War of the Spider Lore

opportunity ability and will many believe the first of these to be beyond their control the weak and ineffectual bemoan their circumstance the cruelty of a galaxy that would not reward their entitled mediocrity the exceptional know that opportunity must be wrought it must be wrestled free opportunity must be ripped raw and bloody from the corpus empiric and those incapable of doing so are forever doomed to lament its absence ability is an altogether more clean cut matter or an either possesses ability or one does not strive toil fight tooth and nail to make more of yourself than the accident of birth as promised it matters not the truly gifted do not strive to attain mastery of their art but rather to keep pace with the rapacious appetites of their own brilliance to such beings all others are but mortal clay to be fashioned as they will such is their right and calling will is simplest of all will is strength when all about you preach weakness will is courage when your peers are cowards all will is the hand that reaches fearless into the fire the eye that does not look away the minds that comprehends that right and wrong are naught but laughable constructs made to tremel the weak will is taking the forbidden step voicing the forbidden thought opening the forbidden door will is doing what you must though all about you wail that you must not with his power opportunity ability and will with these three things i shall break the fetters of mortality and these three things i shall master the secrets of life and death with these three things i shall become a god fabulous bile extract from his mysterious vitalis exacto meditations upon the key to the gates of life and death games workshop psychic awakening war of the spider the emperor's realm reels in the wake of the great rifts opening everywhere madness and mutation run riot and imperial armies fight desperate battles for survival against nightmarish odds chaos is in the ascendant and in few locations is this more true than amidst the flames of war zone cadia long did the fortress world of cadia stand against the furious assaults of aberrant of the spoiler and his 13th black crusade yet it could not stand forever abaddon left cadia a shattered and blasted husk as he swept on towards fresh conquests the warp intercease known as the eye of terror expanded in his wake day by day it swallows more of the region known as the canadian gate and as the tendrils of the warp spread like blood through churning waters one planetary system after another is beset by mass psychic mutation and plagues of madness the core of abaddon's black crusade forces may have accompanied their master towards wars and vigilance but teeming hordes of heretics renegades demons and opportunistic xenos still prey upon the isolated imperial enclaves that remain tides of anarchy and bloodshed sweeps through war's own caviar presenting to some a golden opportunity to further their own twisted agendas fabius bile is one such profiteer of misery emerging from his stronghold deep within the eye of terror the spider spins a new web of cruelty and perversion working through puppet warlords and experimental subjects he has drawn in foes from both the death guard and the elite agents of the imperium he seeks to reap a nightmarish bioharvest from these assembled enemies so as to further his latest malign schemes yet they are dangerous quarries indeed baal's forces are outnumbered and he will require all of his wicked cunning if he is to emerge victorious from this war he has begun a convergence of prey fabulous bile's campaign against the forces of the death guard and the imperium took place amidst the ward-torn ruins of the canadian gate its seeds were sown elsewhere however some in the benighted squirt stars and others upon the bloody soil of the world of classider cassider had long been the chapter planet of the brazen drakes noble and selfless defenders of humanity the brazen drakes had fought in the emperor's name for over five thousand years amidst the darkness of the noctisa turner however everything changed some believe that their chapter master argento quarion had been concealing latent psychic abilities for years others claimed that they manifested as a result of the great rift's baleful influence whatever the truth by the time the dr saturna had ended colin and over half his chapter had turned renegade accounts of the brutal civil war that followed could fill a volume of their own how corian renamed himself the enlightener of his faithful disciples how their conflict with their loyalist former brethren spiraled out to consume three entire imperial systems her last the base and drakes were defeated by the torchbearer task force charged with delivering primaries gene tech to the once loyal space marines the enlightener and the ragged remains of his warriors fled final retribution they made for the nachmund gauntlet and the perception of safety offered by the lawless wilds beyond in the wake the torchbearer fleet commanded by adeptus custodes shield captain atal taivor destroyed the gene tech they had brought with them and executed the handful of surviving brazen drake grey shields as the taint of their chapters heresy run through their veins typha then vowed that he and his fleet would hunt the enlightener to the ends of the galaxy and set off in furious pursuit little did they suspect the news of the brazen drake's perfidy had made it back to terra by secret channels and that another imperial force was mobilizing elite assets to track koryan down and slay him new schemes fabius bar's path converged with that of the enlightener by chance deep within the war-torn expanse of the canadian gate the primer janitor was ever a master opportunist and soon turret happenstance to his advantage barle was laboring in service to a brand new scheme one he had conceived of even as the galaxy rised with the opening