldari culture, history and science. This included some knowledge of the Wraithguard and of the related Aeldari reanimation and soul-transference technology encapsulated within the Soul Stones. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Radical Ideas: Czevak was deeply dissatisfied with the Imperium's cultural and technological stagnation and repression. Through his congress with the Aeldari he had come to believe that the terrible nature of threats like the Tyranids required nothing less than the physical leadership of the Emperor of Mankind Himself once more.Czevak became obsessed with utilising the Aeldari's resurrective incarnation technology in order to make the dying Emperor whole once again.This was thought by others in the Inquisition to be at best misguided and at worst treason. Heated Inquisitorial Conclaves were held, and Czevak was often threatened with sanction by the more Puritan Inquisitors and generally admonished to stop pursuing the study of alien lore. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Darcturus: In the late 41st Millennium, Czevak discovered the ancient crash site of the lost Aeldari Craftworld Uthuriel, which had fallen to the planet Darcturus in the Moebius Sub-sector. Czevak lead an Ordo Xenos expedition to the planet, a large operation that required support from the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Adeptus Ministorum and the Imperial Guard, and required the presence of his full retinue of Acolytes as well as a Deathwatch Kill-team.Czevak was specifically looking for the splintered craftworld's shrine dedicated to Kaela Mensha Khaine, and its Avatar of the Aeldari war god. The shrine was indeed found, and accompanied by the Deathwatch Space Marines and his retinue, Czevak entered it to discover the intact, enormous statue of Khaine on his throne.Czevak secretly hoped to glean further knowledge concerning Avatar reanimation technology by studying the artefact, in order to further his aim of resurrecting the Emperor. Czevak's retinue discovered their master's true purpose only at the last moment.Unbeknownst to Czevak, the Inquisition hierarchy of the sub-sector had reached the limit of its tolerance for his radical ideas and continuing involvement with xenos, and had decided to rein him in.Upon discovery of the Avatar of Khaine, the Deathwatch, secretly acting under the direct orders of Moebius Inquisitorial Conclave Grand Master Ephisto Specht, placed orbital bombardment markers on the statue while also announcing their intention to take Czevak and his retinue into custody for transport to an Inquisition base.There, Czevak's eventual fate would be decided. Although Czevak accepted his arrest, a misunderstanding caused violence to break out amongst the Imperials. In the middle of the firefight, a troupe of Aeldari Harlequins made a wholly unexpected appearance and proceeded to kill the members of the Deathwatch squad, while leaving Czevak and his Acolytes untouched. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Black Library: The Harlequins activated a Webway communications interface to a meeting of the Black Council, the governing body of the Black Library within the labyrinthine dimension. The Black Council was the closest thing the Aeldari had to a centralised advisory body for their entire species.The Council made Czevak an offer he could not refuse: he was "invited" to the Library to study its accumulated lore concerning Chaos and to help thwart the Chaos Sorcerer Ahriman, who had tried to gain entry into the Webway and the Library for millennia in pursuit of his own quest to better understand and master the power of Chaos and his own patron, the Chaos God Tzeentch.Over the objections of his then-Interrogator Raimus Klute, Czevak accepted the Black Council's offer. Klute, previously Czevak's chirurgeon, then proceeded to inject him with various vaccines as a precaution for the journey, among them a vaccine for a powerful strain of the meme-virus.This virus infected the carrier and altered his neural patterns to produce an insatiable, irrational thirst for knowledge, a near-photographic memory and enhanced pattern recognition ability. It also had occasional side-effects, including the inducement of vivid hallucinations.Klute knew that Czevak's cryo suit would probably inhibit the inoculation of the meme-virus, leaving Czevak infected. Czevak accepted this, as this meant that the lore of the Black Library would be even more accessible.The Black Library is a "dark" craftworld eternally travelling through the Webway. Its location and route are secret, hidden from all but the Harlequins and the members of the Black Council. Like all craftworlds, the vessel is conscious and psychoactive, hiding itself from all psychic probes, while simultaneously repelling Warp entities and intrusions.It is an enormous construct with a scorched, crystalline appearance, covered in vanes and flourishes but with the typical flowing grace of Aeldari architecture. The interior is an intentional labyrinth with all manner of convoluted passages, corridors, and chambers.Bubble vaults full of stasis caskets containing forbidden lore and dangerous artefacts hang from the superstructure, whilst inside and above are myriad citadels, obelisks, monoliths, and spires where the rest of the Craftworld's arcane contents are kept.Czevak was taken to the Library, where he mainly studied at the Wraith Tower, the section of the Library devoted to humanity's interaction with Chaos, the accumulated lore of the Imperial Traitors. Several standard years later, and no longer needing his cryogenic suspension suit to enhance his mobility due to the Webway's natural regenerative effects upon human tissue, a much younger-looking Czevak returned to realspace and the Imperium. