Editing Battle of Rai (section)

===Plague Marines vs. The Entombed===

In preparation for the battle Wilmut Sachs unleashed untold horrors upon Rai. He crafted the Sea of Woe, which was filled not with water, but with countless colonies of pestiferous bacteria. Its shores were stalked by megamoebae, pathogenic germs the size of a Land Speeder that constantly oozed diseased slime. More conventional plagues were also created in anticipation of the Entombed, such as Red Scythe that turned the erythrocytes in the blood of its victim into miniature needles, thus turning his blood vessels into barbed wire, or Strongman's Bane that caused all of the muscles in the body of the diseased to contort to their maximum extent until they ripped his body apart. High Genetor's Plague Marines fortified strategically important positions with walls made from corpses of plague victims glued together with pus. Ever jovial, they spent their time awaiting the arrival of the Entombed sitting around methane bonfires gargling cheerful limericks about terminal diseases.

The fun ended very quickly when the first crypt-shaped drop pods of the Entombed crashed into the pestilent mud of Rai, releasing countless enraged dreadnoughts upon the minions of Sachs. Their leader, the saturnine Cardinal Merik, was obsessed with vengeance for his fallen Primarch to the point of lunacy. Driven to a frothing frenzy by self-flagellation and the Cardinal's fulminating demagogy, the Entombed hit the ranks of the Plague Marines like a tidal wave, shaking off any damage they received in process. The Loyalists ignored mortal wounds, lost limbs and concussions, fighting until the last drop of blood left their veins. Some even continued to rabidly lash out with their chainswords for several minutes after their heads had been sliced off by a corrupted Apothecary's bonesaw. The Plague Marines were pushed back by this irresistible force, but they knew that the time was on their side: no force in the Galaxy could keep up such an exhausting assault for long.

After several hours of ceaseless fighting, it finally appeared that the Loyalists were running out of steam and their offensive was grinding to a halt. With gleeful cackling, Sachs ordered his forces to regroup and begin a counter-offensive, priming to smash the pestersome foe to a pulp. Alas, it appeared that he merely fell into a trap prepared for him by Cardinal Merik. Before his orders were even delivered to the soldiers, the Entombed suddenly pulled back, and from their midst in there rolled an imposing pitch-black Land Raider encrusted with reliquaries. Merik himself rose up from the opened hatch, a strange artefact of clearly Xenos origins clutched firmly in his fist. Although Sachs had no way of knowing the proper name of the peculiar relic or its intended purpose, he could feel the godlike alien power oozing from it, too potent to be contained by ancient technosorcery, and this feeling made him afraid for the first time in a long while. It's been long since he had lost his fear of death, pain didn't bother him and his soul was far too black to fear moral suffering; and yet, the contents of the mysterious artefact Merik held in his hands made High Genetor tremble with terror.

The concept of humour was utterly alien to Merik - he was infamous for killing several people for attempting to joke. And yet, he laughed as he pressed a glyph on the alien artefact's surface and threw it to the ground before the ranks of the Life Bringers. Seconds after the cursed obsidian box touched the ground, it exploded in a beam of star energy, releasing its aeons-old prisoner. The titanic figure that rose up from the explosion was wrapped in a torn shroud that seemed to be weaved from the primordial darkness of the frigid abyss between the stars; its bony hands held a scythe composed of pure negative energy, and the eyes that gleamed from beneath its hood shone with malice unknowable to mortals. This godlike creature was none other than a Shard of the Nightbringer, an ancient star god whose cruelty and madness prompted his own flock to shatter and imprison him millions of years ago. After letting out a bellow of rage that sounded like an explosion of a distant supernova, the Shard descended upon the Plague Marines.

At last, the Cardinal's simple plan became clear. He used the initial assault to make a good dent in the fortifications of the Plague Marines, fought his way into their midst, and then released the shard of the alien god to deal with the hated foe. Naturally, Merik realised full well that after dispatching the Life Bringers the Nightbringer would turn on the Entombed who had no means to control him, but he was fully prepared to die at the hands of the vengeful deity knowing that his Primarch had finally been avenged. Meanwhile, the Shard was slaughtering the Plague Marines by the score: their signature chemical and biological weapons proved utterly useless against a creature of sentient metal. While his soldiers were being massacred, Sachs watched coldly and made notes, trying to calculate the best possible response to this new threat. Finally, he got a brilliant idea. Instead of sending his last remaining reserves against the creature, he ordered his artillery specialists to blast them with the most potent chemical projectiles they had left. As the first projectiles hit the unsuspecting soldiers, Sachs started reading litanies to Nurgle, asking him to accept this modest sacrifice and send one of his servants to deal with the Nightbringer. The Master of Plague was so impressed with Sachs's perfidy that he sent one of his most powerful Great Unclean Ones to assist him - Nilethagh, the lord of all venereal diseases. 

As Nilethagh crossed his corroded sword with the Nighbringer's entropy scythe, the Plague Marines were finally free again to finish off the Entombed. But Merik's men were unwilling to give up, and put up a fight that would've made Golgothos proud. As a greater daemon and a star god were furiously fencing in the background, the Space Marines were caught up in one last fight to the death. Even after the massive casualties inflicted upon the Life Bringers by the Shard, they still greatly outnumbered their adversaries, and the fate of the Entombed appeared to be sealed at last. When Sachs was preparing to finish what Vrach had started when he unleashed his genophage virus upon the children of Golgothos, his right flank was smashed by a strike force of the Void Angels who were supposed to be fighting Galen's Green Men. Whatever was the reason behind their sudden arrival, Sachs quickly realised that he had no chance of winning this battle and began frantically thinking of ways to escape. 

Once again, he was assisted by his pestilent deity. As Nilethagh finally defeated the Shard of the Nightbringer, reducing him to a pool of liquid metal, he finally turned his attention to the mortals fighting at his feet. Always eager for a fight, he disembowelled himself with his sword, letting out the hordes of Nurglings living inside his belly. While the Loyalists were too busy dealing with the daemonic infestation, Sachs and the remaining Plague Marines quickly boarded their shuttles and joined with the rest of the Life Bringer fleet on the orbit. It was the time to flee again.