of the great drift speculation was right throughout the eye of terror and beyond as to what the spider might be planning another attempt at cloning or creating his own primark the fashioning of some dread new altered army development of a weapon that could lay low robut gilman or indeed any other similarly godlike being barl himself had revealed nothing of his schemes even to his closest lieutenants but he moved with a purpose through the mayhem and horror of the imperium nihilus that purpose had first manifested in the theft of a mighty arcane artifact that had originally been bestowed upon the death guard by none other than the great unclean one rotagus himself named arc cornu contagious this gruesome gift of nurgle seethed was warped melody that triggered catastrophic and uncontrolled bodily regeneration in its victims to the unnatural physiologies of the death guard this was a boon for the ark's foul emissions allowed them to heal battle damage faster than their foes could inflict it to any other being however the relic's effect was a monstrous blight that soon reduced even the mightiest warrior to a heaving mound of diseased flesh and ruptured blabbery inherds what uses ball could have for such a perilous and revolting artifact was the secret he kept to himself regardless at the head of a ragtag alliance of renegade warbands he had braved the perils of the newly conquered scourge stars and successfully made off with the ark safely swaying it with a potent stasis field that campaign had lost boyle all but a handful of his followers however now he fled back towards the eye of terror through the royal and warped storms of the imperium nihilus with typhus himself at his heels bile could not flee directly back to his lair in the eye of terror lest he bring the wrath of the death god down upon it he needed fresh allies who could help him dissuade his pursuers before he made good his escape fate or perhaps the dark guards sent him the enlightener karyan had not been idle since reaching war zone cadia he had claimed the tainted fortress world of dessar for his base and had reforged the brazen drakes into a warband calling themselves the shriven who now fought under the colours of abaddon's black legion yet corian had caught wind of the vengeful imperial pursuit even now bearing down upon him thus even as biles saw in the shriven an army he could turn against his pursuers so they believed that with the primer janitor's gifts they would be strong enough to crush the imperial agents coming for their heads it was a diabolic alliance of mutual mistrust and one that bile soon turned to his twisted advantage ambush on limaxis by the time fabius bile joined his forces to the black legionaries of the shriven typhus and his plague flee were close on his heels recognizing that swift action was crucial bail wasted no time convincing the enlightener to mobilize his forces in exchange for certain gifts of augmentation the poisonous light of a mutant star painted the brutish towers and redoubts of dissa as fabius bile violin argento korean cemented their alliance baal co-opted a sprawling suit of bio-wooded vaults within which to continue his great works he concealed the arc cornucontageous behind runic rocks and servita guns then set his acolytes to work augmenting an initial wave of shriven warriors the enlightener it seemed had lost none of the strategic calling or charisma from his days as a loyalist chapter master while saw evidence of not only a producers private army of heretics startees serving at korean's whims but also hordes of cultists mutants and rogue psyches as well as a menacing complement of traitor warships to prowl the void beyond assad's orbital envelope bar knew he could do much with such resources but time was of the essence even as he worked upon korean's bioaugmentations in person the spider urged his new employer to swift action against the approaching threats though he was initially fixated upon his imperial pursuers the enlightener soon grasped the two scale of the more immediate peril presented by typhus death guard he might have been expected to fly into a rage when he realized the size of the army that pursued his new ally he did not the elixirs bile had injected him with had made corian stronger but also plunged the hooks of addiction and dependency into his soul coupled with certain subtle but invasive augmentations the spider had wrought within his nervous system the enlightener was now fabulous biles creature whether he wished it or no warp auguries by korean slave sorcerers suggested that typhus's flagship the dreaded terminus est was but days for mick from exiting the warp above dasa worth the omens told of a fleet of plagueship sailing in his polluted wake all of them packed her the gun walls with the diseased worshipers of nurgle if typhus force was allowed to attack the shriven in such strength then the fight might well go ill for bile and his new allies even if they prevailed against the traveller the shriven would be decimated left powerless to stop the imperial forces also drawing closer by the day a preemptive strike was required to bleed typhus forces so badly that their attack would stall or be called off altogether the enlightener suggested the world of lim access though dessar shared its local space with a handful of gas giants and radiation-based hellscapes limaxus was the only nominally habitable planet that now lay between typhus and his quarry in the wake of whatever catastrophe destroyed its cities limaxis oceans had risen to swallow all but one of its landmasses this region now known only as the drowning wastes had become a swampy morass from which rose the rusting cadavers of dead high cities along abandoned imperial fortifications such terrain was hardly the ideal theater in which to face the relentless death guard or the corrupting plagues but with their strategic options limited bile and