Editing Nobledark Imperium Imperial Society and Culture (section)

== The Cost of War ==

A squad of men with chemical sprayers walk over a burned field, churned by tank treads and artillery fire, clad in bulky grey protective suits and bug-eyed masks. One of them spots something, and points — a green fungal stalk, pushing its way out of the abused soil. They surround it and hose it down, the growth visibly withering under the fungicidal assault. One of them plants a small flag, marking the spot for follow-up crews. Dozens, hundreds of other squads walk beside them in a loose line, stretching out to either horizon.

In a half-forgotten underhive sump, a charnel mound of corpses a dozen deep, blood shaded black under low-power red lighting. An apparent Guardsman walks in and ambles over to the body pile, inspecting it. Suddenly, a charnel beast lunges from the center of the pile in a welter of gore, something like what you would get if a Catachan Devil fucked a bale of razor wire and then a surrealist madman tried to create a sculpture of the resulting offspring in obsidian, wrapping sadistic tendrils around the man and dragging him into the mound. Then the melta bomb embedded in the lifelike servitor's chest detonates. A dozen twists and turns back, a pair of enginseers prepared another suicide servitor; they aren't sure how many creatures there are.

The carbonized remains of spore towers rise high above the ground, the stench of promethium and phosphorus still thick in the air. A team of engineers bustle around the base of one, planting explosives, before retreating to a safe distance. With a muffled thump, the spore tower falls to the ground, crumbling, sending up a thick wave of choking black soot. Tens of thousands more remain, thin streams of ash drifting from their peaks in the wind.

Endless rows of holding cells, each containing a person. Bound and restrained in their beds, to prevent them from hurting themselves or the orderlies tending them, and fed by IV lines. Lost deep in chaotic madness. Servitors move among the cells, refilling IV bags and changing bedpans. Monitoring machines beep and whir, filling endless reams of printouts with the jagged lines of brainwave and heart rate. Psykers and psychologists consult in low tones, flipping through thick case files. Several stories above, the Interrogator reads the summaries with a careful eye. He has two stamps; {MOVE TO LONG TERM TREATMENT} and {EUTHANASIA RECOMMENDED}. He uses the first hardly at all and the second a great deal. He is very, very tired.

An engineering vehicle beats the dirt with its mine flail, sending up sprays of dust punctuated by the occasional explosion. The engineering battalion had been here a scant a few months ago, when they laid the minefield down; now the battle was over, the enemy repelled, and they have to remove it. A mine that somehow escaped the flail detonates beneath the track, making the machine lurch; its hatches opened and its crew spill out, shaken but unharmed, to make their way back to safety. A tank recovery vehicle moves into action, carefully traveling down the cleared track to haul the mine-clearing vehicle back out. The wrecks of two more vehicles left sitting at the edge of the minefield, enginseers fussing over them, show that this isn't the first time this has happened.

After the battle, cleanup. War is a messy thing, especially where most of the Imperium's enemies are concerned.

Orks and tyranids scatter spores wherever they go. Dark Eldar and Croneworlders delight in leaving behind an incredible array of hideous booby-traps. Nurgle's followers leave behind his myriad gifts, those of Tzeentch subtle sorceries. The Imperium itself tends to scatter unexploded ordnance when it goes to war, from land mines to dud artillery shells. Once the fighting has concluded, there is still a great deal of work to be done before the battlefields can be turned back to other purposes. Years, decades, sometimes centuries of work.

There is no unified authority for taking care of these issues. The Imperial Army has the Office of Battlefield Reclamation and its array of specialized engineering regiments. A number of Sororitas orders, both Militant and Hospitaller. The Inquisition deals with the human wreckage, sorting the redeemable from the irremediably tainted. A great deal of the burden falls on the afflicted planets themselves.

No matter who does it, in every case it is a long, difficult, expensive, and often thankless task. And an endless one as well; there are always more battlefields in need of cleaning, more wounds on the face of the galaxy to be turned into scars. The work continues.

=== Plague and the Imperium ===

The Long War has a great many fronts. Far from the worlds where cannons crash and thunder, on worlds which have never known the touch of insidious cults, even there the war rages. For the enemy is one as old as life itself, present almost everywhere protein chains dare self-replicate:

Plague. 

The overwhelming majority of diseases are not directly influenced by Grandfather Nurgle's hand; even the creativity of a god can hardly match the sheer breadth and depth of evolution across a hundred million worlds. Still, the fruits of his cauldron are numerous. And just as a mortal follower of chaos may be elevated for monumental deeds, a particularly slaughterous mundane disease may find itself suddenly surging with warp-given power. 

Public health is never far from the minds of the Imperium's decision-makers; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and the best way to fight Nurgle's plagues is to prevent them from taking hold in the first place. On the worlds of the Mechanicus, medical servitors stalk the corridors, mosquito-like tendrils lancing out to take blood samples from random passersby for analysis. Quarantine gates divide hive worlds into thousands of segments, ready to slam down in the event that an epidemic is detected, sacrificing the few to save the many. Starships demand everyone boarding to submit to a full exam to prevent the spread of disease between worlds; stowaways are reviled as potential disease vectors. Thousands of varieties of animal are trained to sniff out ill health, with Biologis breeders splicing in new genes for ever greater sensitivities. Propaganda campaigns exhort citizens to wash their hands frequently, sanitize surfaces, check with a doctor for even slight fever or flu. Face masks and latex gloves are profitable businesses. Most bodies are cremated.

Where prevention fails, treatment steps in. The Biologis, the Orders Hospitaller, and thousands of smaller organizations across the Imperium work to develop cures and vaccines for thousands of mundane diseases. For supernatural diseases, the many devotees of Isha — both human and eldar — are frequently fighting even these back. At least in the early stages of infection. Where all else fails, the Imperium does its best to ease the victim's suffering. Sometimes via a cyanide pill.

And when things get really bad, there's always the Imperial Guard and their flamers. 

At times, these methods are overzealous. Entire hives basically shut down over flu season, and perfectly healthy people are quarantined for weeks or months of observation for a case of the sniffles. People get used to invasive random checks. Like the TSA, except the TSA doesn't demand blood or urine samples. 

All too often, they are not nearly enough. As the long roll of dead worlds attests.