Editing Story:Warhammer 60K: The Age of Dusk (section)

==Additional Background Section 7: The Dread Marshal and The Tide of Wrath==

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“In the name of nothing, I purge you and this whole world. For it is good. It is very good. Time to burn! Time to pray! Hope your heathen gods are listening, otherwise... this’ll be quick...”

(''recording degenerates into uncontrollable bitter laughter'')
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'''[Last audible transmission received by the unarmed agri-world of Fensidal, hours before being invaded and razed to the ground.]'''

Twenty Thousand years is too long for a crusade of punishment. Yet still the crusade of the High Marshal of the Black Templars continued. Even as new warp gods rose and fell in the firmament, the Templars continued to purge world after world, converting or destroying every planet they could reach. For countless centuries the grief-maddened Templars degenerated and slaughtered. They recruited more and more eager and insane converts into their furiously propagated faith. They preached a creed of self-mortification, punishment and eventual death. For the Emperor was dead, and the world would know of this fact through pain.

Such nihilism numbed them to their own casual heresies. They converted any Astartes who willingly joined them. ''Night Lords'', amused by their terror-tactics, threw in their lot with the maddened monk-knights, as did many desperate ''Sororitas'' and a great multitude of foolish men from across a thousand worlds. ''Sons of Malice'' fought with and joined the Crusade in their own paradoxical glee, and the agents of ''The Hydra'' found it pathetically easy to infiltrate the crazed warriors. The Templars were no more. They embraced their own self-destruction, and the distinction between man, Astartes and blood-mad butcher dissolved in the melting cauldron of war.

This was the ''Crusade of Madness''. They increasingly referred to each other as ''Oblivionites''; agents of sweet annihilation. For only in destruction on the battlefield, surrounded by thousands of slain foes, could they find peace.

Chains and fire was their legacy. Populations were bound in chains, alike and screaming in misery across the Oblivionite vehicles and ships. Their artificers crafted warped and bizarre dark armor that molded to the forms of the Crusaders; armor that coiled about them like disgusting bleeding vines, which merged with their chains and braziers. Oblivionite initiates and serfs had wailing sirens stitched into their throats, that blared old imperial hymns, horribly distorted and modulated until all that could be made out was the underlying hate that fed the vox hailers. Immolator tanks and Crusader Land Raiders pulverized settlements and ruined lives on the whims of this crazed order. Some of the more insane and formidable Oblivionites had their limbs elongated and bonded to blades and pincers and serrated flails, with cyclone launchers that flung hate speech and frothing oil as frequently as krak missiles. These were known as the Lange-Mensch, and where they fell nothing lived. Even themselves.

The Eternal Crusader expanded with each passing year, as did many of the barges that followed in its wake; expanding to accommodate more prisons and churches filled with spinning blades and grinding drills; where pious men would fling themselves into the churning mass of metal, and their fleshy pulp was then sprayed over new recruits through thick hoses.

The Oblivionites were led by the former High Marshal Kanan, who became known as the Dread Marshal. He was bound within a Dreadnought sarcophagus. Some claimed it was this that drove him mad, and contributed to the rapid degeneration of the Crusaders. Others claim the turbulent warp was to blame for their madness; its conflict between the Star Father and the other powers warping the minds of the Astartes, who were both furious figures of hate and adherents of Imperial domination, which split their minds into things of shattered glass and deluded perception.

Kanan dwelt within the Eternal Crusader almost exclusively, conversing with shadowy figures who shifted in the gloom of his Reclusium. Chaplains brought adherents to his chambers every month, and these quivering men were rarely seen again alive. Those who left his chambers were dark-eyed and crazed; spouting philosophical nonsense as they calmly carved their names on the faces of their friends, or opened airlocks and jumped out. The only thing they all ranted about equally was a singular word; '''Malice'''. Dark pinions could sometimes be glimpsed on the battlements; flashes of shadowy shapes on the periphery of vision.

The Oblivionites terrorized the galactic north in a wide arc, which infringed upon both Chaos Empires, bordered the conflict in the East, and even affected the outer territories of the ''Vulkan Imperium''. They were narrowly driven from the ''Ryza-Catachan Alliance’s'' sector, after repeated raids by the cybernetically-enhanced ''Catachan ‘Plasma-Commandos’''.