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Ahriman and Xarchos: Czevak's return to the Imperium was a major political event. Adding to the controversy surrounding him, he had become a celebrity, looked on as a champion by the Radicals in the Inquisition while serving as a lightning rod to Puritans, who nevertheless craved his newly acquired knowledge even as they sought to destroy him and any who supported him.The politically astute Inquisition authorities allowed him to resume his duties and reassemble a retinue of Acolytes. They assigned Klute (now an Ordo Xenos Inquisitor in his own right) to look after his protection, mindful of his knowledge's value.However Czevak’s return to the Imperium proved to be short-lived. Not long after, while attempting to run through the blockade erected by the Forces of Chaos around the world of Cadia that signalled the beginning of the 13th Black Crusade in 999.M41, he became the victim of a superbly executed Thousand Sons' illusion and ambush, and eventually found himself captive in the Impossible Fortress, the Chaos Sorcerer Ahriman's own flagship, where he was held for several standard years.Ahriman wanted Czevak's knowledge of the Black Library, and more specifically, the activation runecodes for a Webway portal discovered by the Thousand Sons on Etiamnum III. Ahriman's apprentice Korban Xarchos was tasked with Czevak's lengthy interrogation during which Czevak went through unimaginable physical and psycho-spiritual torture.He confessed all his most embarrassing and personal secrets, as well as his knowledge of the methods and assets of the Inquisition. He even revealed damning secrets held in the Library -- but nothing of the Library itself or of a way to find it.Under the most arcane and unbearable torture, Czevak resisted all attempts to divulge the Library's own secrets, and he realized that the Library had somehow psychically secured his knowledge of it, rendering him unable to reveal information about it under any form of coercive pressure.Finally, the Traitors produced the ravaged form of Joaqhuine Desdemondra, a former associate and secret love interest of Czevak's who had been canonised as a Living Saint by the Ecclesiarchy. Being a Reanimate, an immortal mutant, she was tortured in front of Czevak with repeated death by incineration. Czevak's love and sorrow over the suffering of another finally broke the Library's psychic wards, and Ahriman's subsequent and forceful mind-invasion forced Czevak to unwittingly reveal the Etiamnum III portal's runecodes.Even more damaging unwilling revelations by Czevak were averted when the troupe of Harlequins assigned to watch him suddenly appeared, boarding over from a cloaked Aeldari vessel. After a fight with Ahriman, they managed to take Czevak away from the Traitors. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Return to the Black Library: Czevak was returned to the Webway and the Black Library. This time he was imprisoned (for his own and the galaxy's protection according to the Aeldari) as one of its living specimens and exhibits. Confined in a cell within the Wraith Tower that, like the rest of the Library's interior, was mostly transparent, he spent his days furthering his knowledge of how to combat Chaos.Thanks to Aeldari medical attention and healing techniques, as well as the wraithbone environment's restorative properties, he quickly recuperated from the Thousand Sons' tortures. He naturally rejuvenated, acquiring an even younger, athletic appearance, and boundless energy.He had occasional visitors, curious Aeldari who wanted to personally see the human polymath, Chaos expert and famous prey of Ahriman. He was once even scrutinized by a rare human visitor, likely an Illuminatus, an incident that set his mind to thoughts of escape.His personal attendant was Iqbraesil's daughter Adara-Ke, a long-serving Guardian-Scribe of the Library, but it is not known whether she was assigned because of Czevak's previous relationship with Iyanden.Czevak became the subject of a Black Council meeting as quite unexpectedly to the Aeldari Farseers, Ahriman had used the knowledge extracted from Czevak to breach the Webway.Because of this threat, most of the Council's members were in favor of either imprisoning Czevak for life or even better, terminating him, as he was deemed too independent, unpredictable and dangerous due to his knowledge –- which, most Farseers were convinced, would eventually somehow fall into the wrong hands.Farseer Iqbraesil, who sat on the Council as Iyanden’s representative, disagreed with the majority’s verdict on Czevak, believing that he still had a worthwhile and beneficial role for the Aeldari to play in the galaxy. He instructed Adara-Ke to help Czevak escape while the Craftworld’s attention (and most of its residents) were at the Black Council meeting. |
Bronislaw Czevak - The Atlas Infernal: Adara-Ke informed Czevak of the Black Council's proceedings and of her father's plan to have him escape death and the Library. She gave him a bulky, ancient Imperial tome with covers of burnished, golden, astonishingly lightweight and resilient metal with a unique sheen. The book's title, written in High Gothic, was the Atlas Infernal.It was an organic, adaptable map of the Webway, dating from before the time of the Horus Heresy. A psionically-negative item, its "pages" were the stretched pieces of the skin of an Untouchable who had once been a Sister of Silence, attached to lightweight golden frames.The veins, capillaries, and arteries on the "pages" could reconfigure themselves to show the reader his desired destination within the Webway, being constantly fed oxygen by an intricate regulated pump embedded in the book’s spine.Using both the anti-psyker and adaptable-mapping properties of the Atlas, Czevak was able to escape the Black Library through the Webway. He subsequently used the book to traverse the galaxy through the Webway in order to outsmart his Harlequin pursuers, and also in a quest to thwart Ahriman and his minions.Another likely objective was locating his former associate and secret love interest Joaqhuine Desdemondra, still held captive by the Thousand Sons. Ahriman in turn was fervently looking for Czevak, craving his knowledge. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Reappearance: Czevak spent a number of standard years wandering the galaxy through the Webway making plans against Ahriman, consumed by guilt over the deaths caused by his torture-induced revelations.In the meantime Klute, who respected and admired Czevak, was remorseful over failing to prevent his capture. He spent two standard decades after Czevak's disappearance over Cadia on a mission to find him, a secret objective his superiors and even his retinue was unaware of.He had assembled a highly unconventional cadre of Acolytes and based on the Rogue Trader starship Malescaythe, he made frequent extended forays to the Eye of Terror. In his search for Czevak, Klute was looking for artefacts that would allow him access to the Webway.Sometime during the first few decades of the 42nd Millennium Klute and his team found, and transported to the Malescaythe, a Webway portal called the Lost Fornical of Urien-Myrdyss. To everyone's surprise the portal soon activated, and a visitor who turned out to be Czevak stepped through, pursued by an ichneuplasm which he eventually managed to vanquish.Following the initial surprise and a heated argument, his associates accepted Klute's assertion: this was indeed the infamous, irascible Czevak, known among Imperial, xenos, and Chaotic operatives galaxy-wide and long presumed dead or worse, having become Ahriman's plaything. Czevak for his part looked almost four centuries younger, and had lost none of his opinionated ways and cutting sarcasm.Klute and associates were now ready to return to the fold of the Imperium. Yet Czevak had no illusions: the only thing the Imperium and Inquisitors of any persuasion wanted was his knowledge and the conclusions he had drawn from it. In the eyes of the Imperial authorities he was considered too compromised, and either a Heretic or a Traitor.Before this argument was resolved, the first part of a typically ingenious and cunning long-term plot by the Thousand Sons to recapture Czevak -- or rather, to take the Atlas Infernal -- started to play out, in the form of an encounter with a Khornate Berserker vessel. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Mammoshad: A complicated series of clues to Korban Xarchos' whereabouts followed, involving a captured cogitator from the defeated Khornate vessel, and the avoidance of a trap set by Xarchos to ensnare Czevak. He and the retinue reasoned that Xarchos was attempting to replicate daemonic psychic vivisection as practiced millennia before by the Daecropsicum, a long-destroyed Dark Mechanicum cult, while simultaneously carrying out a campaign of carnage and death in order to provide the necessary psychic power to summon a suitable daemonic subject.Czevak and company eventually acquired a piece of a vivisected daemon that was the only successful result of the Daecropsicum's experiments: the psychic fragment of the ancient and extremely powerful Tzeentchian Lord of Change Mammoshad, whose greed and ambition had been bound into a coin.Czevak proceeded to interrogate the daemonic fragment about Xarchos and Ahriman's whereabouts and plans. It was an unceasing multi-day session without respite, during which the increasingly unhinged Czevak mercilessly tormented the daemon. Mammoshad in turn was taking advantage of the raging meme-virus within the Inquisitor's mind to apply equal torture on Czevak through denials and obvious misinformation.Eventually Czevak found out that the Thousand Sons were planning to reassemble and re-release Mammoshad as their servant, spreading havoc in the galaxy, and helping Ahriman breach the Webway again. The event was to take place on Melmoth's World, a Nurglite planet in the Eye of Terror, which became Czevak's next intended destination.By now Klute had had enough. He had realised that his hero, friend and mentor had been drawn into an elaborate trap by the master deceiver Ahriman and his minions, who knew the workings of Czevak's brilliant, hyperactive mind all too well.Klute secretly ordered a change of course towards Cadia, and specifically the nearby top secret Inquisitorial fortress at Nemesis Tessera. Another heated argument with Czevak ensued when the latter found out. The naivete and brilliance of both men became apparent.Finally Czevak agreed to return to the Inquisition and the Imperium, but insisted on a secret approach to the base, and entry through a "back door." Klute and his retinue reluctantly accepted. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Nemesis Tessera: Czevak never intended to return to the stagnant Imperium. Drawing on his tremendous conviction about stopping Ahriman and doing his part to better the galaxy, he continued his ongoing campaign of counterbluff, counterintelligence and oneupmanship. He therefore turned the wishes of his only remaining friends (Klute and company) to his advantage.Using the Lost Fornical and the Atlas Infernal Czevak lead his associates to an Inquisition Reliquary Chamber kilometres below the sub-surface base. One of the relics was a functioning, unguarded Webway portal, a major lapse in the millennia-old base's security, which Czevak had taken advantage of before. Thanks to the portal the team from the Malescaythe entered the fortress undetected.Czevak instructed the astonished and fearful team (which included witches, daemonhosts and Renegades under Inquisition kill-orders, all now trespassing within a heavily defended Inquisition fortress) to start looking for a specific item. It wasn't long before the team was detected, and was assaulted by Grey Knights and Inquisitorial Storm Troopers.Czevak saved the day by brandishing the sought-after relic, which was a long-abandoned heretical experiment: a cloned Pariah embryo in a bell-jar stasis casket, a virtually unheard of (outside of the Culexus Temple) Omega Minus null entity.The severely mauled remnants of the team then returned to the Malescaythe, which had been detected and was simultaneously engaged in battle with an Inquisition flotilla.Sustaining heavy damage, the starship managed to extract itself by making a desperate, blind Warp jump, during which Czevak came close to being slain by the mysteriously appearing and equally inexplicably disappearing Harlequins. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Melmoth's World: Czevak's manipulation and his willful endangerment of his associates' lives in order to get the Pariah embryo resulted in a further violent confrontation with Klute.Czevak finally apologized and acknowledged his friends' loyalty and concerns, while Klute realized that they were indeed on their own, as the Imperium would not tolerate loyal but unconventional warriors with an independent streak, questionable associates, and a knowledge of deep and frightening secrets.With the Malescaythe and its crew hiding in an inaccessible and unstable area of the Eye of Terror called the Scorpento Maestrale, Czevak used the Lost Fornical Webway portal to arrive at Melmoth's World.Knowingly walking into the trap Xarchos and Ahriman had so painstakingly laid for him, he realised that the whole planet was to be used as a birthing cradle for Mammoshad, and the Thousand Sons had forced the slothful Nurglite population to mine a Warp mineral that would accelerate the Greater Daemon's birth.He was arrested and taken to Xarchos, who being a shapeshifter and telepath, was being "worn" remotely by Ahriman. He had no need of Czevak any longer except as a sacrifice to Mammoshad, who had expressly demanded Czevak's life. Ahriman knew he could get all the information he wanted from the Atlas Infernal.Mind-forcing Czevak to reveal where he was hiding the book, Ahriman was actually fooled by the Inquisitor into handling the Pariah casket instead, which immediately started draining his psychic essence. The wounded Ahriman hastily retreated from Xarchos' body, who was then destroyed by exposure to the Pariah.Mammoshad was next. Just as it was hatching back into existence from a colossal daemonic egg, Czevak threw the Pariah embryo at it, stunting its rebirth and ultimately banishing it back to the Warp. After a skirmish with the ubiquitous Harlequins who were also on the planet, Czevak returned to the Malescaythe, which was again in trouble because it had been detected by Ahriman's fleet.In an extremely dangerous and ingenious play typical of Czevak, he had the ship elude its pursuers by entering a huge Webway portal on the surface of the area's highly unusual cryo star.While the Malescaythe was drydocked in the Webway for repairs, the Harlequins again appeared. However this time Czevak was expecting them. Knowing they wanted both the Atlas and his life, he tricked them into approaching and then opened the book.The volume's potent psychic null field mortally wounded the troupe's Shadowseer and injured the rest of the Harlequins, who disappeared to save themselves. Through the dying Shadowseer Czevak sent a message to the Black Council: he was going to find and stop Ahriman on his own terms, and not as an Aeldari puppet. |
