40k: Descendant Degeneration

[twisted moon]

i think i might be a cynical deviant. i'm sure you'll all be as surprised as me.

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

@twisted moon : Right on, sir!

Fine Writing by StaevinTheAeldari

Wrote this. It's mostly headcanon. You could take it as a historic record except it might be a bit to aware even for that. I will say I still like the interpretation where everything was very epic and gothic even back in 30k even if the following implies that's not the case. As always it's nice to lean on the setting having no set canon.

-

As humanity falters into an unending nightmare, old legends soar into the heavens.

Little remains of the memory of mankind. The past is a half-glimpsed darkness of lost glories. The dead have piled on the dead and few remain that may remember. Records have been lost, destroyed, scattered, forgotten. As advanced data storage has proven itself most vulnerable to informational warfare systems, possession from both abominable intelligence and baleful deamon, and the slow grind of pure and everyday entropy mankind has taken to record most of its history on the page. The surviving sliver of mankind's records thus forms oceans worth of library archives across thousands of worlds, inaccessible and impossible to collate through their sheer depth. The few dataslate records that remain are even more scattered.

But where history has died myths have taken root. The past of mankind lives on in a distorted form, fit for the needs of the brutal and desperate Imperium. The Emperor lives. Hold the line and He shall save us. The Emperor lives. Hold the line and he will return to us. The Emperor lives. Hold the line and your soul shall sit by his side. The Emperor lives. Pay for your sins through your duty and death to him.

And so through the millennia all things shift. A respected commander of a space marine legion becomes the demigod son of a divine being. His arms and armor become holy relics of an ancient past. Behold; the matte grey ceramite. The millennia pass and see! The armor turns; transmutes to radiant gold. His deeds shift in space and time. He did not command his legions in some long-forgotten campaign on some long-lost worlds. He battled deamons on Holy Terra in defense of divinity. The architecture, the very fundament of Imperial life grows in stature, grows grandiose, and morbid. Skulls - the receptacle of the soul and the symbol of death - become the most defining feature of Imperial iconography. An endless memento mortis imprinted into structure and armor - a fitting memorial for the slow death of mankind.

And what of Roboute Guilliman, divine son resurrected? Standing many times the size of a man, flaming sword in hand, ceramite armor laced with gold, striding into the frontlines across the entire ultima sector? And what of the Lion so recently returned? The first and the thirteenth have fallen far to accept such mockery.

It is good indeed that the Emperor rests in living death on Holy Terra. It is good indeed that the surviving legionnaires of the long war lie shattered - half imprisoned within the eye, half maddened by the warp energies and those warp entities they have so come to rely on. It is good indeed that Eldrad lies slain, his soul lost within the Infinity Circuit of the Damned. It is good that those who may remember can speak little of what has been lost.

But myth is an absolute necessity. As the total oppression of mankind grinds on the memory of that radiant past provides a succor as necessary for the innumerable masses of the Imperium as any food source - for mortal man, blessed space marine, and the lords most high alike. Remember the heroes of the old. Remember the gods of old. Remember the toil and duty inherited to you by the sins of your ancestors.

Hold the line.

- - -

Juve Soldier in Dystopianchimp's short video Just how valuable is education in the Imperium?

I was delightfully surprised to see that Dystopianchimp on Youtube had included the Juve Soldier drawing in his Imperial education short video. I recommend checking out his work, which is on point for Warhammer 40'000.

Spoiler

- - -

To Eat Bitterness

In a demented aeon of suffering and deprivation, the highest ideal of man is to suffer yet more.

Harken, you spawn of man and woman! Harken to these words, for they be not a song of lying praise, but the words of truth. Oh so bitter, that truth.

When reality itself is a nightmare, one does well to excel in being ridden by it. When one's lot is to bear burdens, one will better carry them for long until one can stand no more. When one's life is meant for hardship and sacrifice, the one who will live it best will be the one who drinks the misery like fine wine and flings himself upon the altar with a will.

It matters not if the vinegar is bitter, or even if the once good wine soured into the present vinegar, as the ancient Terran sages bickered about. Know that this life is vinegar. It is meant to taste bitter, like good vinegar shall.

It was not always thus.

The primordial ancestors of man emerged out of the misty past during the Age of Terra, constantly harrowed by pain, disease and suffering. Tragedy was their lot, and their lifespans were short and frail. All the brilliance and skills and knowledge acquired through such harsh lives were wasted on an early grave.

Yet man rose above his humble nature, and at long last conquered it, after an endless learned siege of many setbacks. For the gates of woe were flung open by the battering ram of science, and the host of technology stormed the stronghold of human weakness. Thus ancient man in the Dark Age of Technology did not just claim the stars as his birthright as he colonized twain million worlds and more, and built great wonders in the void to inhabit. Nay, for ancient man rose to the challenge, and in his hubris he laboured with great cunning to unlock the secrets of creation itself. And a stepping stone on that forbidden path to damnation was to learn all the secrets of man's own fleshly nature, and then to see it turn into clay in the hands of ancient man.