corian elected to proceed moving fast the enlightener mobilized almost half of his military assets he and bile laid a formidable force into the void towards him access accompanied by the first batch of grotesquely altered shriven known as the terrata and augmented with certain arcane technologies the bile had accumulated over his long years their plan was set the spider was determined to drive typhus from his trail and cared little for what this would cost his allies dangerous prey since departing the scrooge stars upon bile's trail typhus and his victorians had been guided by the otherworldly senses of caged demonic predators the vile liquid entities had followed the spider's psychic spore with much ill-natured hissing and bubbling but when they suddenly went into a rabid frenzy typhus took note surely suddenly he was all but on top of his prey the terminus s tore its way through the ectoplasmic meniscus of real space like a putrid maggot bursting from the flesh of a corpse wallowing plague ships followed it out all of them quickly detecting the frantic distress cause echoing across long-range rocks it was the work of moments to confirm that the coral signifiers belonging to the wretch the warship aboard which bile had made good his escape some weeks earlier the vessel hung in low orbit over a nearby world its warp engines dead its blast riddle hull bleeding atmosphere there are last signs aboard but they were faint suspecting a trap typher selected not to board the crippled craft instead he commanded carefully targeted salvos of lance fire that shot out the wretch's remaining engines and sunk it shuddering down into the planet's atmosphere let the ship crash down upon that marshy world typhus thought the ark was an artifact blessed by nurgle himself and would come to no harm as for baal and whatever followers he had left typhus doubted they would prove as durable it seemed as though someone survived toward the wretch however the ship fired emergency atmospheric thrusters that turned its plunge into a graceless glide and saw it splashed down a few miles south of a toppled high spire the impact was enough to tear the wretch in two and leave its inner strewn across a dozen miles of swampland typhus did not care he ordered his ships to settle in orbit then led a substantial invasion force down to the surface to claim his prize and ideally bile's rotting head ross pogba landers and attack craft rumbled down through the maxis's atmosphere foul pollutants and unholy plague spores trailing behind them one by one the noxious vessels settled in the planet's shallow waters and spread slicks of foulness across the surface throwing clouds of plague flies boiled from the lander's noisome interiors as plague marines diseased cultists and bloated demon engines disembarked in great number plague burst crawlers threw up great fans of putrid mud as their treads churned in the filth led by typhus trusted lieutenants the war bands waded through the mire and took up positions upon islands of comparative solid ground around the crash site typhus and his entourage of blightboard terminators entered the wreck following flickering energy signatures to where they believed bile must have concealed ark typhus was more than displeased when instead of his precious relic he found himself confronted with a rabble of half-dead slave clones and an extremely large bomb the explosion sent rolling waves through the swap water and blazing wreckage crashing down amidst the alarm death guard before its echoes had even died away the traitor vox channels filled with gurgling cries of distress from on high the plague ships were under attack slipping from behind the concealment of bars pilfered and retrofitted cormorate night shields four shriven warships dove into the midst of tyson's unsuspecting plague fleet the dark of the void lit up with flickering lance fire and the rippling fire blooms of broadside after broadside as the black legionaries punished their diseased enemies for their caution the lamentation was destroyed entirely its blazing wreckage filling the lamaxian skies with streaks of fire as it broke up the moriband the fricate gift and the rancid blade were all heavily damaged recognizing that their position was untenable the last three untouched plague ships broke orbit amidst flurries of diseased ordnance and drove for clear space in the hopes of reforming and launching a determined counter-attack dread core drop pods and armored gunships streaked down from the launch base of the shriven cruisers bearing bail corian and their followers to war at the same time advanced bands of terrata who had landed on the planet the day before and advanced under a blanket of saucers concealment hurled themselves at the death guard defenses the sample bolters in the boom of heavy artillery echoed across the fetid marshes as typhus's forces lit fly altered warriors dropped thrashing and gushing boiling i-corps as their wounded bodies self-destructed bed claws hit their mire amidst immense plumes of dirty water disgorging squads of black legionaries who hammered the death guard with range fire then charged their positions with chainsaws howling the enlightener himself hovered from his transports ramp surrounded by a furious psychic corona drifting into the battle with beams of ravening warp energy leaping from his blazing eyes bal meanwhile shadowed his puppet warlord his clipped orders sending in howling bands of altered warriors to drive back any plague marines who looked to be staging a breakout the death guard positions recoiled and contracted like wounded mollusks plague cultists died in droves herded mercilessly into the ambushers guns in order to give their masters the chance to stage a fighting retreat using the wreckage of the wretch recover typhus warriors dug in and kept firing other forces might have panicked or been overrun as the shriven pressed home their attack