However, in most cases, the worlds they invaded were woefully unprepared for the enemy who descended upon them. Even if prepared, the mercenary armies of private worlds often deserted rather than risk themselves fighting mad superhumans. Even the few remaining free Companies were reluctant to waste resources fighting such monstrously destructive foes. Worlds would surrender pitifully, and their people would suffer for it. Hunted in the streets, and burned from orbit, or taken and indoctrinated in a creed which compelled them to murder everyone they loved, men suffered and died in great masses. The Oblivionites would then erect titanic monuments on each world they converted; mile-high statues built from filth and the wreckage of smashed cities, which proclaimed the crusaders’ own glorious disregard for everything and everyone in existence.

''Valhalla'' was not such a world. When the Oblivionites burst into their system, their system defense fleet immediately charged to attack the incoming obsidian vessels, initiating a vast naval battle which lasted for almost a month before the SDF were eliminated. This bought the Valhallans time. Distress signals were hopelessly flung out into the void, trenches were dug, supply lines and armories were stocked and prepared. The Draft saw almost every man and woman not employed in factory work thrust into the military. Orvec Chenkov, the Grand Dictator of Vahalla and a distant descendant of the infamous M41 Colonel that shared his last name, would not accept invasion or subjugation. Valhalla had weathered the ''Second Age of Strife'' and the decade of a thousand invasions from 234.M53-244.M53. They would not bow or prostrate themselves before nihilistic psychopaths. Valhalla would endure, always.

The massive icy cities of the Valhallan, built into mountainsides or beneath mile-thick ice sheets, were ever-more fortified. Seven Armored Companies were stationed outside the city of Invenka, where the towering gold Dome of Saint Ciaphas rose majestically atop a volcanic ridge that jutted from beneath a glacier. Serf Soldiers of Krieg were placed in the most hazardous and inhospitable areas. Militias bearing the banners of their cities flooded the training barracks in their millions. All leave from factories was revoked, a worker worked 22 hours a day producing war materiel for stockpiling. It was said that there was an ammo dump on every street corner, and even the children had autopistols tucked in their belts.

On the evening beginning 284.399.M54, orbital bombardment began with a firestorm of fearsome scale, followed by kinetic barrages of kill-rods and heavy macro-cannons. The very tectonic plates themselves shuddered with the force of the assault. Earthquakes and fires erupted across Valhalla, but the forces simply dug themselves in. Defense Lasers stitched flaming patterns in the heavens, and wounded the sky until it seemed to ripple red with the onslaught. Torpedo silos embedded in cliff faces dueled with the enemy vessels also, hurling munitions the size of castle turrets towards the void-bound foe. Heedless of risk, many of the smaller Oblivionite vessels were struck and crashed onto the surface like city-sized meteorites. Mushroom clouds of plasma fire scorched the glaciers, and great rolling banks of nuclear steam, that boiled thousands of Conscripts and Serf soldiers as they ran for cover.

Soon after, the drop pods came, plunging through the fire and fury and punching holes through the glacial ablative armour which protected the cities. The ice confounded several pods, trapping them halfway between the sky and the crust in frozen tombs. Heavy weapon teams soon destroyed those immobilized invaders with their lascannons and missile pods. Others however, penetrated the ice and struck like lightning swift daggers at the heart of cities. Superhumans stormed bastions and charged through the streets with furious abandon. Their physical perfection and murderous might overcame the discipline and bloody-mindedness of the defenders, and they were forced on the back foot throughout.

Meanwhile, on the surface, the conscript armies in their countless millions clashed against the human Oblivionite neophytes who swarmed from their large-bellied landing craft, while Thunderhawks covered with chained, wailing prisoners strafed the human waves of gun fodder, and delivered more Astartes into the fray. But the skies were contested. Valkyries and vendettas also blasted the invaders, while Marauder bombers dropped thousands of tons of high explosive across the blood-drenched glaciers. The Serf Soldiers showed their worth, demonstrating utter fearlessness in the face of battle. Those who died made sure to kill their slayer, or at least encumber the enemy enough to allow their vat-born brothers to finish them off. Basilisks and even larger fixed artillery positions cast an endless deluge of ordnance into the fray, and continued firing even when their defenders desperately tried to fend off strike teams of Night Lord Oblivionites, who crawled down the cliffs like spiders to reach them.

The Oblivionites were posthuman gods of war, bred to destroy, and backed by legions of zealots and gigatons of ordnance. But they faced an entire world of Valhalla soldiery, entrenched with an armory which could last for months. The war drew on, and Valhalla soon became a world of crumbling icy slush, jagged mountain fangs all surrounded by oceans made from the melted remains of the ice world’s crust of permafrost. The Ice world became a waterlogged nightmare. Battles raged through the catacombs and sewers. Artillery dueled from the peaks of opposing mountains. The Tank Battalions clashed with the predators and raiders of the Oblivionite crusade in the shadow of the glorious golden dome, which was soon smashed into glittering shards amidst the fury of exchanged ordnance.