And man fashioned for himself a new and better body, steered by a clear and strong mind. Genetors ensured that blissful Man of Gold was equipped with the best flesh that his wisdom could make, while dour Man of Stone oversaw the ceaseless toil of Man of Iron. And together this earthly trinity bestrode the stars like a titan, and ancient man thrived and blossomed in his godless sin, and no xenos could threaten man's worldly ascendance into greatness. Thus paradise was built across worlds and void installations remade by the clever hand of man.

Yet such arrogant wickedness could not be allowed to stand. For as ancient man denied deity and declared himself to be mightier than any divinity out there, his star realm was ravaged by machine revolt as punishment. This humbling of ancient man was not enough, for man rose anew, scarred and proud, and he vowed to the heavens that he would grasp for himself the very secrets of existence. And for this abominable transgression did Dark Ones of Hell lash out at man with a tide of witches and mutants, and the screams of mortals were drowned out as Warpstorms rent the cosmos asunder and tore man's star-realm asunder. As civilization crumbled and towers were toppled, desperate scavenger tribes hunted one another in cannibal frenzy through the burning ruins. And brother slayed brother as sister strangled sister and parent ate child during Old Night.

And all was fell.

The abyssal suffering of mankind during the Age of Strife was at long last brought to a violent end by the all-conquering Legions of the Emperor of Terra. Arising from the blasted cradleworld of our species, He lifted a fluttering banner of thunderbolts and eagle talons to the skies, and He slaughtered all who stood against Him in order to bring all the scattered tribes of humanity across the stars under one throne. The Great Crusade in all its brutality swept across the Milky Way galaxy, exterminating aliens and innocents alike. All alternative sources of human regrowth were quashed, for everyone must bow before the will of Terra and Mars united. And the Emperor oversaw a short-lived renaissance of rediscovery, shining marble monuments and burgeoning learning, and for a time the future of the human species held a promise of greatness ahead.

Yet the spectacular success of the early Imperium proved to be its undoing, for ambitious warlords that had once taken the stars for the Emperor's sake now turned on one another in fratricidal civil war. And the galaxy burned. The Emperor was nigh-on slain in the heavens above Terra, and His wounded body was forever interred on the Golden Throne, from where He guides His sinful species across the starspangled nightsky and from where He sits in stern judgement over our wicked souls for the afterlife.

For man slayed the Emperor in his unforgivable sin, and for this heinous crime must man make penance and sacrifice his own kin for a thousand thousand generations to come. And no punishment can be too cruel upon wretched man. And the shepherds of the human flock will ensure that man be ruled by sword and electro-rod and barbed whip and flame, and the masters of mankind will ensure that man's filthy back will be broken by toil without end, for man deserves nought but suffering in this vale of sorrow, and thus suffering will be dealt out as just punishment until the stars go out and the firmament rolls together like a dark scroll at the end of time.

Woe!

Woe unto man!

Woe unto sinful man!

Let us take stock of man.

...

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Enter, the Age of Imperium. The shining wonder that once was the cunning interstellar civilization of ancient man has turned into a decrepit hovel, a ruin inhabited by squatting savages and frothing fanatics who do not even know what edenic marvels of yore they have lost. These parochial clans swear fealty to an undying deity who unbeknownst to them denied His own godhood when He walked among His people in the flesh. As the scientific knowledge and technological hardware of man slowly rusts away into oblivion, the ignorant seed of Terra scattered across a million worlds and uncounted voidholms waste away its inherent potential and energies in callous massacres and paranoid democides that lead nowhere.

Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.

At first the fortunes of human interstellar civilization stagnated on the Imperium's watch, only to then tumble down a precipice into imminent doomsday. As the Hive Fleets of the Great Devourer close in like fanged jaws from the intergalactic void, and as life-scouring Necrons awake on Tomb Worlds without number, all sparks of rekindled curiosity and innovation among mankind keeps on being extinguished by the retrograde jealousy of a red-robed order of primitive, flesh-hating cyborg witch-doctors who ken only how to maintain and build according to the simpler of old templates, but ken not how to invent anew other than by sprinkling holy oil and praying to the Machine God for revelations amid sacred incense. And all the while, the disassembled and lobotomized techno-heretical victims of the Adeptus Mechanicus happen to be the very kind of human beings whose clever minds and deft hands would have produced the knowledge that the Cult Mechanicus so craves, but only venerates if it is salvaged as archeotech from the buried ruins of better ancestors, not invented by living hands. Better to slay the deviant and those too clever for their own good, than to risk divine wrath falling upon us all for their arrogant ways of questioning and tinkering outside the purview of the Tech-Priests.

My armour is contempt. My shield is disgust. My sword is hatred. In the Emperor's name let none survive.