but the death guard are known for their tenacity above all things and they displayed it now their face was rewarded as a terrible droning buzz filled air and wreathed in the demonic insect swarms of the destroyer hive typhus led his surviving blight lords from the burning heart of the wreck scorched wounded but very much alive the traveler rallied an armored fist of demon engines about him before launching a spearhead assault that butchered more than two dozen terrata and stalled the black leisure momentum as enemy pounded his warriors with harassing fire and probed for weaknesses typhus used the power of a slave sorcerer to contact his plague ship captains in orbit what he learned gave the death guard fresh heart successfully reforming their line the plague ships filth monger vermin curse and lipper's blood had driven the shrivens cruisers back mauling both the hand of darkness and the bloodied talon in the process twice's captains requested permission to press their attack and smash the smallest driven fleet but the traveler refused instead he had the least damaged of his ship's former blockade to hold his driven craft at bay meanwhile the moribund and the rancid blades settled low in lamaxis's atmosphere and unleashed carefully targeted creeping bombardments as lance beams and plague bombs streamed down from on high the outermost shriven support elements suddenly found themselves in the midst of a devastating firestorm herded inwards by the encircling fire patterns bile and his forces found themselves caught between ruinous detonations to their rear and the thunderous guns of the death guard to the fore worse was to follow as fresh waves of death guard made planet fall amid storms of fire to the north south east and south west of the crash site from their lowered ramps it should wave upon wave of playgroud and pox walkers the grinning groaning zombies spilled from their landing craft like vomit and encircled the black legion with the horrible inevitability of a wasting sickness it appeared that the ambushers were now caught in their own barbed web the limaxis offensive had never been intended as a fight to the death however and bile and korean had their contingencies in place vox signals flashed northwards to wear three of the brazen drake's renegade thunderhawks and an ancient emperor's children stormbird waited amidst the shadows of a rusting imperial hangar not for nothing had barr conditioned his slave clones to bring the wretch down where they had tangled screens of foliage burned away as the four heavy gunships burst from concealant with a scream of powerful engines blitzing the death guard's northernmost landing site as they went the aircraft made for the looming hulk of a drowned hab block that had been designated as the black legion extraction site led by corian and the last of bile's first wave of terrata the spider's surviving forces cut a bloody path through the groaning pox walkers to reach the stumped habstack post-human warriors were dragged down and buried by mounds of grinning never dead their armor peeled off them bit by bit their islands is smashed out and questing fingers thrust into the jellied orbs beneath yet with bars augmented warriors rending hacking and bludgeoning at the foe and korean psychic blast reducing sways of pox walkers to ash the black legion reached their objective bile himself led the push up the hamstacks tilted creeper hung stairways and was the first to reach the lowered boarding ramp of his storm bird death on bearston with the immediate threat staved off the shriven found themselves with a window of time in which to gather their strengths and plan their next moves however cracks were already appearing in the alliance between bile and the enlightener in the days following their triumphal return from limaxis the shriven moved with even greater confidence they had outmaneuvered and to their minds out fought typhus himself having seen how ferociously the torata fought they were able to gloss over the horrors of the warrior's demise and baal found himself with no shortage of willing test subjects for his surgeries warbands of shriven took to the warp aboard swift frigates returning with more luckless raw materials for his elixirs and experience the spider worked busily day and night but argento korean was less than delighted with baal's success the enlightener was sharply conscious that day by day his authority was being undermined with bile's compounds running through his veins he could not bring himself to act against the parasite he had invited into his fortress he could however remind his followers who their true master was this he resolved to do auguries and demonic whispers revealed that the imperial retribution force was now only a handful of short jumps away corian sears told him that his enemies had halted in the bellis corona system and were currently in orbit over the world of bearstown prime corrine announced that he would not cower and wait for his enemies to beard him in his lair instead he mustered all but the most essential garrison forces and took shape at once for the bellas corona system baal accompanied him at the head of his latest batch of altered warriors yet he had little interest in supporting what he saw as the enlightener's posturing instead val had his own agenda upon best and prime on hostile currents shield captain taiva had led his torchbearers to the war-torn nachmund gauntlet through the fringes of war-torn vigilance and on into the very limb of the eye of terror he and his comrades remained strong their purpose unwavering but their road had been perilous indeed even with a full cadre as silent sisters scattered across their craft each warp jumped through the storms of the imperium nihilus had been hellish they had faced hostile forces time and again they had suffered losses now with their quarry close at hand in the moment of truth almost upon them