Bronislaw Czevak - At Present: In the early 42nd Millennium, Czevak, Klute, and his retinue carried on with their self-appointed crusade against the enemies of Mankind, and especially Ahriman and his plans. Although now hunted by almost every faction in the galaxy, Czevak has remarkable freedom of action thanks to the Atlas Infernal, his vast knowledge and intelligence, and his able and loyal associates.His multi-decade sojourn in various parts of the Webway had a naturally rejuvenating effect on him, and he currently looks about 400 Terran years younger than his actual chronological age -- he is almost 440 standard years old, but with great amounts of newly acquired energy.He is still willingly carrying the meme-virus, refusing treatment. He still uses the previously implanted cybernetic Mind Impulse Socket to interface with all kinds of machinery.When in combat Czevak favours a pilfered Harlequin overcoat, whose holographic cloaking abilities, embedded wrist-mounted monofilament wire weapon, and unnatural extradimensional storage capacity he often puts to good use.Inherently dangerous, independent, and unpredictable, Bronislaw Czevak is a worthy opponent of the enemies of the Emperor and of Humanity who should not be underestimated. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Base of Operations: Malescaythe -- The Malescaythe is a Rogue Trader starship owned and commanded by Captain Reinette Torres of the Torres-Bouchier Mercantile Sovereignty which is based on the world of Zyracuse. Its full crew complement consists of former Imperial Navy recruits and Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-priests, serfs, Menials and Servitors. The vessel's security detail is provided by detachments of the Penitent Savlar Chem Dogs Regiment of the Imperial Guard. The ship's armament and weaponry is typical of starships of its class and function. The ship contains a specially constructed "Archeodeck" full of stasis cases and other vaults housing a large collection of relics, some holy to the Imperium, most others illegal, alien, heretical, or Chaotic. These include a functioning Webway portal known as the Lost Fornical of Urien-Myrdyss. The vessel also contains a specially fortified chapel. For the past few decades the Malescaythe has made extensive forays into the Eye of Terror. While in the Eye, the ship always runs with an active Gellar Field, regardless of whether or not it is actually in the Warp, and is additionally fortified with numerous psychic wards against daemonic intrusions. Despite the prolonged missions in the Eye, the vessel has never been psychically breached, and her crew has remained generally untainted. Recently, the Malescaythe withstood extensive damage and was eventually repaired within the Webway after Czevak identified a large portal into the Labyrinthine Dimension with the assistance of the Atlas Infernal. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Retinue and Allies: Raimus Klute (former and current member) - Previously Czevak's chirurgeon, Klute became Czevak's Acolyte and Interrogator for 2 standard decades. He was responsible for Infecting Czevak with the meme-virus. Klute became a full Ordo Xenos Inquisitor after Czevak's abduction by the Harlequinade. After Czevak's return from the first visit to the Black Library, he was tasked with his protection and security, but failed to prevent Ahriman from capturing his charge. He then set off on a decades-long mission to find him, partly because of feelings of guilt and partly because he apparently worships Czevak, a sentiment frequently taken advantage of by the latter. He kept the mission to find Czevak secret from all, including his retinue and associates. Upon Czevak's reappearance he tried to unsuccessfully convince and manipulate him into returning to the fold of the Imperium. However, following the events on Nemesis Tessera Klute realised the futility of such action and offered himself and his retinue up to the service of Czevak and his plans, while Czevak finally appreciated his friendship and declared him an equal. Klute is currently about 70 standard years old, but has undergone rejuvenat treatments that make him appear much younger. Like Czevak he likes to avoid violence, but favours a modified Cadian-pattern Kasr close-combat shotgun, sometimes loading it with sanctified silver/salt rounds when operating in the Eye of Terror.Joaqhuine Desdemondra (former member, MIA) - Desdemondra is an immortal human mutant known as a Reanimate. She is also known as Saint Joaqhuine or The Idolatress. She was canonised by the Ecclesiarchy as "Saint Joaqhuine the Renascent, Living Saint of the Imperial Creed". However, she is feared by some within the Imperium as a monstrous abomination, for she is an eternally young woman whose consciousness remains intact upon death while her body can automatically reconstitute and reanimate. She is an ex-member of the vampiric, blood-drinking Imperial Death Cult called the Path Incarnadine, and she once served as Czevak's bodyguard, assassin and henchwoman. Czevak was additionally interested in her because of her reanimation ability, but eventually ended up secretly falling in love with her. She was later captured by Ahriman and tortured in order to blackmail Czevak into revealing his knowledge of the Webway and the Black Library. She is probably still a captive of Ahriman and Czevak will not rest until he has found her once more.Saul Torqhuil (current member, ex-Klute entourage) - Saul Torqhuil is a Techmarine of the Relictors, a Space Marine Chapter declared Excommunicate Traitoris after it turned Radical in its fight against the Forces of Chaos. Like other members of his Chapter, he was on a personal quest for knowledge of Chaotic methods or artefacts that could be used against