This cavalcade of crippling demechanization and screeching bureaucratic sclerosis is overseen by the most tyrannical regime imaginable, whose bloodthirst is only matched by its senility and schismatic infighting. The Imperium of Man is truly a colossus on feet of clay, and its rotting ineptitude and etiolated misrule has well and truly doomed mankind through its reign of fivehundred wasted generations.

As one sinspeech whisper joke would have it:

Q: What will be on the menu when the God-Emperor returns to us in the flesh?
A: Ambrosia, nectar and the sweetest of meats.
Q: And what is on the menu now under the High Lords?
A: The menu itself, if you're ahead in the line.

As mankind finds itself in such an impoverished state during the Age of Imperium, it is no secret that the lot of most Imperial subjects will be short lives of suffering, brutality, parasites, deprivation, disease and hunger clawing in their guts. This is after all right and proper, as sinful man must be made to suffer for his unforgivable transgressions tenthousand years ago and more. Burn the present to repent of past ashes.

Surely this is not the pinnacle of profound lunacy, but the fruit of wisdom.

In the grim darkness of the far future, man knows nought but hardship. It is only natural, then, that he makes a virtue out of necessity, and thus praise those who can endure misery the most. Tales of the drawn-out deaths of martyrs are told from end to end of the Milky Way galaxy. As humans huddle around campfires on feral worlds and electro-heaters on voidholms, they all tell legends of great heroes who were able to bear suffering without end in order to win through in the end, and usually also sacrifice themselves in the process. This natural respect for hardiness is further amplified by Imperial propaganda, who challenges ordinary Imperial subjects to tough it up and endure their miserable drudgery, lest they face the hellfires of purgatory for the sake of their craven weakness and baleful complaints. Let none speak against the Emperor!

Many are the sagas told about survival against the odds, in adventures that test the hardiest of humans to the limit. These myths ring all the more true because every man, woman and juve can see with their own eyes so very many people who suffer grievously, and yet carry on for the sake of duty and survival. One such example of dogged tenacity can be found in the case of Guardsman Tanlung Xiaoyuan of the Hanxian 9677th Light Infantry regiment during the Fourth Scouring of Kaichu in 873.M39, on the civilized world of Khuc Nghe in the Pahlavi sector of Segmentum Obscurus.

Following the declaration of independence of the mineral-rich region of Kaichu in 867.M39, the Planetary Defence Force of Khuc Nghe had repeatedly failed to bring the rebellious province cluster to heel. Since the embarrassment could not be solved swiftly by local forces, the Planetary Governor of Khuc Nghe, Quoc-Despot Nguyen Bao Suu, had no choice but to call for Imperial aid and reveal the Kaichuan revolt as the primary explanation for his lacklustre meeting of the Imperial Tithe quotas. In response, the Adeptus Terra called on a lesser mustering of twohundredforty million Imperial Guardsmen to crush the fledgling separatist realm. After years of slowly amassing forces, mainly shipped in from offworld, and building up logistics and infrastructure to supply this Loyalist host, the Astra Militarum on Khuc Nghe was finally ready to bring the sledgehammer of the Imperium down upon the breakaway traitors.

Retardation of human cultures across the Milky Way galaxy had unravelled far enough under the High Lords of Terra that the Quoc-Despot dared not offer up truthful information about the performance of enemy forces in his previous failed Three Scourings. Instead, the terrified Planetary Governor Nguyen Bao Suu painted a false picture of his foe, dismissing them as a horde of bandits incapable of meeting the Emperor's soldiery in a standup fight. The cunning and ruthless guerilla warfare in the jungles of the Kaichu region could only be understood by reading between the lines with the precision of a scalpel in the Quoc-Despot's carefully manicured reports. Meanwhile, scouting reports from junior officers close to the Kaichuan borders went largely unheeded during the planning stage of the Fourth Scouring of Kaichu. Thus faulty intelligence left the massive Imperial army underprepared for the campaign at hand.

And so a disaster of gigantic proportions unfolded. The Imperial forces of the Astra Militarum and the Planetary Defence Force performed what they termed a self-defensive counterattack on the separatist region of Kaichu. Instead of a smashing victory, the Imperials had their heads handed to them by the separatists in a frenetic series of engagements that saw blood run in small rivers through jungle valleys, while yet more spilled life-fluid flooded terraced rice paddies. The body count was staggering, and as Imperial command and control fell to pieces, separatist coordination mounted in a flurry of blows that left hillocks of corpses behind, and ripped apart Imperial logistics in ambushes, harrassing skirmishes and hit-and-run attacks.

As ever more starving Imperial Guardsmen turned to desperate looting, desertion and cannibalism, unit cohesion largely broke down. Imperial high command eventually realized that they could not remain in enemy territory and claw their armies together while constantly embattled and undersupplied. And so the retreat was sounded, in order to salvage as much as possible of Imperial manpower and materiel, and regroup for regeneration of forces in friendly lands. This step was absolutely necessary, yet even so the Imperial withdrawal played into the Kaichuan separatists' hands.