shield captain tyver had elected to re-arm and repair his surviving forces before running his prey to ground typha's hopes of refitting at the naval docks of bellis corona were dashed that mighty fortress was beset by myriad foes and what resources it had were required to keep its own fleets operational instead tyvar's task force settled into high orbit about barest and prime in hopes that the tech maggai who ran its famed duralia mines could be prevailed upon to affect repairs in fact the torchbearers found a world abandoned and fallen into ruin what catastrophe had overtaken barristan prime was unclear but repeating warning cycles across every vox frequency beseeching all to avoid this cursed world in the omniscience name taiva was in no mood to heed such ghostly deterrence however not when allspecs confirmed vast quantities of refined uralium languishing in rusted silos within a complex signified as refinery 16. giving his own tech adepts to make what repairs they could upon his warships the shield captain led his forces to the surface they dove through its furious electric storms to claim the resources they required such was the imperial disposition when the enlightener and his fleet tore their way from the warp into bellis corona system swift and powerful though they were the imperial warships were in the midst of repairs heavy shuttles plied the void between the ships and the surface refinery presented with the sudden threat of an advancing black legion fleet shield captain taiva's ships could do little more than fend off the heretic ships with battery fire and do what they could to protect the vulnerable ore shuttles the enlightener had little interest in the imperial ships however his quarry lay on the planet below for he had sworn before all his warriors that he would slay at altaivar in single combat the enemy's fleet could be dealt with later once the warriors they transported had been slain on korean's orders flights of armored gunships and combat landers flied from the embarkation decks of his cruisers escorted by flights of black legion helldrakes they swept down upon bearston's equatorial mining planes and isolated life signs around refinery 16. the leading shriven dropships were met by ferocious anti-aircraft fire baivar had woken the server crews of the refinery's icarus turret now the weapons tracked and span barrel stumping as they fired clouds of flak shells up at the descending craft hail drake's pinwheeled away training frames of wing fragments a heavy lander detonated raining wreckage and blazing bodies down upon the refinery it was bile who gave the order for the shriven to redirect their assault sending their dropship swooping away towards the small industrial spaceport a mile to the south solid utilitarian assemblages of landing pads and outbuildings all connected to the refinery by mag rails set atop high rocky causeways shield captain tyvar had set squads of custodians to defend each of them as the striven craft swept down one after another upon the southern port however it rapidly became clear that the odds were impossible even for warriors of the adaptor's custodies shrugging off hammering volleys of fire from the drop ships the custodians fell back with their guardian spears blazing and flared along the causeway corion and his shriven were right on their heels bile for his part hung back marshalling a sizeable force of terrarta before following more cautiously in the enlightener's wake his approach proved prudent as halfway through the causeway a band of virtuous player to a struck they had streaked in low using the rocky bulk of the causeway to mask their approach now they reared suddenly interview amidst the howl of powerful engines and subjected the shriven to a punishing salvo of missiles as they did the retreating custodies turned and let fly explosions tore heretic astartes apart a shriven predator detonated with a fiery roar chunks of its wreckage spinning away ablaze the enlightener's furious oath echoed across the lighting lash planes the air quivered with empiric tension before the altered sorcerer unleashed a furious stormless psychic energies into the causeway even the vaunted aegis of the emperor was not enough to stop this explosion of raw force which hurled three of the custodians from the causeway and sent two dawn eagle jet bikes spinning away to explode on the hard bedrock below again the surviving imperial forces fell back and again the shriven gave chase again bile hung back amidst the bulk of the assault force watching with detached interest as corian and his chosen warriors reached their rail head in the shadows of the refinery's towers here the imperial forces struck back baltis and flamers roaring as squads of null maidens sprung an ambush of their own even bile recoiled the null aura that the silent sisters projected while korean front and center in the renegade battle lines howled in agony at the sudden stifling of his empiric senses the attack might have faltered there and then but by our histories of his own altered warriors and flesh-twisted bikers bullied their way to the fore with bile in their midst and hurled themselves at the outnumbered foe at the same time the surviving hell drake swept back in the draconic shadows crisscrossing the engagement area as warp flames belt from their moors once more the imperial forces fell back in good order leaving their fallen blazing or bottle riddled in their wake this time the enlightener halted he has successfully claimed a beachhead upon the rocky plateau that housed the refinery proper but only thanks to bile's quick thinking conscious that his control was slipping and perhaps his sanity with it the enlightener fought to think clearly and strategize snapping out orders he broke his surviving warriors into several smaller war bands each supported by obliterators and demon engines each led in by squads of rhino apcs who could watch