Chaos, carrying his individual crusade into the Archenemy's territory, the Eye of Terror. There, his path crossed with Klute and after initial hostilities they forged a truce, eventually becoming partners. Torqhuil often sports numerous Mechadendrites and other cybernetic attachments common amongst Techmarines. Torqhuil maintains the Archeodeck and the Gellar Field on the Malescaythe. He is currently recuperating after being severely wounded at Nemesis Tessera.Reinette Torres (current associate, originally hired by Klute) - Reinette Torres is a Rogue Trader whose family's fortune and power had greatly diminished from its height. She had once been the Captain of an Imperial Navy Frigate. She is the capable, no-nonsense Master and owner of the Tradeship Malescaythe, the current de facto base for Czevak and his warband. Hired by Klute under false pretenses, she (and the rest of his retinue) only found out they were actually looking for Czevak upon the latter's reappearance. She as well as her starship may have been proscribed by the Imperium following the events at Nemesis Tessera and probably both are actively sought by the Inquisition. Since Malescaythe's Navigator is incapacitated, she usually has to rely on Epiphani and her gifts (see below) for Warp navigation. However she is often jealous of Epiphani's youth and beauty and upset at her ship-threatening navigational recklessness.Epiphani Mallerstang (current member, ex-Klute entourage) - Epiphani is a prognostic Human Warpseer. She is the illegitimate (and unacknowledged) daughter of a mystic/sorcerer who was a former Klute Acolyte, and of a noblewoman who is the current head of a powerful Navigator family among the Navis Nobilite. Young and beautiful, she has a heightened sense of fashion, and her seer gifts allow her to often dress for the (future) occasion. This fact acts as a signal to the retinue for what the near future may hold, as she sometimes dresses for battle. Her psychic talent has often helped in locating needed items and places. Epiphani also acts as a quasi-Navigator for the Malescaythe. Being an Unsanctioned psyker, she has no inhibitors and is not soul-bound to the Emperor -- she is therefore a constant danger as well as the subject of an Ordo Hereticus kill-order in 12 Sectors. As she is blind like many seers, she relies on Father for realsight. Ephiphani is addicted to Spook, a potent illegal psychoactive drug. She has an affinity for the Daemonhost Hessian, and being somewhat immature, loves to bait Captain Torres who is insecure about her age and looks. She is currently recovering from the effects of exposure to the Pariah embryo at Nemesis Tessera.Hessian (current member, ex-Klute entourage) - Hessian is an extremely powerful and old Daemonhost known as "The Anathame" or "The Abominate". The daemon is imprisoned in the body of a handsome youth who was previously a vassal (and boy-lover) of Epiphani's father, and it is held in check by arcane under-skin wards grafted into the Daemonhost's body by the latter. Hessian has an affinity for Epiphani, probably due to her Warp-taint, but also because of the host body's previous relationship to her father and their shared experiences. Hessian can be reactivated at will by Klute, who can calibrate the necessary incantations into releasing the host's daemonic essence either fully or partially. Hessian is usually kept in Malescaythe's fortified and warded chapel. Hessian is currently recuperating following a severe mauling by the Grey Knights and exposure to the Pariah embryo at Nemesis Tessera.Father (current member, ex-Klute entourage) - Father is a Servoskull drone constructed around the skull of Epiphani's father. Father maintains a mind-link with her, and its bionic eyes act as her realsight conduit. Father has a vellum-scroll printer installed in its mouth, and some Cogitator ability.Phemus Melchior (former member) - Melchior is an Arch-Magos of the Adeptus Mechanicus, previously assigned to the Xenarite Diagnostic Coven on Vulcraetia. Melchior was a member of Czevak's entourage before he first entered the Black Library. It was Melchior who designed Czevak's cryogenic suspension suit and the Mind Impulse Socket that was a part of his bionics. Melchior accompanied Czevak during his first visit to Craftworld Iyanden, and witnessed the Harlequins' performance. His current status, whereabouts or affiliation remains unknown.Ferdan Kieras (former member, KIA) - Kieras was Czevak's Interrogator and pilot after his return from his first visit to the Black Library. He was previously Klute's Acolyte and pilot. Kieras was killed in a crash-landing during action against Chaos forces over Cadia.Cynthis-Six (former member) - Cynthis-Six was a female Calculus Logi (administrative assistant) of the Adeptus Mechanicus who had been heavily augmented by cybernetics. She had been a member of Czevak's entourage before his first visit to the Black Library. Her current status, whereabouts or affiliation remains unknown.Kressida (former member) - Kressida is a Sister Hospitaller of the Order of the Eternal Candle. Kressida was a member of Czevak's entourage before his first visit to the Black Library. Her current status, whereabouts or affiliation remains unknown.Carodoq (supporter and ally) - Cardinal of the Ecclesiarchy, lead a "citizen's crusade" in the Spurcia Sub-sector to have Czevak declared a Living Saint upon the former's return from his first visit to the Black Library. Czevak considers him "misguided" and a "false friend". His current status, whereabouts or affiliation remains unknown.Una Belphoebe (opportunistic ally, active) - Belphoebe is an Aeldari of the Asuryani faction, an Iyanden-born female Pathfinder and the leader of a contingent of Asuryani Rangers. She is a seeker and purchaser of Spirit Stones and other Aeldari relics, and makes frequent visits to the Eye of Terror, where she trades in archeotech with the Traitor Legions. Una serves as Czevak's occasional trading/bartering counterpart amongst the Aeldari and she helped him during a Xarchos-orchestrated ambush at the Arach-Cyn Archeomarket.Iqbraesil (opportunistic ally, active) - Iqbraesil is an Aeldari and the Senior Farseer of the declining Iyanden craftworld. He is a member of the Black Council that governs the Black Library. Iqbraesil was Czevak's most important Aeldari contact, for it was Iqbraesil who first invited Czevak to visit the Iyanden Craftworld to, among other things, watch a Harlequin performance. Iqbraesil secretly helped Czevak escape the Black Library after his imprisonment there, as the Farseer was convinced of Czevak's future usefulness to the Aeldari.Adara-Ke (opportunistic ally, deceased) - Adara-Ke was Iqbraesil's daughter, and she served as a Guardian-Scribe with 3 standard centuries of service in the Black Library. Adara-Ke served as Czevak's attendant during his 2nd sojourn and imprisonment within the Library. She helped Czevak escape the secret Craftworld and the Webway at her father's request, by giving him the Atlas Infernal from the Black Library's stores of ancient artefacts. To shield herself and her father from suspicion from the Black Council over the escape, she committed suicide by opening the book, whose null psychic energy killed her. |
