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StarKrakChro6

2016-05-24T00:26:28Z

2601:1C0:4B00:7BEB:609E:EDF3:B9CF:142: template added

{{Story}}
==We Rise==

The 1st tactical squad of the 4th company of the Star Krakens has been known as Squad Black Fist for longer than anyone in the chapter has lived. The members of the squad have the armour on their right fists coloured black, removing the mark if they leave the squad. Few outside the 4th company know the reason why, for the tale is told but rarely. It speaks of a great sacrifice, a stalwart and heroic brother sergeant and the weakness of a captain.

Sometime after the meeting of the ten flags, The Trident and the 4th company encountered a strange asteroid, drifting on the edge of the deeps. It gave of all the readings of being able to sustain life, yet there was almost no sign of fauna or animals on it. The Kraken captain deemed the rock of suitable interest for him to visit its surface, but maintained he need not be accompanied by his entire veteran squad. What could harm him on a rock almost utterly devoid of life? After much talk and persuasion, he relented and allowed the company’s first tactical squad to accompany him.

When they arrived on the asteroid’s surface, they were armed as though for a hostile encounter. Such was befitting for the guard of a company captain, however unlikely violence is. It was a great honour for the tactical squad to be the captain’s guard, and they would do things properly. They patrolled the area of the drop site thoroughly, lifting every rock and peering into every shadow. The Krarken ignored them, wandering across the barren environment without a care. So sure was he that there would be no battle this day, he did have his blade or pistol drawn.

As the captain walked, the marines constantly marching in front and around of him started to irritate him. Was he not a company captain? He needed to guard to swoop around him like a scout on their first mission. So it was that he ordered the squad back to the drop site, brooking no argument. Only one member of the squad refused to leave; the squad sergeant, his name lost to legend. The captain tried to talk his subordinate into leaving him alone, but the sergeant was adamant. Either he went with the captain, or the whole squad did. Eventually, the captain relented and the two set off.

They wandered far from the drop site, the captain still looking for something interesting enough to justify this visit. In truth, he was unsure why he had come to this rock, and to why he had ordered his guard not to accompany him. If he found an artefact of import or significance, it would save him from face when it came to explaining things to his fellow brother-captains. When they came across a deep ravine, a tear in the earth, he immediately decided that he would travel to the bottom. He descended as fast as was possible, the sergeant hurrying to keep up.

When they reached the bottom, the captain stopped. He merely glared around the canyon floor, as if daring it to explain to him why he was here. And it did. From a cave in the side of the of the rock, a huge monster appeared. It crawled out stealthily behind the captain, but halted when it saw the sergeant. The brother-sergeant had no such problem, unholstering his bolt pistol and opening fire. The tempest bolts bounced from the beast’s thick skin, sending shard of frag spinning through the air. Seeing his sergeant shoot over his head was enough to make the captain turn to face the threat, but he wasn’t soon enough to dodge the blow from the beast. Its huge, blade like arm crashed into his chest and threw him across the canyon floor. He smashed into the ground and lay still. The beast stalked slowly towards him, the huge black eyes that sat in the centre of its face focussed solely on his prone form. Their concentration was broken when the sergeant stepped in between them.

Seeing his bolts were useless, the sergeant had discarded his rifle. He filled his right hand with frag grenades and his left with a combat knife, before leaping for the foe’s throat. The alien was fast, however, and its claws sent most of his right hand off into the distance. Then it slammed him to the ground and screamed in his face. Perhaps it sought to exert its dominance, or was preparing to eat him. Either way, it gave the sergeant an opportunity. His left arm was trapped by the creature, but it had neglected to do the same to his right, likely because there was little left of his hand. The sergeant looked and his hand and saw that he had one finger left, the smallest one. With a roar to match the beast’s, he plunged his hand into the huge black orbs of the creature’s eyes.

The creature screamed, tearing its head back. But the sergeant’s single finger had been clenched deep inside the eye, and when it came out it brought a sizeable chunky of gooey ichor and flesh with it. Still shrieking, the beast stumbled away and bashed off the walls of the canyon. The sergeant pulled himself up, heedless of his wounds, and dragged his battered form to the fallen captain. From his battle brother’s belt, he drew the plasma pistol. Then he turned back to his foe.

