Editing The Entombed (section)

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==The Fall of The Entombed==

It was in the year of 391.M35 that Erebus, Lord of the Grave, received a message from the [[The Justicars]]. The Children had discovered that the Life Bringers were destroying entire systems on the edge of the galaxy, converting them into twisted jungles for Nurgle's pleasure. What's more, Primarch Johannes himself had was rumored to be leading the operation. Upon hearing the news, Erebus chose to mobilize all 3,000 Entombed. He would have his vengeance.

Aboard the battle barge Catafalque, Erebus called out to the other Legions for aid, but only the [[War_Scribes#Knights_Draconian|Knights Draconian]], a War Scribes successor chapter, responded. The Entombed and their ally set out for the Mortis system, a chain of agri-worlds used to feed the most distant backwaters of mankind. When they arrived, They found Mortis I and II already turned. Warp-spawned tentacles reached out from the surface all the way into space, tearing apart the support ships of the Imperial Guard. 

Erebus steered his fleet to Mortis III, a hive world from which the Mortis sector was governed. In orbit, he convened a war council to make plans to defeat the Life Bringers once and for all. At this council, Knights Draconian Third Company Captain Eadwine Herschel came before Erebus on his knees, and begged Erebus to forgive his chapter for their failure at Isstvan V. The War Scribes Primarch had frozen when he learned of the traitor legions' treachery, and failed to warn The Entombed of the incoming artillery barrage which would doom their legion. In anger, The Entombed had declared the War Scribes to be Void, and from then on acted as if they did not exist. Erebus considered Herschel's apology for a long time before replying, "How can I forgive one who does not exist?" Many of the War Scribes were insulted, but Herschel was wise, and knew the response for what it was. The Entombed were stubborn, and in his Primarch's absence, Erebus had no choice but to abide by the Void Decree. Herschel knew that, for The Entombed, to even budge an inch was remarkable.

It was then that the Knights Draconian and The Entombed formed their plan: They would erect a special planetary shield, which would prevent the Life Bringers from deploying their gasses from orbit. If the Life Bringers wanted to turn this world, they would have to do so from the ground. Erebus deployed his forces on the ground, while Herschel held his forces in orbit as a mobile reaction force.

The Life Bringers arrived soon afterward, and engaged the Knights Draconian in space. While the Draconian ships were distracted, the Life Bringers snuck a smaller ship past their blockade. On this ship was a device called the Great Genesis, capable of spewing forth diseases and chemicals which would warp Mortis III into a nurgle-spawned death world. The Entombed marched toward the device, slowly but surely, while battle barges crashed and burned in the skies above.

When The Entombed arrived at the Great Genesis, they found that the Life Bringers had been busy turning civilians into plague zombies. A swarm of writhing corpses orbited the Great Genesis like an asteroid belt, with a core of Life Bringers waiting within. The Entombed showed no remores, no hesitation. They cut through the zombies like a scythe through wheat. As The Entombed marched ever onward, the Knights Draconian began to rain drop pods upon the enemy, breaking their lines and weakening their defense.

At that very moment, as the drop pods and demolisher shells were raining down on his men, Johannes Vrach himself emerged from the Great Genesis. The Daemon prince had been warped and twisted by nurgle, and from his mouth spewed forth vile gouts of bile, where they landed, Knights and Entombed alike died by the score. Erebus ordered his ossuaries to fire their mighty cannons against the hated foe, but Vratch retreated back into the Genesis.

The casualties were becoming too much, and so Herschel ordered his men to retreat. Erebus, however, stubbornly held his ground. The battle came to a standstill, the Entombed unable to advance, and the Life Bringers unable to push the enemy back. The stalemate raged for hours, with heavy losses on both sides. As dusk fell, however, the Great Genesis finally came online. Its mighty vents began to spew forth thick red clouds, and from its massive pipes flowed a sickening yellow sludge. The Ossuary dreadnoughts began to bombard the machine, but even their mighty cannons could not penetrate its thick hull. Herschel commanded his whirlwinds to strike the machine, but the heavy gales of toxins threw the missiles off course. Johannes Vratch emerged once more from the Great Geneses, surveying his victory with joy.