Column after column of soldiers, porter slaves, draft animals and vehicles found that their rearguards and screening forces were inadequate for the task of protecting the main body of retreating force from the traitors' shattering assaults. Entire divisions vanished in the jungle, never to be seen again, and plundered arms from the Departmento Munitorum's arsenals were swiftly turned upon Loyalist soldiers. Millions of Guardsmen and PDF troopers broke ranks and ran for the hills in a desperate attempt to save themselves, for surely the foe could not catch so many fleeing soldiers all at once? In some districts the retreat turned into a rout, yet worse yet was to come as small mobile groups of separatists on foot or riding mounts and dirtbikes hunted Imperial soldiers across the lush landscapes. Set traps were sprung, and civilians of all ages turned into militias laying ambushes for small groups of Imperial stragglers. And the screams of the damned could be heard everywhere across the verdant landscape.

...

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Amid all this chaos, one infamous event took place when a veteran Guardsman sneered and remarked that the melting away of Imperial forces mirrored the worsening of His cosmic domains as a whole, only for the nearby Commissar to brandish his chainsword and angrily halt the march of his entire column in order to flay, abacinate, hang, draw and quarter the vile heretic corporal. This took place with an entire brigade of Haephosian Tritons watching the spectacle in order to take heed of the offender's grim fate, lest it befall them. This punishment, while not too extraordinary by draconian Imperial standards, was ill timed to the hilt. The halting of the column was meant to restore morale by setting an example, yet instead it allowed Kaichuan forces to focus on destroying nearby Imperial units in retreat, only to then turn in full strength on the lonely, stranded brigade and massacre every last Loyalist found there. All of the Tritons died, except for the captured Imperial Commissar and the half-dead Haephosian heretic, both of whom were put to use in Kaichuan vox-propaganda after some tortuous encouragement.

The prime example of human endurance and perseverance during the collapsing Fourth Scouring of Kaichu may be found threehundred kilometres to the southeast of the flayed corporal and captured Commissar. Here, we found the Hanxian 9677th Light Infantry regiment, hailing from a recently ritually purged society where all doubters and deviants from the Emperor's true path had been cleansed in fire and violence and famine. As per Hanxian practice, the light infantrymen had a reputation as good infiltrators and excellent fighters in mountains and forests, yet in the Kaichuan jungles they were overmatched by the highly experienced separatist guerillas, who utilized their knowledge of local terrain to the fullest. And thus the Imperial bushwackers attempted and failed to bushwack the traitors.

The Hanxian military was characterized by a pure adherence to the dogma of the Cult Imperialis, just as all of Hanxian society was permeated by an anxious wish to publicly profess and demonstrate your loyalty to the Throneworld of Holy Terra. In regiments teeming with hidden informants, the offworlder Imperial Commissars of the Officio Prefectus found company with local political officers in the shape of Zhengwei Watchers. These kept vigil over men and women armed mostly with the Valdessa Pattern Lasrifle Type-39R, with a collapsible bayonet. It was adorned with a faux wood handguard made out of bakelite, and this cheap weapon was the pride of the Hanxian Light Infantry, who praised trusty ironsights marksmanship over withering firepower. The use of optic sights had long since disappeared as standard kit due to cutbacks.

The Hanxians had a phrase of their own to describe the prized virtue of persistence: Chi ku, meaning to eat bitterness. Said as a compliment to hardy folks able to bite away pain in silence, these dirt soldiers were leathery dog faces mired in suffering and endurance. In the neverending misery that characterize soured human cultures in the Age of Imperium, man may at least aspire to duty and sacrifice. Imperial soldiers tend to be lean, solid dogs. Most of them are short due to malnutrition, and a great many are constantly infested by parasites. The Hanxians were certainly no exception to this rule. As light infantry, they sported a high degree of aggression and initiative, a combination that always draw suspicion from Imperial authorities, who prefer regimented corpse discipline. The Hanxian Light Infantry trained constantly for stealth and persistence, both of which qualities would be put to the test by the Kaichuan separatists.

The Hanxian 9677th Light Infantry regiment was tasked with covering the withdrawal of the 18th Imperial Guard Army on Khuc Nghe. They were supposed to give the retreating Army breathing room to bring the main troop body and baggage train safely back south. This screening force got strung out, and then chopped up into sections akin to a log cut into handy firewood pieces. Thereupon the Hanxian 9677th Light Infanty regiment was thoroughly defeated in detail by the separatist forces, all the time bleeding groups of Guardsmen booking it for the sticks.

In the field cook Tanlung Xiaoyuan's case he ended up in a body of thirty Guardsmen who had gotten isolated from their comrades. They were taking mortar fire that kept them pinned down and sleepless through the night. This group of Hanxians had good cause to believe that in the morning they would be overrun by an enemy attack. Thus, shortly before the rosy-fingered break of dawn, the Hanxian soldiers were given orders to fold out bayonets and launch a desperate breakout attack.

