Wenezlan's Fall

This article is about a battle in the /tg/ Heresy project, a fan re-working of the Warhammer 40k universe.

Wenezlan's Fall
Date	M34
Scale	Planetary
Theatre	Adranum
Status	Decisive Death Smiths victory
Belligerents
Eternal Zealots The Ifrits Harbingers of Pestilence	Death Smiths
Commanders and Leaders
Wenezlan Bohlen	Ilmari Wieland
Strength
6,000	500
Losses
Half of Harbingers of Pestilence fleet lost Wenezlan's warband wiped out	Minimal
Outcome
Wenezlan turned into a shield A great number of Daemon weapons stolen from Adranum by the Ifrits

The grim fate that has befallen everyone who tried to steal a Daemon weapon from the Death Smiths does not stop ambitious Chaos Lords from trying. Assaults on Adranum happen at least every decade and are likely to persist into the future, since there will never be a shortage of self-confident fools who bite more than they can chew in Eye of Terror. Lulled into a false sense of security by the modest numbers of the Death Smiths, these cocky warlord tend to forget that their enemies have probably the most dangerous arsenal of weapons in the Galaxy at their disposal. And so they flock to the Planet of Smiths like butterflies to a flame, only to be slaughtered by an enemy they have so fatally underestimated. It is even said that Wieland likes to encourage such raids, as they serve as an important source of new high-quality slaves for the warband.

Perhaps one of the most ambitious assaults on Adranum was undertaken by Wenezlan Bohlen, a successful leader of a sizeable Eternal Zealots warband. A firm believer that all Traitor Marines were brothers in their fight against the Corpse Emperor, he despised the very idea of them charging each other for their services. Therefore, when he decided to order a Daemon weapon from the Death Smiths, he didn't consider for a second paying for it. His attempt to convince the ferromancers to forge him a sword for free as a contribution to their common cause ended in an utter failure, as the smiths pointed out to him that they had no real common cause, for wealth interested them much more than Imperium's downfall. Feeling betrayed, Wenezlan left Adranum in a terrible rage, swearing to return and claim what he considered rightfully his by force. The Death Smiths laughed at his empty threats, as he was most certainly not the first one to attempt to intimidate them.

However, nobody laughed when the Chaos Lord lived up to his boasts. With promises of looting the legendary arsenals of the Planet of Smiths, he managed to lure two more warbands to his cause, the Ifrits and the Harbingers of Pestilence. Their mighty combined fleet has encircled Adranum, ready to drown it in a hail of bombs at Wenezlan's command. With iron in his voice, the Chaos Lord demanded on vox that the Death Smiths surrender all of the Daemon weapons in their possession to his warhost, lest their planet be laid waste to by viral bombings. Much to his irritation, the vox stayed silent for several hours, and Bohlen was getting ready to reiterate his demands when the grand gates of the Forge of Wieland slowly creaked open and a single Chaos Marine left the citadel. It was none other than Talos, the personal bodyguard of Wieland, with a primitive looking longbow in his hands and a simple quiver on his back. Without uttering a word, he put an arrow to the string, pulled it back to his cheek and shot it into the sky eclipsed by enemy warships. The very next second, one of those metal leviathans exploded in a colossal ball of fire and fell to Adranum's surface. As the warriors of Wenezlan's warhost were struggling to believe their own eyes, Talos put a second arrow to his bow.

That was, of course, no ordinary longbow. A Daemon weapon of unparalleled power, it used the principle of Warp acceleration to turn arrows into weapons of doom comparable with nuclear missiles. As soon as the arrow left the string, it was pulled into the Immaterium, where it continued its flight completely uninterrupted for millennia, meeting no material obstacles and no aerodynamic resistance. As it accelerated to near light speed, it was pulled back into the real world mere fractions of a second after it had originally been shot, still along its original trajectory. Although merely an arrow, it could now bring down castles and critically damage spaceships due to its enormous speed and the resulting increase in mass, as demonstrated by Talos. His actions were, of course, a gamble, as he only had the total of five arrows for this bow and each one of them was a Daemon weapon in its own right, taking a decade to forge. But it managed to work, for after their third vessel in a row had been destroyed in less than a minute, the Harbingers of Pestilence fled Ardanum's orbit, feeling no desire to fight an enemy that could shoot down their warships with a simple longbow. As Wenezlan was frantically thinking of a new course of action, the impetuous Ifrits made the decision for him by making a landfall on the planet's surface to engage the Death Smiths in close combat. Cursing his unreliable allies, Bohlen begrudgingly ordered his men to follow suit.

This was a doomed endeavour, which the Chaos Lord realised perfectly well. Even with their clear numerical advantage, his warhost stood little chance in close combat against the Death Smiths, especially since the Ifrits thought teamwork was a buzzkill and tactical planning was for weaklings. His pessimism proved to warranted when his best troops were slaughtered by angry smiths enraged that they had to abandon their forges and he personally was taken prisoner by the Hammerfist. After some pondering, Wieland found a fitting punishment for Wenezlan: since he wanted a Daemon weapon so much, he would get one. The insane blacksmith made his fallen enemy a part of his newest creation, the Shield of Wenezlan. Eternally bound to the front of this tower shield by his limbs that grew into its metallic surface, the fallen Chaos Lord is eternally cursed to endure every blow blocked with the shield. Yet the magic permeating the artefact always heals his wounds and mends his flesh, ensuring that death may never relieve him from his suffering.

Incredibly enough, the Ifrits did somehow manage to stumble across a vault left unguarded and steal a whole stash of Daemon weapons before fleeing from Adranum. Most of these weapons eventually killed their owners, since they had no idea how to use them properly, but this is a topic for another story.