Bronislaw Czevak - Notable Opponents: Mammoshad (Daemon, banished) - Also known as the "King of Kings, Enslaver of the Craven Worlds and Keeper of the Vault Abyssal," Mammoshad is a Lord of Change, a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch. Millenia before, Mammoshad was subjected to psychic vivisection by a Dark Mechanicus cult called the Daecropsicum, and its pieces were scattered throughout the galactic East. Following Korban Xarchos' manipulations, one piece of the daemon came into Czevak's possession, only to psychologically and mentally torment him. Recently the daemon was the object of a long-running reactivation project by Korban Xarchos and the Thousand Sons. Mammoshad was banished back into the Warp during its rebirth by Czevak through the use of the Pariah embryo.Valentin Malchankov (Inquisitor, Ordo Hereticus, active) - Malchankov was a member of the reactionary Monodominant Puritan faction of the Inquisition, and an implacable opponent of Czevak, whom he considers a dangerous Heretic and Radical "schismatist." Following a particularly heated argument with Czevak, he publicly vowed to hunt him down. His assets include the Black Ship Divine Thunder.Pavlac (Imperial, Witch Hunter) - Pavlac is a Witch Hunter and probably an Inquisitor of the Ordo Hereticus. He actively campaigned against Czevak and any who support him, condemning other Inquisitors and whole worlds. His status after Czevak's return from the Black Library is unknown.Ahriman (Chaos Space Marine, psyker, active) - Ahriman is the mightiest Chaos Sorcerer of the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion after its daemon Primarch Magnus himself, and perhaps the greatest mortal Sorcerer in the galaxy. He is dedicated to the pursuit of a perfect understanding of Chaos and his patron, the Chaos God Tzeentch. For this reason, Ahriman desires nothing more in existence than to enter the Black Library and learn its myriad secrets. Thanks to information gleaned from torturing Czevak, Ahriman managed to once breach the Webway, but was repelled by the Aeldari. Ahriman was injured by exposure to the Pariah embryo at Melmoth's World. Despite his wounds, Ahriman will never stop in his relentless pursuit of Czevak and all he knows.Korban Xarchos (Chaos Space Marine, psyker, deceased) - Xarchos was a Chaos Sorcerer of the Thousand Sons Traitor Legion, and the Equerry and apprentice to Ahriman. Xarchos commanded the Traitor Frigate Rubrician. A shapeshifter, he was slain after being used by Ahriman as a shield against Czevak's Pariah embryo.Eldrad Ulthran (Aeldari Farseer, psyker) - The strongest living psyker and likely the most powerful member of the leaderless Aeldari race was one of the Farseers who most vocally called for Czevak's death while he was in Aeldari custody. However, by the time the Black Council met for the second time to discuss Czevak's fate, Ulthran was away fighting against the 13th Black Crusade of Abaddon the Despoiler. Had Ulthran been present to judge Czevak, Iqbraesil might not have been able to sway the Council in Czevak's favour against the strength of Ulthran's influence. Ulthran is now a major champion of the new Ynnari religious faction in Aeldari politics.Vespasi-Hann (Aeldari psyker - deceased) - Vespasi-Hann was a Harlequin Shadowseer. Part of the Harlequinade assigned to monitor Czevak's activities after he first travelled to Iyanden, because the Inquisitor was considered by the Aeldari to be an "asset" to be used in their undeclared war against Ahriman and the Thousand Sons. Czevak used the Atlas Infernal to kill the Shadowseer during a confrontation within the Webway.Various Harlequins - A Great Harlequin, a Death Jester and others (active). Injured by Czevak's brandishing of the Atlas Infernal during the encounter that resulted in the death of Vespasi-Hann, they retreated from recapturing or killing him.The Black Council (Aeldari political body, active) - This Aeldari advisory body of Farseers drawn from every major Craftworld has in all likeness condemned Czevak to death as a danger to the Aeldari race, and has additionally tasked the Harlequins (who act as the Black Council's enforcers) with retrieving the Atlas Infernal. However there is dissent in the Council and not all members seek Czevak's death (in particular, Iqbraesil of Iyanden is Czevak's strongest supporter on the Council). |
Brontian Longknives - Brontian Longknives: The Brontian Longknives are the highly disciplined regiments of the Astra Militarum conscripted in large numbers from the Hive World of Bront, located within the Golgenna Reach Sub-sector of the Calixis Sector. Despite the high level of violence present on this world, the population of Bront is unusually self-disciplined.The people of Bront favour an assortment of blades over ranged weapons, which typically leaves their bodies scarred during the course of ritualised mass battles using these close combat weapons. These scars are proudly displayed, serving as a mark of experience of an individual warrior's prowess and experience in battle. |
Brontian Longknives - History: The Hive World of Bront is known to be a particularly violent place, yet possesses a level of order and discipline not found on many other Hive Worlds of similar population density. One of the younger Hive Worlds in the Calixis Sector, Bront was founded almost a decade after the end of the Angevin Crusade, as a reward to the 33rd Army Group, the last of the Crusade's forces to be demobilised as the sector fully established itself in the Imperium of Man.While not originally a Hive World, Bront was swiftly industrialised, and was reclassified by the Administratum as a Hive World within a mere thousand standard years of its founding. Bront's populace was formed from the descendants of countless thousands of Imperial Guardsmen and their families who were originally drawn from dozens of different worlds, who had been brought together by the shared experience of conflict. |