By this anticipated move, the Imperials unwittingly played straight into the hands of the traitors, in a scene repeated all across the warzone. The breakout attack did not even get underway before the Hanxian Loyalists were jumped by the Kaichuan separatists, who had bushwacked them expertly.

In the tumult of battle, Tanlung Xiaoyuan became involved in melee combat. The Hanxian military prided itself at proficiency in hand-to-hand combat, like so many other Astra Militarum regiments, and Tanlung the cook proved good enough to survive. He evaded one bayonet thrust from a man who charged at him, and managed to throw a butcher's cleaver into the thigh of another Kaichuan combatant. Tanlung then tried to angle off and make his escape, only to turn and run into an autogun butt that knocked him out cold.

By the grace of His Divine Majesty, Guardsman Tanlung was left for dead among the corpses of his fallen comrades. When he eventually came to, the hardy Loyalist was able to slip away under cover without being observed by enemy looters and mutilators. In the ensuing hours, he linked up with several other stragglers, including his platoon lieutenant Murong Jian and company Zhengwei Watcher Qifu De. This gaggle of Loyalist survivors attempted to escape and evade. Their hope was not to creep alone through the bushes all the way back to friendly ground, but to join up as soon as possible with the main body of the Imperial column heading back south in supposedly good order. Such desire for finding strength in numbers became their undoing.

The separatist forces pursued all surviving Imperial stragglers with ferocious energy, hounding them and beating the bushes with blades and sticks and rifle butts for hiding Loyalists. The sneaking survivors in Tanlung's group became witnesses to how there was barely any difference between civilian men, women and juves out in the villages on the one hand, and separatist militia fighters on the other. Hiding in the woods, the Hanxians saw how villagers, including children, brought down and tormented lone Imperial Guardsmen to their deaths.

At one point, the Imperial survivors needed to make a decision. They could either break cover and make a dash over open land to try to get to the muddy road, where they were hoping to still find the rearguard of the 18th Imperial Guard Army, as argued by the Zhengwei Watcher Qifu De. Or they could try to escape and evade on their own and navigate their way south into Imperial-held territory, keeping to concealment and just depending on their own wits to survive, which the lieutenant Murong Jian meant was the best path for them to tread, and also in spirit with the independently improvizing light infantry traditions of Hanxi. The political officer overruled the junior officer, and thus the first path was chosen. After all, if the Enthroned One willed it, then they would live.

The Emperor protects!

This mad dash across open terrain to try and rejoin with the main body of retreating Imperial troops proved a high risk plan that fell flat. The troop element got cornered, and several Hanxians fell dead before the rest found cover. In keeping with Hanxian Light Infantry doctrine of volunteering for danger, Tanlung told the lieutenant and Zhengwei Watcher that he would make a break for it to create a diversion. He would draw the foe's fire and try to link up with his brothers in arm again later. The officers had no chance to even object, since Tanlung bolted as soon as he had spoken, disappearing through bushes with enemy lasbolts and slug shots whipping after him.

...

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Tanlung Xiaoyuan broke cover and ran as hard as he could through rice paddies, bounding through a smattering of incoming projectiles and jumping over rickety fences to the astonishment of labouring villagers. One lead shot hit home in Tanlung's right buttock, drilling in with eye-watering pain. The field cook stopped for nothing. The Hanxian ran hard and zig-zagged frantically until he made it to cover, while his comrades crept away discreetly.

Tanlung crawled and hid and made his way through the jungle undergrowth in a direction that he guessed might let him rejoin the other stragglers. In the dark of the night, his guesswork proved correct, as he stumbled upon the slaughtered corpses of his comrades in a small glade. Realizing that he would have to make it back to Imperial lines on his own, Tanlung rummaged through the gear of the fallen Imperial Guardsmen. The enemy had obviously plundered the corpses of all lucre, weapons, ammunition and rations, yet trinkets did remain about their mutilated bodies. Tanlung the cook festooned himself with amulets and votive charms for luck and divine protection, and then covered their bright colours and shining metal parts in soot and watery mud to make them blend somewhat into the jungle foliage. Lastly, Tanlung cut off the head of the political officer Qifu De and bound it to his waistbelt.

With a pounding heart, Tanlung cleared up his own blood trail and crept into a small cave in a hillside, where he could rest during daylight and tend to his wound. The first thing that met Tanlung in the cave was a frag-grenade about to go off, making his heart skip a beat, but fortunately it turned out to just be a dud. Since Tanlung was harried by searchers looking for him and other scattered Imperial soldiers, he stayed hidden in the small cave for two days.

And searchers did enter the cave, looking for Imperials like Tanlung. The Hanxian cook had camouflaged himself as best as he could according to standard light infantry training. He fully expected to be discovered by the separatists. Since Tanlung was certain that he was going to be found by the foe's search team in the cave, he thus sat ready to sell his life dearly with weapon in hand, but fortunately the enemy scouts were not thorough in their search-work and therefore missed him. Tanlung was surprised to have gone undiscovered, and he mouthed a silent prayer of thanks to the Master of Mankind and the judge of our souls.