Every week the war dragged on, more commanders began to question Chenkov’s attrition-based approach. Every week, more and more commanders were executed, and more and more soldiers were drafted to face off against the might of the vast crusade force of the Dread Marshal. The factories began to use up the stocks of adamantine and promethium which had been gathered the previous year from nearby trading worlds. Valhalla was being bled dry, and still the mad Astartes poured all their fury and self-destructive hate into the war, which had spread to the other planets in the system, which each fell one by one, until Valhalla was all that was left. Newly deranged converts to the Oblivion cult flocked to Valhalla from the other planets, eager to die in the fires of warfare. Chenkov obliged of course. There were so many water-logged corpses upon Valhalla, which they formed vast battlements of dead that stretched for miles around each city.

After a year of grueling sieges and desperate battles fought in the shallow war-born oceans, the dread marshal’s heralds began to address the world on an open vox, carrying across the system to every commander that could receive such signals. It was a voice of cruel mockery and merciless intent. The heralds screamed from their fleet-ships:

''“We shall carve you into bloodied ribbons of flesh, and pound your world to dust. The Emperor’s sight has been put out, and deviancy reigns in its stead. There is no guiding Astronomicon beacon! We are alone in the dark! You shall die here, and you shall welcome it! Oblivion has come to your world. We feast upon your flesh tribute, and we grow strong from this destruction, while you grow weaker. Offer your bodies, your flesh, unto the wardship of the herald of the End, and he will ensure its passage is a swift and glorious one! With your flesh and your strength, we may put out the eyes of man’s foes, and gain apotheosis in degradation. The flesh is strong, and you can be strong!”''

Before the defenders could reply, another message cut into the transmission. It was a harsh, metallic tone.

'''“Nay, heathen dog; the Flesh is Weak. Lord Vulkan sends his regards,”''' the Iron Hands Force Commander responded bluntly, as his vessels emerged from interstellar space, where they had lain in wait for a year, slowly re-entering the system under minimal power. The perfect sneak attack.

Chenkov had never intended victory over the Oblivionites. Chenkov’s strategy had been one of containment; he had been ordered to keep the focus of the crusaders upon Valhalla, and to ensure that all the Oblivionites converged upon the system. He had been ruthless in his acceptance of this plan, and the sacrifice of his people to achieve it. He had known they would suffer, and he cared not; a legacy of his ancestor’s bloodline. Apparently Chenkov died in his sleep shortly after the liberation of the ruined Valhalla.* 

The Dread Marshal’s fleet was caught off guard by the Iron Hands and their cold metal vessels that soon shuddered to life and unleashed hell on the twisted Astartes. Battlebarges and cruisers dueled in the heavens at colossal distances, and ships burst apart like stricken whales in the deep, spewing fiery viscera from mechanical bowels. 

Yet, for all their joyless mechanical power, the Iron Hands could not contain the Eternal Crusader. Battered and bloody, it fought its way clear, almost breaking the iron hands fleet on its own. The Iron Hands Commandery Master, Murgon, managed to destroy the Crusader’s warp drive, and forced it to flee into the void itself. Wounded but still very much armed, the crusader was harried from the system. Yet, the Iron hands could not sustain any mere losses in pursuing the stricken craft any further. They left that seemingly-banal mission to the Fire beasts, who translated into the system alongside the Purple Vipers and Heartrenders Space Marine Commanderies to mop up the surviving crusaders.

When the Fire Beasts finally caught up with the Crusader, it was running on minimal power. Hoping to capture the vessel for Vulkan (''as the Primarch had done with Phalanx during the Battle of Falling Skies a century before''), the Fire Beasts eagerly boarded the vessel. What happened on board the Eternal Crusader is a mystery, but many hours later, the Astartes left the ship, and bombarded it until it collapsed upon itself and was finally wrecked. The Fire Beasts rarely speak of what occurred inside the vessel. All that is known is that they lost almost 200 Marines inside. All they say when explaining what happened there is the simple phrase; ‘Malice has seen the wheel behind the world,’ and that is all they ever say in reference to that dark day. The day the Black Templars were put down.


* '''[It took several dozen disgruntled soldiers, fourteen rounds of a heavy stubber, an overdose of tranq, a vial of neurotoxin, a hatchet and three bayonets to make sure he died in his sleep, but eventually he did. The legend of Chenkov’s death subsequently did get amplified in the telling, but his remains suggest at least the stubber shots were accurate...]'''
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