for further traps as the shriven pushed forward all specs showed the majority of the foe gathered around the macro silos at the refinery's heart and so the shriven pushed their way through the tangle of rusted machinery creaking cranes and abandoned structures barl however split a small force off from the main advance corium was only too happy to see him go ordering only the bar should stay out of his way the spider for his part was also pleased for here was a rare chance to harvest fine specimens for his work for his great work he vanished into the gloomy alleys between the refinery's towering buildings taking with himself squads of his most heavily altered followers as well as a gaggle of gibbering acolytes clad in rubberized surgical gear again the imperial forces stuck at the shriven and again now though the heretic astartes met them with disciplined fire and vicious counter-assaults that saw even the attemptus of custodies driven back at first corian led the way into the refinery central processing yard amidst blizzards of psychic fire there the shriven met the main strength of the imperial force and had their master been in his right mind they might have rethought their assault shield captain tyvar had gathered a formidable force of custodians of null maidens around him venerable contempted dreadnoughts and even land raiders rumbled in support yet biles twisted surgery had done terrible things to the enlightener and to many of his followers unable to restrain their psychotic battle lust they hurled themselves into a maniacal charge and battle was joined as the fighting raged none noticed a dark figure that crouched amidst the rustling walkways of a micro silo high above the figure stayed still as death a long and deadly looking rifle cradled in its hands bile heard it all from a distance the muffled thunder of gunfire and a clash of blades echoing to where he and his warriors stalked in the shadows they had circumnavigated the refinery until they reached a separate causeway that connected to another of the complex's spaceports as bile had hoped a single custodian warden with an understrength squad of null maidens lingered here they were clearly dying to join the battle but duty compelled them to watch over the continued efforts of heavy servitors still ferrying shipments of duralium into waiting mag cartridges and thence to the shuttles docked at the spaceport below only too god to offer his enemies a taste of the fighting they had been denied baal loosed his terrarta on them altered warriors surged forward with lunatic howls shrugging off direct hits from bolt rounds and a slashing kiss of powered blades deformed limbs and heads spun away as the imperial warriors hacked and huge furiously yet barle's warriors were relentless they felt neither pain nor fear blood shot eyes bulging and foul appendages thrashing as they surrounded their victims and sought not to kill them but to wound weaken and finally grapple them to the ground as the fight turned his way bile stove forward the rod of torment tapping with every pace with surgical precision the spider shot each of his victims in turn aiming for exposed armored joints and bed flesh his xylos needler hissed like a serpent as it spat one dart after another each loaded with tremendously powerful paralyzing toxins of barle's own manufacture as each victim fell biles twisted acrolytes descended on them and dragged them away into the shadows only now that he had his harvest did the spider turn and lead the last of his altered warriors back to korean's aid he arrived in time to see the shriven hard-pressed and teetering upon the brink of collapse the enlightener himself however was hanging suspended in a corona of witchfire eyes blazing and hands outstretched as he drove shield captain tyvar to his knees it was then that the echoing crack of a high-powered sniper rifle cut the din of battle corian jerked in mid-air blood puffed from the side of his skull his fires blinked out in a heartbeat and his body crashed heavily to the ground the battle ended in that moment in the route that followed only the martial might of the shriven allowed them to execute a fighting retreat to their drop craft amidst the mayhem and bloodshed biles terrata bore the twitching body of argento corian from the field bar led them gunning down the few loyalists who bought his path smiling all the while the unraveling web bile and the sarving shriven retreated to dessar falling back to their fortresses high battlements and gun emplacements with the enlightener apparently slain his former followers looked to bar for leadership they were his creatures now just as he had planned all along yet peril drew closer by the day the shriven sears wailed of not one but two foes drawing closer with every passing hour in desperation some amongst the warband besieged fabulous bile to aid them while others muttered darkly that the spider had already done more than enough for his part bayer was satisfied with events he had not predicted corian's fall upon barristan and had some grey suspicions about it to others but he had been quick to capitalize upon this unexpected boon bile had made great strides behind the sealed doors of his laboratory now he sought to make good his escape bar gathered the shriven within the enlightener's grand throne room and addressed them he spoke of his desire to see these invaders crushed both the filth-ridden death guard and the presumptuous corpse worshipers he could do it he said but not without the complete loyalty of the remaining shriven this was at last too much for our argento korean surviving chosen tempers flared as they accused the rest of the warband of being duped they called bile an opportunist ghoul cursed the day he had come to desire and laid the enlightener's death firmly at barr's feet at this the spider merely smiled and signaled his surgeon acolytes to unveil his last masterpiece