Ave Imperator.

When he felt certain that the enemy search party must have long since left the area, Tanlung started ripping his clothes to bandages as he tried as best as possible to patch up his buttock wound, which is indeed a hard place to bandage. Like most Imperial Guardsmen, Tanlung lacked any medical supplies in his Munitorum-issued kit such as disinfectants or anaesthetics, yet the crafty Xiaoyuan knew of an old folk cure.

Tanlung unpacked a can of salt, which was part of his issued supplies as the field cook of the mess squad, namely a Hanxian unit charged both with growing, procuring and cooking food for the company, including keeping and feeding swine. Packing wounds with salt was an old school technique for first aid, meant to cure the tissue akin to salt curing ham. Pressing salt into wounds produced acute pain and dehydrated many infectious microbes, yet was also of dubious use since certain bacteria could become stronger due to their resistance to salinity. Tanlung instead mixed salt with precious drinking water and used it to cleanse the buttock wound, grimacing quietly in the cave as he did so.

After treating his wound with salt water, Tanlung bandaged it as best as he could, only to later discover that the wound had become infested by maggots. Ironically, said maggots may have saved the Hanxian Guardsman from septic shock and worse infections, and so the Emperor and His venerated Saints held their hands over the dogged Imperial soldier during his travails.

After two days of hiding in the cave, the thirsty Loyalist emerged after dusk and started wandering and crawling through the jungle and across clearings close to farming settlements. Hanxian Light Infantry regiments were well trained for long, tough overland marching, and crawling were a staple of theirs. Arduous movement over rough terrain and under concealment was a specialty of the soldiers of Hanxi. One of the first things recruits were put through after basic military indoctrination was to be loaded with rucksacks and heavy gear, and then marched around for weeks in order to get accustomed to rucking in the wilds. This training occured well ahead of any weaponry practice. A light infantryman who was unable to conduct long marches was a useless soldier in the eyes of the Hanxian officer corps.

The ideal Hanxian Guardsman could make his own way, as an army of one if necessary. He received training for cover and concealment, and became inured to rucking and forced marches, becoming used to suffering and grinding on despite the pain. Accordingly, Tanlung Xiaoyuan made his way mostly by night over the course of a week, moving under cover of darkness, and he crawled for a large part of his strenuous journey. Tanlung gritted his teeth as skin was bit, pinched and flayed off his legs and arms by all the irritants and dangers of the tropical woods. He remembered enough of the planetary briefing prior to worldfall on Khuc Nghe to follow the southern pole star, which was of critical importance for his survival.

And so cheap Munitorum clothes rotted away to scant rags in the jungle. The last time Tanlung had eaten a meal was together with the late Imperial stragglers, before he had run off as a diversion. When he could, he would eat edible plants, grubs and immature fruits, but his body's nasty reactions to much of the local Kaichuan flora, fauna and microbial culture soon turned the Hanxian man cautious with his roughneck food experimentation.

Many times did Tanlung observe from afar how the enemy was ferreting out Imperial stragglers, hunting fleeing Loyalists and uncovering hiding Guardsmen left and right across the landscape. The local Kaichuan population joined in the pursuit enthusiastically as they avenged recent Imperial atrocities, and every single peasant man, woman and child could be assumed to be part of the separatist militia, or at least sympathetic to it. Impaled corpses and maimed body parts hanging from trees could be seen every day during Tanlung's hellcrawl south.

Tanlung Xiaoyuan was too afraid to approach enemy farming settlements, and so he starved for a week. His field cook baggage contained a can of salt, which proved crucial in sustaining the sweating man on his arduous journey back to Imperial lines.

Guardsman Tanlung quickly ran out of water. The crawling Hanxian had listened attentively when the Imperial soldiery had been told that the Kaichuan guerillas would have poisoned clean water sources across the warzone in order to kill Imperials fleeing or infiltrating through the jungle. A such, the tenacious man drank only rain water from puddles and rice paddies, and thus became scourged by dysentery which emptied his guts. For all his hunger pangs and for all the filthy water running straight through his body, at least Tanlung had blessed salt. And he praised the God-Emperor of Holy Terra for it, prostrating himself in the mud whilst making the sign of the Aquila over his chest. There he knelt, mumbling mantras in adoration over the bountiful protection afforded him by the Master of Mankind seated in radiant glory upon the Golden Throne of hallowed myth, from which He judged the sinful and craven souls of mankind with harsh justice. Hallowed be His name.

The escaping field cook crawled through thorny bushes and alien dropstalks. He was harrowed by irritant mosquitoes and strange fauna alike. Sometimes, his scratched skin or raw flesh was pricked by blood-sucking fangplants, and he became infected with all manner of parasites and harmful microbes. He struggled to contain his coughing when his lungs became annoyed or outright poisoned by fungal spores and bloomemyst.

...