Both the astartes and the xeno were wounded, but the sergeant was a warrior of humanity and a champion of the emperor. Victory would be his, even if he had to tear the flesh from his bones for it to be so. A battle hymn on his lips and the plasma pistol in his healthy hand, the sergeant began to charge his foe. Once again, he leapt into the air and once again, the beast’s claws flashed out and caught him. Instead of slashing him down, this time they impaled him through the midsection and held him up in the air. The sergeant hardly noticed. He was glaring at something at the creature’s feet, and suddenly he brought up the pistol and fired. The plasma round struck the frag grenades on the floor and detonated them with a cacophonous boom. With a fleshy sound, the xeno’s legs were blown off and it fell to the ground, with the sergeant still attached to it by the talons in his chest.

As they both lay on the ground, the sergeant raised the pistol again. The creature observed him with its remaining eye, still whimpering in pain. It seemed resigned to its fate though, and was not disappointed. The sergeant blew out the beast’s remaining eye, before allowing himself to rest. The captain awoke moments later, to find his loyal sergeant dying and the beast slain.

He knelt down by the sergeant and spoke to him. “Go to the Emperor in peace my brother, for today you were truly an exemplar of his might. Dwell in the darkness, so that we may think of you in the deep. You will not be forgotten, nor will your devotion” spoke the captain, as he looked down and the bloody remains of the sergeant’s chest and fist. The sergeant spluttered a response through the mouth grill of his helmet “We do not fall... we do not die... we rise...” before his head lolled back into the grove of the armour and he died. The captain carried his body back to the drop site, the last finger of the sergeant’s hand still grasping the aliens eyeball.

When they the krakens saw their fallen sergeant, their shoulders fell and gazes dropped. It was the captain who spoke to them of their sergeant’s memory. He cursed them for disrespecting his sacrifice, for mourning when they should have been shouting his victories to the endlessness of the deep. One of the brothers stepped forward, reaching down to the xeno’s eye. He spread some of the adhesive black liquid onto his hand, and then stepped back. One by one, every member of the squad did likewise. When all had adorned themselves likewise, they began to speak. Short tales were told of the sergeant. Of his deeds, his valour, his skill and his wit. The captain listened to them carefully, hearing not accusations but feeling blame directed at him from all sides. He retreated and left them to their ritual, guilt heavy in his chest like rock.

Once aboard The Trident the members of the squad began to make the mark permenant, painting the right fists of their armour black. So it was that whenever a new warrior joined the squad, his hand was marked. When one left, the mark was removed, and the squad have been known as the Black Fists since. Further examination of the xeno that had been slain showed that it was a psychic parasite, luring its prey close and persuading them to abandon all of their guard and arms. The captain was disgraced for his weakness, allowing himself to be taken in by the creature. He punishment was not terrible, though neither was it light. His fate is another tale, however.

[[Category: Stories]][[Category:Stories/Warhammer_40,000]]

Story:The Shape Of The Nightmare To Come 50k section10

2016-05-24T00:24:46Z

2601:1C0:4B00:7BEB:609E:EDF3:B9CF:142: template added

{{Story}}
[[Image:The_shape_of_the_nightmare_to_come_MYOC_BANNER.png|800px]]