At that moment, when all seemed lost, a great eldritch light filled the battlefield. Looking up, Erebus saw with horror that a warp storm had appeared in the sky above Mortis III. His despair turned to exultation when he saw the primarch's own battle barge, Nurgle's Grave, emerge from the warp storm. Screaming through the skies came the Drop Pods of Golgothos and his Venerable Dreadnoughts, come to slay their ancient foe. With a CRASH, the dreadnoughts struck the ground, and the dreadnoughts came out shooting. They waded through the sludge without concern as it melted through their armoured plates, with not a thought toward self preservation. Golgothos barreled across the battlefield, shouting "VRAAAAAAAAATCH! VENGEANCE FOR THE FALLEN!"

The mighty Golgothos and the twisted Vratch crashed into eachother, blessed power fist meeting against mutated claws. As they dueled, they kicked up huge waves of sludge, crashing over their own men and causing fungal blooms to rip through their armour. The primarchs struck with the bitter hatred of five thousand years, each blow shaking the ground for miles. After hours of fighting, Vratch managed to gain the upper hand. He ripped off Golgothos' faceplate, exposing the ancient face within, and spat a torrent of bile into Golgothos' armour. Golgothos' flesh began to twist, and mushrooms tore through his flesh. As his body tore itself apart, Golgothos grabbed Vratch, shoved his demolisher cannon in his face, and fired.

Erebus cried out, with both joy and despair. He had simultaneously seen his beloved primarch and his hated foe die. He and The Entombed were normally silent in battle, but now they screamed. They charged forward through the sludge, guns blazing, and tore through the Life Bringers. The vile poison twisted their flesh and tore them apart, but not before Erebus and a few survivors made it to the heart of the Great Genesis, deactivating it for good, and saving Mortis III.

As he watched from his safe vantage, Eadwine Herschel wept. In all his years as captain of the Third Company, he had never seen such a divine display. The glory of the warring primarchs, the valiant stubbornness of The Entombed, their last glorious charge to save the planet, it was all too much for him to bear. Once the sludge had been cleared from the battlefield, Herschel had his men gather up the remains of the dead, and load them onto his battle barge. That day Heschel declared that The Entombed would forever be interred on Sepulchra, and that he would found a new chapter, The Watchers Of The Dead, to guard The Entombed for all time.

==The Assault on Ostium==

The Thunder Kings, though not present at Isstvan, fought alongside The Entombed during the taking of Ostium. The Emperor was enraged by the fracturing of the Terran Webway gate, but the thought of simply sending a force to execute his son was more than he could bear to think. The Voidwatcher would be brought back to Terra, so that his father could look him in the eye and hear the reasons for his treachery; of course, The Emperor knew it would be beneficial to remove the wicked sorcerer from the war at this early stage. For this purpose, the Emperor called in both Golgothos, whose heavily armed Entombed would be ideal for an operation on a collapsing planetoid like Ositum, and Brennus, whose legion was one of the largest still loyal to the Throne. The two rendezvoused at the Entombed's homeworld of Sepulchra, where Brennus offered to provide runic charms against sorcery for his brother. Golgothos and his sons readily accepted, and Brennus and his Runesmiths spent the transit to Ostium working these mystic sigils into The Entombed's armor. Brennus also presented his brother with a mighty hammer he had named “Warlock's Dread”. Brennus also entrusted his brother with 2 sets of mighty iron manacles, bound in the mightiest runes of warding Brennus could grave; the two vowed to drag the Voidwatcher back to Terra "fettered hand and hoof as a lamb for our father's table."

Brennus and Golgothos, while working together in the forges, created a plan for the taking of The Black Augurs homeworld. Brennus and the Thunder Kings would establish beachheads on the world, forcing the Black Augurs to retreat at least some distance, and then the Entombed would teleport in from space, hitting those areas where the Black Augurs were concentrated most heavily to keep them from overwhelming the Kings with summoned daemons, and to hopefully shatter their strongest positions while the Thunder Kings kept reinforcements from arriving. Brennus attempted to convince his brother to stay in the rear guard, and perhaps support his sons at range, but Golgothos would hear nothing of that; he ached to get close to the traitorous sorcerers and teach them their folly. Brennus relented, but instead sent a detachment of the Horned Gods to fight alongside his brother, along with Golgothos' elite guard, The Death Masks. At first, this plan worked quite well: the Thunder Kings were able to hold key fronts long enough for the Entombed to enter the fray. In one notable case, an Entombed Dreadnought pod crushed a sorcerer as he was preparing a spell to slaughter a whole squad of Thunder Kings who had been paralyzed by warp-lightning. Across the battlefield the arrival of The Entombed would spell disaster for the Black Augurs, the heavy hitting, heavily armored warriors pulverizing warlocks across the battlefield. Golgothos was on the front lines, exacting a fearsome toll on the traitors of Istvaan V. Unfortunately, the terms of battle would not favor the loyalists for long.