Brontian Longknives - The Spinward Front: Brontian regiments are proud to continue in the martial traditions of their ancestors, fighting for the Imperium as their ancestors did generations ago during the Angevin Crusade. With the Calixis Sector still considered relatively young and wild, Brontian regiments are most frequently deployed to relatively local conflicts, from the brutal insurrection of the Meritech Wars, to the mutant uprising on Tranch and the 47 Kapella Pacification. However, an increasing number of Brontians have seen action in warzones further away, particularly with the needs of the Margin Crusade increasing with every passing year.When Duke Severus XIII annexed the worlds beyond the Periphery Sub-sector into the Severan Dominate, Bront increased its recruitment rate, offering a greater tithe of men to the Departmento Munitorum and to Lord Sector Marius Hax in order to punish this transgression against the labours that their ancestors bled for. Dozens of regiments have been thrown into the Periphery and the zone beyond every year, and this seems unlikely to cease as the conflict on the Spinward Front continues to seethe. |
Brontian Longknives - Regimental Culture: The population of Bront have strong traditions of military discipline and ancestral ties to the Imperial Guard, with old regimental affiliations forming a system of clan-houses. These clans form the heart of Brontian society, maintaining ancient traditions from their ancestors' distant homeworlds and instilling a deep sense of loyalty and duty to the God-Emperor in its people. However, the military tradition that defines Brontian culture also ensures that the clans work tirelessly to be ready to defend the Imperium as their ancestors once did. Disputes between clans are resolved through ritualised mass battles, favouring an assortment of blades over pistols, rifles, and other ranged weapons.These ritual battles typically leave little more than scars, which are worn openly where possible to display a warrior's victories and losses, and every Brontian warrior knows and can recount the history of every one of his scars. While most scars are regarded as a sign of experience and honour, a few are viewed with scorn: scars upon a warrior’s back are universally regarded as dishonourable, whether from the bite of a lash to punish a criminal, or from the edge of a blade when fleeing from battle. Ne'er-do-wells and cowards are ill-favoured in Brontian society, and seldom rise to achieve any worthy status once marked as such.The people of Bront grow up surrounded by crowds in the hive cities, and they are used to weaving through even the densest mobs with ease. Brontians seldom endure the horrors of the open sky or suffer the indignities of the great outdoors. |
Brontian Longknives - Regimental Organisation: When recruited into the Imperial Guard, Brontian Longknives regiments are deliberately drawn from multiple clans, with individual companies, platoons or even squads all holding different ancestral affiliations. This means that each Brontian regiment represents the world and its people as a whole, rather than any one element of it, and the bonds of bloodshed formed during ritual battle hold these disparate groups together in spite of their differences. A Brontian knows to respect those he faces in battle for the death they can deliver, and the warriors of the other clans have been faced many times.Individual Brontian Guardsmen are still known to bear their scars openly, and carry their favoured knives about their person, adding new blades to their collection with every campaign survived -- a Brontian soldier's experience can be seen in the scars on his arms, torso and face, and in the knives strapped to his armour. Brontian officers are known to carry the tradition a step further, with an array of swords worn at their belts and over their shoulders, and their scars used to help determine their worth as front-line leaders -- rare is the Brontian officer who achieves a significant rank with dishonour's mark upon his back.Brontian regiments are most commonly infantry, mechanised infantry or light infantry, with Brontian armoured regiments being extremely rare. The Brontian preference and talent for close assaults are ill-suited to armour or artillery regiments, and are better served being placed at the front lines, leading assaults with bayonet charges or ambushing enemy patrols with blackened knives. Some notable exceptions exist, such as the famed Brontian 82nd Armoured, whose Leman Russ Demolisher squadrons were invariably found at the heart of the fighting, pounding enemies and fortifications alike at close range. |
Brontian Longknives - Wargear: What follows is a list of the most common items of wargear issued to the members of the Brontian Longknives regiments:Lasgun - Produced in a multitude of different styles and patterns, the Lasgun can be found in use on almost every world of the Imperium.6 Charge Packs - Charge Packs are powerful capacitor batteries used almost exclusively by Imperial laser weapons. The Charge Pack's size and make varies depending on the class of the weapon. In all cases, it provides shots equal to the weapon's full clip value and can be recharged when emptied.2 Knives - This one-handed melee implement is the ubiquitous back-up weapon for warriors all across the Imperium, be they lowly hive scum or the elite soldiers of a Planetary Governor. Some, such as the Catachan Fighting Knife, are designed for a specific purpose, whilst others are more generic in nature. Brontian regiments are known for their fondness of anything with a blade, carrying an assortment of knives with them at all times.1 Mono Knife - The Mono-Knife is a one-handed melee implement that is one variant of the ubiquitous back-up melee weapon for warriors all across the Imperium, be they lowly hive scum or the elite soldiers of a Planetary Governor. Some, such as the Catachan Fighting Knife, are designed for a specific purpose, whilst others are more generic in nature.3 Frag Grenades - Frag Grenades use a combustible charge and special fillers of shrapnel fragments which make them potent anti-personnel weapons. Imperial Frag Grenades are roughly the size of a clenched fist and covered with a heavily notched shell, both to increase the shrapnel produced and provide a more secure grip for throwing.3 Krak Grenades - Krak Grenades are crafted with powerful concentrated explosives designed to punch holes in armoured targets such as vehicles or bunkers. While stronger than Frag Grenades, Krak detonations do not produce a blast effect and their more focused explosion makes them less practical as anti-personnel weapons.Brontian Longknives Imperial Guard UniformFlak Armour - The most common type of armour used by Imperial Guard forces is Flak Armour, and it is standard-issue combat gear to the countless millions of Imperial Guardsmen who fight on the Emperor's behalf across the