=Section 10: The New Devourer=
The great Devourer, the dread star locust, had made massive inroads into the galaxy, even by M41, snatching whole clusters of worlds in its billions of jaws, digesting them, even as their hopeless defenders screamed defiance. Many were the attempts by a one Inquisitor Kryptmann, to slay the foul swarm, which flooded from beyond the void betwixt galaxies. Viruses, fire storms, plague bombs, exterminatus. All these devious and hateful ploys failed. The beast was too adaptive, too fiercely unstoppable. At last, in the closing decades of the forty first millennium, that he employed his final, lasting gambit. The Tyranids, that great plague, was turned towards the only race in the galaxy as hopelessly virulent as themselves: the Orks. Genestealers were seeded upon the worlds of the Octavian Overfiend<nowiki>'</nowiki>s many worlds, drawing the Great Devourer, like a moth to a blazing furnace. The war was unsinkable. As the Tyranids flooded the worlds with warriors, the Orks fought all the fiercer, growing stronger in the crucible of war, and drawing more of their number to them, via the unseen psychic force all Orks shared. As the numbers swelled, the Tyranids feasted upon this superior biomass, and they too grew strong from the continuing war. Both sides drove the other to ever greater feats, and ever increasing numbers. The worlds of the Octavius became twisted hells, ork spores and machinery coiling around and competing, with vast spires of bone and chitin, and creeping vines of semi-organic malice. As the death mounted, the bodies coated the worlds, expanding the vast surface of each to unprecedented sizes. Worlds collapsed under the pressure of so many bodies and structures, but even the collapsing boulder fields were knitted together by slimy tendrils, and warring machinery. Roks and hulks warped in from across the galaxy, accompanied by fleets of countless Orks. For a brief moment, things seemed to be improving n the universe. Ork held worlds across the galaxy suddenly began to depopulate, as almost every orkoid in existence, ploughed into the churning maelstrom of the Octavius Empire. The Imperium and other aliens moved into these vacant worlds, and it seemed as if perhaps the Imperium was not doomed after all. Their vain hope was misplaced. For, as Tyranid and Ork came together in this war, each of these rival ecosystems, so virulent and profound in their terraforming abilities, began to subvert one another, at the biological level. Ork spores mutated, to infest Tyranids, Tyranids infested Orks with gene stealer eggs and Tyrannic lice. Tyranid spores battled Ork spores, just as Carnifexes and bio-titans battled gargants and stompas, in the epic, never ending war. Nobody knows for sure when it came about, but the New Devourer was swift to action. It crafted a species, borne of Tyranid and Ork, but truly of neither, which turned upon the Orks and Tyranids, stripping them of their biomass, to create their own hive-waaaggh. The creatures created seemed to be muscular, large and covered in foul appendages and weapons. Hive ships, coated in orkoid machinery, fused with orkish biology, and merged with Tyranid hyper evolution and biomorphs, spread from the Octavius system. The Orks were outmatched by this new force. The New Devourer<nowiki>'</nowiki>s troops were vast things, taller than almost all Orks, faster than all Orks. The spore reproduction of the Orks was subverted, and these monsters reproduced at a scarily swift race, with monsters sprouting up from the ground, within hours of being seeded from each New Devourer beast. Each beast could produce a thousand offspring within a day, each battle ready on that same day. The regenerative ability of Tyranids and Orks was also heightened and twisted beyond comprehension, until wounds were healing, even before the blade or weapon causing the wound have even finished wounding the fiends. They could not be killed, they could not be stopped. The inherent Orkoid knowledge of technology allowed them to merge technology with biotechnology, creating semi-mechanical monsters beyond the wildest nightmares of even the most mental of Mekboys. Similarly, the Tyranids could not defeat the New Devourer. Even when a Hive fleet devoured specimens of the New Devourer, the hive vessel which absorbed the biomass, would become corrupted by the New Devourer, and become part of this burgeoning new terror<nowiki>'</nowiki>s psychic web. The hive mind, like a bear pulling its paw from the fire, withdrew it<nowiki>'</nowiki>s surviving fleets from the milky way. The vast majority of the Tyranid race lay beyond the galaxy. However, on some level, the titanic consciousness of the Hive mind realised it could not eat whatever horrendous thing had been born in our galaxy. Thus, the Tyranids turned from this galaxy, and looked to other galaxies, teeming