argentinkorian was much changed the part of his brain not destroyed by the round passing through his skull had been scooped out by basque churrogans the altered golem that stalked into the throne room was the enlightener in name only bulging red eyes stared from a face riven with stitch marks scarified runes and wires his armor strained to contain his muscle bolt physique pipes and tubes gurgled with weird fluids flushing through corian's armor and body alike unbridled psychic potential crackled around the enlightener though with his skull emptied of its contents all but fabulous bar wondered how such a thing could be done how such a thing could be incensed those loyal to corian's former incarnation went for their blades the enlightener annihilated them with beams of psychic fire bile asked again for the loyalty of the shriven and this time standing over the black and mangled remains of their former comrades they agreed to a man bob planned to augment every remaining shriven chaos space marine he ordered all defenders concentrated within dasao's primary bastion which was partially built into a tower mountain into a towering mountain he commanded that the outer defenses be demolished at laced with booby traps ensuring his enemies would have to come at him through a lethal killing zone when the foe attacked the enlightener and the shriven were to stand firm in the fortress's defense drawing the foe in and pinning them before the wars only then would barle unleash his master stroke a flight of modified helldrakes would belch neurotoxin fumes over the battle barl assured his followers this would leave them untouched while driving the death guard and imperial warriors into a murderous frenzy with their enemies lost to madness and tearing one another apart bile and the remaining shriven could flee aboard a swift frigate and slip away into the warp frenzied preparations followed barle's pronouncements and the primary bastion was ready by the time typhus's plague ships appeared above dessar the traveller had not been idle practical raids of neighboring systems had yielded the resources to repair his vessels he had gathered cultists from several different worlds and swollen his depleted ranks further by the addition of thousands upon thousands of pox walkers now he was coming for the ark corner contagious and for revenge the surviving shriven warships attempted to use bile's knight shields to um to ambush the death guard again this time typhus was ready he had sped tracker entities across his fleet and given each of them the warp center the shriven thus even as the black legion cruisers pounced they found gun batteries primed and pointed right at them explosive carnage field tessar's orbital envelope wreckage rained down as flaming meteorites through the planet's atmosphere when the battle barge drake rampant attempted a desperate and horribly misjudged boarding assault against the terminus est the battle swung in typhus favor soon enough the rusting played riddled hulk of the drake rampant was tumbling away while death guard landers swept up down upon the primary bastion descartes forces landed in great number amidst the fortress's outer defenses booby traps detonated as shambling swarms of pox walkers triggered them so numerous were that inevitable that the fiery blasts made barely a dent behind them came bands of plague marines escorting batteries of plague burst crawlers the demonic artillery spoke again and again lofting hails of blight-laden shells through the air to slam against the fortress's walls soon enough they had blasted a wide and rotting breach judging masses of infantry made for the yawning rent in the fortress's walls but here the enlightener and his shriven counter-attacked furiously blasts of psychic force plowed through to pox walkers and heard their broken corpses left and right altered warriors tore their shambling foes apart sorting swathes of them for every terrata that was dragged down untoward into bits yet all was but a distraction even as the fighting raged down below unclean energies flashed and crackled within the fortress typhus and his terminator retinues stepped from them with grim resolve they had come for the ark and for biles head and the sorceress or specces within their corrupt helms told them that both were nearby barle was alerted to his peril by the thunder of servature guns and the howling of demonic guardian entities he had labored at his great works up to the last moment but now he was concerned that his obsessive desire to keep experimenting might have led him to linger too long surgeon acolytes began stowing his samples and wheeling by a sarcophagi into anti-grav transit racks but bile knew that if typhus was not slowed then they would never escape regretfully the spider activated his latest batch of altered warriors the very finest of his creations from dasar raving and frothing the twisted monsters burst from the lab and surged into battle it was now as the battle raged the taiva and his torchbearers arrived over dassar acting swiftly the shield captain gathered what all specs and pig data he could formulated a robust plan then led his forces down through the plant's atmosphere aboard armored gunships the craft streaked in low hugging dessar's rock rocky terrain to avoid detection as a furious battle spread out before them the bulk of the imperial forces peeled off and made for the death guard's rear lines the gilded gunships delivered adapters custodiaes and sis and silent sisters into the ruins where they struck at the demon engine still pummeling the fortress fighting raged through the ruins as custodians hacked apart mythic blighthaulers and salvos of blightshells laid gleaming imperial heroes low and one by one the plague burst crawlers were blasted to scrap with the enemy guns silenced the adapters custodies and nile maidens turned for the breach their orders would hack a path