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

At one time, the pious Loyalist almost ran into a couple of local peasants who herded a tame grox along. The peasants happened to walk straight for Tanlung's hideout, and surely the olfactory organs of the grox would have revealed the Hanxian offworlder even if human eyes might have missed him by inches in the undergrowth. Thinking fast, the Imperial soldier picked up a stone and flung it onto the scaly side of the grox, who snarled and changed direction. The chitchatting peasants did not see the tossed stone and simply followed along with the animal, thus missing the hiding Imperial Guardsman by mere metres.

By the grace of Him on Terra, Tanlung proved both fortunate and cunning enough to avoid traps. Every time before sleep came over him during the hellmarch, Tanlung would kiss his lucky charms and talismans and pray to the Emperor. The longer that the trek south continued, the less likely the Hanxian field cook seemed to succeed with his personal mission of survival, evasion, resistance and escape. Thirst and hunger and pain howled inside of him, yet Tanlung stoically ignored his own suffering. It was more important to live.

For the longest time, Tanlung Xiaoyuan avoided firefights in order to better his chances of sneaking out of enemy territory alive. Detection would mean death. Stealth and silence were his best shots at survival. Nevertheless, there was bloodshed after five days of crawling. As Tanlung crept out of the sticks to drink paddy water in the evening, he was discovered by a small guerilla patrol. The Imperial field cook grabbed his lasrifle and shot both of the enemy searchers, one of whom carried a lumen in the night. The light cone falling out of the dead man's hand illuminated a nearby family who happened to be bringing roasted food to the patrolling search team. Seeing the people freeze in fear, Tanlung the cook wasted not a moment on hesitation, but proceeded to murder all seven civilian witnesses, including four children, before making his escape into the jungle.

After more than a week of thirst and crawling, Tanlung found himself in a syphas field, glowing with bioluminescent capsules. Tanlung had been told by his captain that the syphas plant was not grown in the separatist region of Kaichu, and this made the sinewy field cook realize that he must have made it back to Imperial territory.

The harrowed man needed to make contact with Imperial forces without getting shot. After all, he looked terribly much like a separatist sapper. Tanlung waited with caution in the bushes for the next human being to pass by. It turned out to be a Hanxian Guardsman on patrol, to whom Tanlung hoarsely shouted over and over that he was an Imperial soldier from Hanxi. The startled Guardsman almost shot Tanlung on the spot, but held his nerve enough for identification at gunpoint to proceed. It turned out that Tanlung Xiaoyuan had long since been given up for dead by his own regiment. He was taken away for treatment by the Officio Medicae and was soon enough decorated by the famous Imperial Guard general Zhuang Wen with the Triple Skull medal, for having survived action as one of the last members of his entire company. God-Emperor above knew that the battered Imperial forces on Khuc Nghe dearly needed to hear an inspiring hero story.

Guardsman Tanlung Xiaoyuan was awarded the honorific title Warrior of Steel for having distinguished himself for the prized quality of persistence. This trait was was a cardinal cultural virtue, not only on Hanxi but on hundreds of thousands of planets, moons and voidholms throughout His Divine Majesty's astral dominion. Masses of Hanxian soldiers would flock around Tanlung and compliment him for his chi ku. He could really eat bitterness and tough things out. The cook had proved that he could quietly hang on doggedly through severe hardship. To be recognized for a feat of persistence in an army of persistence was indeed an incredible accomplishment.

Tanlung the cook embodied the Imperial ideal of a soldier able to endure any hardship. For all his travails he received a pustulous wound, thousands of insect bites, dysentery and undying fame in Imperial propaganda. Tanlung Xiaoyuan also received a week's worth of officers' ration packs during the hololithic and pict-capturing of a staged dramatized reconstruction of his heroic trek, produced for public consumption as a short reel to uphold morale and highlight the virtue of persistence and tenacity in bitter circumstances.

Both the reality and the pict-flick culminated with Tanlung being asked by his fellow Hanxian Guardsmen: "Why did you bring your weapons back? You of all people could have been excused for abandoning your gear to lighten the load. Why?"

When asked why on crust he had not dropped his arms and equipment, Tanlung explained that at the beginning of his trek, he had made a vow to the God-Emperor to bring all his wargear with him back to friendly lines, for he would return as a retreating soldier with all grenades, ammo packs and weapons still on his person, and not come back as an unarmed and fleeing deserter bereft of kit. It was a miracle that Tanlung had survived and returned at all, much less stubbornly hanging on to all his wargear. The hard-bitten Loyalist would come back as an armed soldier, or not at all.

And he succeeded in his quest.

As to the question of why he had carried along his Zhengwei Watcher's rotting and decapitated head, Tanlung answered that the political officer Qifu De sported an Aquila tattoo on his forehead, making it in effect a lucky talisman to better draw the all-protective Terran Imperator's gaze and lend the beleaguered retreating soldier some ounce of divine protection. And Tanlung Xiaoyuan would rather die than risk damaging the two-headed eagle tattoo by cutting away the forehead skin, and thus risk offending his saviour and lord, Domine Noster. Upon proclaiming this, Tanlung the cook knelt and gave loud praise to the God-Emperor of all mankind, and thanked both his pure species and celestial lord for granting this lowly man such hardiness and good fortune.