galaxy. Many layers of ablative and impact absorbent material go into making each suit, enough to deflect or negate most low-level attacks such as small arms, shrapnel, and proximity blasts. Solid hits from high impact weapons can generally negate it, but given that it is relatively lightweight, cheap to produce, and dependable in most combat situations, many veterans keep using it even when offered something better.Gas Mask - A simple breathing mask that covers the nose and mouth or entire face, these offer much better protection than filtration plugs.Poor Weather GearRucksack4 Weeks RationsMess KitWater CanteenBlanket and Sleep BagRechargeable Lamp–Pack - Sturdy and reliable, glow-globes illuminate many an Imperial paveway and cathedral. Most portable ones are roughly the size of a clenched fist and can shine strong, yellowish light a dozen or so metres in width, lasting roughly five hours before their power pack needs recharging or replacing.Micro-Bead - A micro-bead or comm-bead is a short-range radio wave communication device worn in the ear, good for communications out to about one kilometre (depending on weather conditions and the intervening terrain). Each fits discretely in the ear, with higher craftsmanship models nearly undetectable in casual inspection.Photo-Visor - These advanced lenses are designed to enhance low-level light so that even in the darkest nights its user can see almost as well as in daylight.Grooming KitDog TagsImperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer - A standard-issue Imperial text that covers a vast variety of topics, this book is possessed by all members of the Imperial Guard as part of their standard-issue equipment. The Primer is a basic guide that details everything a Guardsman needs to know: principles and regulations of the Imperial Guard, issued arms, attire, apparatus, and equipment, basic battlefield policy and Imperial Guard organisation and structure, elementary battlefield medical instructions, and a detailed guide on the foes of the Imperium. No Guardsman should ever be found without possession of a copy of the Uplifting Primer for the punishment is severe. |
Brontian Longknives - Notable Brontian Longknives Regiments: 4th Brontian Longknives - The 4th Brontian Longknives are a veteran regiment that has served the Imperium across multiple battlefronts over the past twenty-five years. During that time, they have proven themselves repeatedly against xenos and heretic forces. Their preferred heavy weapon is the Autocannon, while their favoured assault weapon is the Meltagun. Only their command squads are officially assigned Chimera transports. Platoons are disciplined to maintain daily marches of thirty kilometres or more under conditions of light resistance for weeks at a time. Only in situations where troopers need to travel more than a week’s march are they assigned transport. Due to the harsh conditions on their positioned world of Skrynne and the limits to support from the Imperial Navy, the regiment has been forced to convert civilian vehicles for extended troop transits on several occasions. Once pressed into service, the regiment assumes full responsibility for keeping these vehicles fully functional over an extended period. As a light infantry regiment, the 4th Brontian Longknives are well suited to combat the native Ork population. Due to the planet’s relatively low mineral content, those Orks are relatively poorly armed and have few examples of the race’s characteristic vehicles. Sending them to combat such a foe may have been a deliberate choice based upon High Command’s historic knowledge of Skrynne. Unfortunately, the Orks associated with Warboss Tufgob are capable of fielding a substantially higher number of vehicles, most of which they brought with them aboard their Roks. This has led to many situations where the regiment has had to depend upon the efficiency of their Meltaguns against the Ork vehicles. Culturally, the Brontians are extremely disciplined during military situations but tend to cut loose when on leave or even just off duty. They are generally a garrulous lot, who are friendly towards outsiders as long as the outsiders give the appearance of being capable warriors. They look down on those who lack the necessary discipline or talent to be effective warriors. This regiment is also a particularly superstitious lot, as they have seen a number of unholy and unnatural events during past battles against heretical foes. A less proven regiment might even have been disbanded or sent on a suicide mission, as the mere knowledge of some of these events could lead to heresy.5th Brontian Longknives, "the Scar-Sowers" - The current Imperial Guard regiment designated the 5th Brontian Longknives are the fourth to bear the name and traditions, commanded by the daring and charismatic Colonel Ioan Dunnoch. Mustered with the establishment of the Spinward Front, the 5th Longknives have served primarily on Kulth as part of a counter-incursion force based in Fort Drusus, pushing back against Ork assaults wherever they occur with little respite between individual battles. As a front-line assault force, the 5th Brontian have suffered extensive casualties during the years of warfare, but their renown and continued success have seen them bolstered by the remnants of other Brontian regiments. To date, sixteen other Brontian infantry regiments have been consolidated into the strength of the 5th Longknives, creating a force forged by brutal warfare into a brotherhood of hardened veterans. Famous for leading the forlorn hope against the Ork stronghold on Tyrrea, Colonel Dunnoch is a man for whom the horrors of war serve as little discouragement. Ambitious, but with the will and talent to support his aspirations to glory and renown, Dunnoch's rise to command the 5th Longknives (and his increasing notoriety) has seen his regiment placed at the forefront of the onslaught against the Orks, taking their knives and swords to Greenskin flesh. Dunnoch and his regiment have received several commendations from High Command in the Spinward Front for shattering Ork bulwarks and crippling Greenskin offensives, and they have gained a reputation as some of the foremost close-quarters specialists amongst the Imperial Guard regiments staving off the devastating advance of WAAAGH! Grimtoof across the region. The soldiers of the Brontian 5th, informally called the "Scar-Sowers," are proud examples of their world's warriors, strong, quick, and deadly with a blade, loyal and unquestioning, and courageous in the face of the enemy. Their honour is without question and their knives without mercy for the enemies of the Imperium. |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.