with life. The Orks, unable to ever feel fear or dread, merely decided to go down fighting. For, it was the only orky thing left to do. Wazdakka launched a surprise attack, deep into the heart of the New Devourer, charging from his semi-complete warp super highway. He led a glorious charge, leading almost a million trillion Orks in the largest battle in the history of the entire galaxy. They struck right at the rotten heart of the New Devourer<nowiki>'</nowiki>s physical and psychic web. A trillion roaring boys, which shuddered the air, and melted brass, such was the volume and intensity. Gargants and Stompas fired constantly, the air literally coloured orange by constant weapons fire and discharge. Rockets and bombs were dropped in their billions, vaporising everything they struck. Kroozers and hulks rammed New Devourer hive ships, their pilots howling <nowiki>'</nowiki>WAAAAGGGHHHH!<nowiki>'</nowiki> forever, before charging across their own ships, to fist fight their foes in space itself. It was not enough. The Orks couldn<nowiki>'</nowiki>t kill the New Devourer. Nothing truly could. The New Devourer murdered each and every Ork that attacked it, before it spread out, and picked off every other ork, who nevertheless fought on, laughing with glee as they fought the New Devourer. However, it was known that the orks hated this foe, calling them "Cheetaz!" and "<nowiki>'</nowiki>orrid grow-ladz". In contrast, the New Devourer had no language for their foe, beyond the endless, piercing bellow of the Hyper-fiends (the most commonly seen foot soldier beast of the New Devourer). The Orks, howling and defiant, died almost to a Ork. Only one Waaaggghhh seemed to survive the onslaught, led by an Ork with a bolter wound to its head. It claimed it had heard Waaaghraz Gharr, a being the Warboss claimed was <nowiki>'</nowiki>da dad of Gork and Mork.<nowiki>'</nowiki>. This apparent god, told the Ork leader to kick his way into the puny Eldar <nowiki>'</nowiki>Web-place<nowiki>'</nowiki> and wait <nowiki>'</nowiki>for <nowiki>'</nowiki>moar intrucshons<nowiki>'</nowiki>. Nobody knows what happened to this Waaaggghhh. Of course, the New Devouerer did not stop with the Orks. In the first few centuries of the forty second millennium, this foul plague swept across the entire galaxy, driven by a corrupted kind of Waaaaggghhh field, and the overall hive imperative of the New Devourer<nowiki>'</nowiki>s synapse web. Imperial blockades were useless. Tau negotiators were slain. Whole naval incursions were swatted aside. Space marine chapters were swallowed whole, by titanic fleets of bio-mechanical hive ships. At least half of the Eldar craft worlds were crushed and sucked dry, their fleets, their memories, their hopes, all quashed. Entire alien civilisations were eaten or torn apart, and millions of worlds were utterly, utterly purged. It was estimated that almost half of all life in the galaxy died in those few hundred years. The only defence against the New Devourer was to flee it, or dodge it. The only thing it did not do better than the tyranids, was the shadow in the warp. It didn<nowiki>'</nowiki>t have one. Worlds got plenty of warning, and fleets could indeed mobilise quickly enough. Though it was easy to evade, it was nevertheless unstoppable. Indeed, the history of the second Age of Strife may have ended there, if something beyond our galaxy hadn<nowiki>'</nowiki>t distracted the New Devourer. Something was happening, far from the milky way, and the New Devourer<nowiki>'</nowiki>s keen psychic sense detected it. Something shifted , deep in the beyond. The New Devourer left the galaxy entirely, within the space of three years, leaving nothing of themselves behind. They went to fight something… greater. Something… different. Again, whatever it was or is, is a complete mystery to the denizens of this galaxy. The only clue came from an astrologer, living within the Ophelian Imperium. She turned her eye lenses towards the distant galaxy, nicknamed Archos Vosh, after her father. She noted how, slowly, even as she watched, the light of that galaxy went dim. As of yet, no scholar, from any race, can explain this. In fact, most do not wish to…  Of course, what they fought is irrelevant to us, because it simply meant that the Galaxy, once more, had just managed to survive total annihilation. It this post-devourer galaxy though, as we can see from previous sections, was a realm gutted, wounded and diseased. The galaxy became a festering wound of civil war, brutality, murder, genocide, ignorance and hatred. It lived only to cause misery, as every race made every other race suffer. Life was horrendously horrific in those times. But, at least, it was indeed life. In a universe as cruel as this one, one must be thankful of small mercies, no matter how bitter…
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