Unbeknownst to the Thunder Kings and The Entombed, events were spiralling out of control beyond their reach. Arelex Orannis, Primarch of the War Scribes, was devastated by the treachery of Istvaan. As his legion had suffered severe casualties, he began to withdraw his troops from across the galaxy, so as to concentrate the remaining loyalist forces and prevent any of his men from being wiped out piecemeal. This action unfortunately allowed a hidden base of Life Bringers the opportunity to sneak free of the Scribes with their deadly payload: a modified form of the Life-Eater virus, specially altered to work only on beings sharing the geneseed of The Entombed. The spies within the Thunder Kings, meant to sow discontent, quickly picked up on the objective of the joint mission. They funneled the information to their masters in the Children of Astarot, who supplied it to the Life Bringers. Armed with this information, the dark healers of Vrachs' legion would make for Ostium with all speed, eager to unleash their twisted science on what remained of Golgothos' army.

As the battle raged on, the Black Augur's daemon summoning would grow to be a problem for the loyalists; even the protective runes of the Thunder Kings could not prevent the horrors of the warp from taking lives for their masters. Brennus, who had remained behind the front lines to better direct the combined loyalist forces, sent Golgothos and a detachment of his finest warriors, along with several bands of the 5th grand company Terminators, to strike at a fortified position from where the majority of the daemons had been loosed. This act would unknowingly save The Entombed from total annihilation; shortly after Golgothos' force made their initial attack on the Augur's summoners, Thunder Kings outriders reported that a mysterious red fog was stealing in from the edges of the battlefield. At first, this was ignored; these furthest positions consisted of only Thunder Kings outriders and scouts, who assumed that it was simply an attempt by the Black Augurs to obscure the field of battle and adjusted accordingly. Oscara mac Damman, one of the Horned Gods and a legion company commander, was leading an assault in joint command with a member of the Death Masks, a nameless warrior known only as The Butcher of Kaelor. When the red fog began to creep up on them, Oscara watched it closely, knowing that there had to be something more than a simply obscuring effect; the Thunder Kings and Entombed were hardly unprepared to pour a storm of fire into the fog, if so needed. But when the fog finally reached the first of The Entombed, he understood its purpose with complete horror: the normally stolid and silent men began to shriek in pain, as flesh began to melt away from their bodies. Oscara reported this to Brennus immediately, as he tried to command his men to retreat and get The Entombed off the field as quickly as possible; sadly, he was struck down by plague rounds from the fog, as the Life Bringers fired upon the now vulnerable Thunder Kings.

Reports quickly spread throughout the loyalist assault group; Entombed were dying across the moon, their horrific screams choking the vox and disorienting their allies. The Thunder Kings fared no better, as without their heavy support they were quickly overwhelmed by the combined might of plague horrors, daemons, and the assault of two Chaos-tainted Legions. Brennus ordered his men to retreat at all speed, and to save as many of The Entombed if possible; few of either side survived however, only 20,000 of the Thunder Kings original 60,000 strong force making it out of the mist, and only a few hundred of the Entombed able to escape from the mist. Golgothos and the marines he had fought with made up the bulk of The Entombed survivors, about 10,000 as the position they were assaulting was isolated from Life Bringers support and thus the fog. Brennus pleaded with Golgothos to retreat, but the screams of his sons had driven Golgothos battle-mad, and he would countenance no action besides an immediate slaughter of the Life Bringers. Brennus raced to confront Golgothos, and attempt to convince him to withdraw and fight another day, but the Tomb Lord's powerful blows quickly shattered Brennus' shield and knocked him aside. Unwilling to allow another of his brothers to die, he withdrew a rune-crafted sling bullet, made to send a mighty pulse of electricity through its target, and cast it into the mighty dreadnought's motive control; the resulting shock paralyzed the mighty battle engine. Brennus instructed the remaining warriors to escort Golgothos off the planet, as he supervised the rest of the retreat; he would remark later that "the screams of The Entombed were all the more terrible for their customary silence, and will haunt me until the last of my days. But the screams of their father, his pain and loss, will echo for millennia."