Editing The Great Sowing (section)

===Ghastly Talons vs Imperial Hangmen===
Although they personally took care of Ciban Chasseurs, the Green Men had no intention of wasting their precious time on the Successor Chapters sent after them. Instead, they sent their thrall warbands to take care of this minor distraction while they were busy healing the scarred industrial worlds of Durnovarian Subsector. The Ghastly Talons were less than enthusiastic about this order. Their warlocks were seriously discussing the possibility of escaping the sector altogether while their masters were too occupied with their crazy plans. Yet before they could come to an agreement, the Imperial forces made the decision for them by cutting off their route of escape. Cursing the cruel destiny, the Ghastly Talons made a landing on the closest inhabited planet, getting ready to punish the Loyalists for snatching their long-awaited freedom from under their noses.

Their escape was intercepted by a Second Founding Chapter by the name of Imperial Hangmen. These successors of the Entombed saw themselves less as soldiers and more as executioners, sent by the Emperor to judge his enemies, sentence them and carry the sentences out. Unsettlingly merciless and cruel to the point of sadism, they always made a point of exterminating their enemies to a man, even if that meant taking some innocent lives. Then again, innocence was an oxymoron to them, for they saw no man as free of guilt, not even themselves. Therefore, they were always fully prepared to die for their sins in a battle with the Emperor's foes, and always wore nooses around their necks to signify their resignation to impending death. Chainaxes that they wielded in place of chainswords and their habit of suspending gibbets with hanged prisoners from their heavy vehicles only added to their morbid image.

Planet Nephelokokkygia, upon which they were to face the Ghost Talons, was a Feral World, which meant a lack of pollution so typical of Durnovarian Subsector. Nevertheless, it was hardly more pleasant than its toxic Industrial Worlds. Due to a heavy concentration of volcanic gases in the planet's lowlands, its only regions that could sustain life were the peaks of its spire-like mountains, towering above the wreathing clouds of toxic smoke. Millennia ago the human colonists of the Dark Age of Technology connected these peaks with colossal viaducts wide as rivers; unfortunately, most of those fell into a state of dire disrepair during the Age of Strife, and it was these rickety bridges that the fighting between the Imperial Hangmen and the Ghastly Talons was to take place atop.

When the Imperial Hangmen made a landing on Nephelokokkygia, they found themselves across a crumbling viaduct from the foe. Wasting no time on preparations, they immediately started advancing towards the enemy positions, carefully avoiding the holes in the ancient construction. Ghastly Talons showered the enemy with a hail of bolts from their redoubts at the other end of the viaduct, but the skilful usage of combat shields by the Imperial Hangmen ensured that they managed to advance under enemy fire with minimal casualties. When the Loyalists began to close on their positions, the Traitors sent a squad of close combat specialists to slow them down. This was a miscalculation on their part, as the Imperial Hangmen made short work of their assailants, killing most of them and incapacitating the rest. Nevertheless, this gave the Ghastly Talons enough time to quickly cross another bridge in their Rhinos and avoid direct confrontation with their pursuers for the time being.

The viaduct that separated the two forces now was far more decrepit than the one Imperial Hangmen had just crossed, as it swayed visibly in the planet's stormy wind. The Chapter's commanders recognised that its pylons could probably be destroyed by the concentrated fire of Ghastly Talons' heavy weapon squads, and so they avoided advancing across it. Instead, they decided to provoke the enemy into advancing first. Using the beams and ropes that they always carried with them for such cases, they built massive gallows visible the other side of the bridge. Then, they stripped their prisoners naked, injected them in the necks with muscle relaxants and executed them by short drop hanging. As they were writhing at the ends of the ropes, the Chapter's Chaplain disembowelled each one of them with a butcher knife. As if this wasn't enough, the Imperial Hangmen amplified the agonised cries of their victims via vox equipment, making sure that the Traitors on the other side of the bridge hear every scream of their dying brethren.

This was quite enough for the Ghastly Talons. Seemingly abandoning their trademark caution bordering with cowardice, they started advancing across the rickety viaduct. With grim contentment, the Imperial Hangmen grabbed their chainaxes and headed towards them. They crossed their weapons in the middle of the bridge and a bloody skirmish broke out. It was then that the Eyedrinker, leader of the Ghastly Talons, revealed his hand. At the sign of his slight grin, the warband's warlocks broke the spell shrouding the battle brothers fighting on the bridge in an illusion. The backpacks on their backs turned into puffs of smoke, revealing a shocking twist: it turned out that they were Warp Talons equipped with jump packs all along. With malevolent cackling they activated their jump devices, flying back to their positions on the solid ground and leaving the Imperial Hangmen alone in the middle of the decrepit viaduct. The very moment the Warp Talons made their landing, the Havocs who had been waiting at the sides of the bridge the whole time, opened concentrated fire at the bridges's pylons. It only took a couple of volleys to make them crumble and send the entire structure with the Space Marines trapped upon it into the scorching clouds below.

But the worst was yet to come. The Eyedrinker used the simultaneous deaths of tens of Imperial Hangmen as a sacrifice to the Ruinous Powers to summon a powerful Warp entity into the material world. Instead of infusing it into a single host, he instead spread its essence evenly across hundreds of hosts - the birds of Nephelokokkygia. An immense flock of birds began gathering in the skies over the collapsed bridge, covering the sun with their mass of bodies. Then this flock started taking on a vaguely humanoid shape, which grew less and less vague until a colossus made of birds floated in the air where the bridge once was. At the Eyedrinker's nod, the creature let out a nightmarish shout composed of hundreds of brids screeches, and brought down its fist upon the remaining Imperial Hangmen. 

The majority of the Chapter was brutally slain on this dark day. The Ghastly Talons expected them to retreat from the plant at any moment, but the grim Space Marines decided to stay, feeling that this was the time for them to pay for the crimes they committed in service to the Emperor. And so, they refused to flee even as the Traitors were slowly but steadily slaughtering what little remained of their Chapter. Their last wish was to be remembered as unyielding warriors. The Eyedrinker remembered them as the stupidest men he has ever met.