through the besieging hordes to where the enlighteners still fought and now the threat of plague bombardment had been removed engaged the turncoat sorcerer meanwhile a pair of imperial gunships drew level with one of the primary bastion's upper casemates they blasted a ragged hole in the structure then lowered their ramps and discouraged shield captain taiva and two full squads of alaris custodians into the fortress's halls taiwan's warriors had made positive identification of fabius bile during the fighting on barristan prime and taiva knew that he had to try to slay the lost heretic moreover several of tyvar's warriors had gone missing during that fight and he had little doubt the bile was to blame as he led his warriors through the fortress's corridors towards the sound of battle the shield captain hoped he could rescue those comrades from bars twist administrations minutes later fabian's bio emerged from his laboratory and straight into the midst of a gun battle typhus and his surviving terminators were trading furious volleys of fire with the advancing shield captain and his alaris custodians their conflict blocking bars route to freedom with the star the primogenitor launched himself into the fight even as typhus bellowed in recognition barr raised his zyklos needler raining toxic rounds upon his enemies and sending a blight lord terminator crashing to the ground several of bile surgeon acolytes were gunned down as they frantically shoved their grave reliquaries through the vicious crossfire and even bile himself grunted with pain as he was shot several times his chirogan clicking madly as it sought to seal his wounds seeing his quarry about to escape typhus launched a headlong charge with his man reaper swinging before the weapon could connect bayern the last of his underlings vanished to another armored bulkhead that sealed behind him with a hiss and a clang the next moment typhus found himself faced with the vengeful shield captain and his iris custodians a glance at the ragged remains of his retinue told typhus that this was a fight he could not win spitting a vow to have his vengeance upon buyer he chanted an incantation and was raised in a roaring swarm of plague flies when they dissipated the traveler was gone leaving the last of his warriors to face the fury of tyver and his companions alone at the breach the enlightener and his berserk warriors had torn and blasted so many foes the mountains of dead lay around them yet their numbers too were dwindling it was now that the execution force struck first came a rifle round fired from atop a ruined spire the enlightener's head snapped up and he obliterated the bullet in mid-air with a psychic blast the empiric bolt roared on back up the shot's trajectory to impact with killing force amidst the explosion a ruined black-clad figure tumbled blazing to its death next came the calendars morphing into two formers as she suddenly emerged from midst and lightness shocked cultists her neural shredder hulled as she blasted first one shriven tarata then another and another flipping over her forth the calendar swept her face sword around to decapitate the altered warrior then drove the blade into the enlightener's chest the sorcerer roared with pain then blasted the lies assassin backwards in a mound of corpses with another psychic pulse yet his bellow of triumph became a hole of agony as a beam of raw darkness hit him banishing his psychic powers in an instant the enlightener looked up to see the eerie figure of a collector's assassin flickering towards him before the sorcerer could regain his powers the skull masked figure of an ever sore assassin tore through a knot of terrate like an artillery shell and plowed into him the frenzied assassin talked madly at the enlightener one hand was blown off by a bolt round from the from the eversource executioner pistol before the assassin's hypodermic talons sunk deep into the enlightener's face one eye punctured flesh blackening with toxins the altered sorcerer grabbed his assailant by the throat lifting him high and snapping the assassin's neck with more psychokinetic force the enlightener enjoyed a moment of triumph before the eversaw's blood chemistry went into critical meltdown and his body exploded with the force of a demolition charge as the dust settled the raptured corpse of the enlightener finally twitched its last their mission completed the calexus and wounded caledus vanished into the anarchy of the battle yet in truth the conflict was done a few tattered handfuls of shriven remained leaderless lost to madness or for fleeing wildly as a war band they were utterly spent word had reached the death guard meanwhile that their master had returned to the plague freedom and had ordered them to fall back their quarry had escaped again full of bitterness and disgust the plague marines quit the field less than a quarter of shield captain taiwan's original forces remained to link up deep within the fortress and purge the revolting horrors remaining within bios abandoned laboratory with their target slain but their comrades lost to bars clutches tyver believed it essential that word of what they had witnessed should find its way back to the imperial authorities this would be his new duty thus the imperial warriors collected their fallen lamented their last and left the canadian gate behind them as for fabian's bar he was not seen again upon the tsar his ship had slipped away a light frigate ghosting through the orbital debris fields and the last flickering exchanges of the void war before punching into warp space and making good its escape the primary generator had work to do upon urum and he did not mean for it to be delayed you

Channel: Baldermort's Guide to Warhammer

Views: 88,539

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Id: 599-KjHeJhU

Length: 50min 43sec (3043 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 10 2020