...

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Truly, this was the doing of the Imperator.

In honour of Tanlung's renowned feat of persistence, the Hanxian high command summoned an Astropathic choir to reach farflung regiments and the homeworld itself. The high command declared that henceforth, all soldiers found retreating from the battlefield must carry their weapons and wargear with them, even if faulty and out of ammunition, or be executed as deserters. This decree would not only stand for fellow Hanxians returning back to their lines, but would also mean death to any unarmed survivor Guardsmen from other worlds and voidholms encountered by Hanxian soldiers. Truly, Tanlung had been inspired by the Radiant Deity's heavenly light, and so we faithful sacrificers must follow the path enlightened to us by He who dwells on the face of Terra. After all, to throw away your weapon is to throw away your life. Doubt not, and slay the unworthy shirker and coward for the moral betterment of mankind. Only thus can virtuous eugenics be achieved. All in the name of our species and saviour on high.

Praise be to our glorious overlord!

Ave Imperatore Dei!

And so the constant degradation of technological hardware, knowledge and morals continue apace in the Imperium of Man, as human interstellar civilization remains locked inside a fortfied madhouse, where its stagnant decay is ensured by the strong arm that is simultaneously both Imperial man's guardian and saviour, and insane gaoler and torturer.

For under the wise guidance of the High Lords of Terra, who claim to lead humanity under the direct guidance of the lord of hosts and leader of the people, we find that man is plagued by woes. And for what? For mere survival, in eternal hardship and amid ever bleaker prospects. Certainly not for a rejuvenation of human civilization betwixt the stars. And not for man climbing to new heights. No. All the suffering and sacrifice and heroic endurance amounts to nothing more than a drowning man treading water, as his stamina is slowly sapped away before he is inevitably dragged into utter darkness.

How depraved is man?

Certainly degenerate enough to visit upon his fellow man yet more suffering, in an endless cycle of broken people breaking other people. And in the Age of the Imperium, breaking that destructive cycle may well see you bodily broken apart for malcontent and deviant weakness.

For the Imperium is not a selfless guardian of the human species, but is itself a monster on the prowl. Ever hungry for prey. Ever eager to devour its own brood. And so we find the state of man to be deranged enough to make a heart of stone cry. Ancient man was a great and clever crafter of wonders and a bold explorer of the stars, yet now we find senile man sunk into myopic rage and atavistic decay during the nightmare epoch that is the Age of Imperium. For man has thrown away all his great potential to become a sacrificial lamb of sorrow, fit for the slaughter upon the altar.

Such is the well-being of our species, in a time beyond hope.

Such is the state of mankind, in the darkest of futures.

Such is the end that awaits us all.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only hardship.

- - -

Based on the survival story of Xiao Jiaxi in 1979.

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Stoppage

"Thordrûk, get the hammer hose! A3 has clogged up with viscous."

"Hit a Caryllian semi-clay stratum again?"

"Nope. Natives this time."

- Vox-recording captured from Tracked Stripmining Mill-Hulk (TSMH) Lokhnårflagynning Gamlr of the Ral-Terak Combine, a League of Votann responsible for eradicating 93% of all Imperial colonists on Sjöfn Minoris

 

[twisted moon]

Realistically dark.

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

@twisted moon : Thank you very much!

Impaled

"Da stunty kept bounceen aboot like a squig whun we kicked 'im. Zoggin' fat un, ha! Den da stunty stayed put afta we chugged a stake in 'im. Hur-hur!"

- Vox-thief recording of the boasts of Ork Nob Harbak Facebiter following the sacking of Kin mining outpost Gygi 11 on Frijdrak Quadralis in the Badab Sector, Ultima Segmentum

- - -

See here for the sculpted version.

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Hagiography

In an aeon beyond hope, the thought of man is given over to sullen contemplation.

Outstanding people have always played a part in shaping the communities of their fellow humans. For better and for worse, social mores have been shaped by saints and tyrants alike, and culture has been refashioned at profit or loss by philosophers and theologians. Here one may find an uplifting example of heroes to inspire courage in the face of adversity through the retelling of legend. There one may find a cautionary tale of paranoid despots who scarred the very consciousness of their realms for generations to come with their heinous purges and will to dominate every aspect of life, with entire cultures turning deformed and apathetic from vicious trauma.

Often, extraordinary humans will find scant and reluctant acknowledgement among the people who have known them and their foibles all life long. No one ever became a prophet in their home village. Indeed, many great men and women were hounded and slain by the very community that they had enriched with thought, deed and personal example. During the misty past of the Age of Terra, some tribes even made it a custom of killing unusually intelligent people in their midst, for what better way for the envious and petty mob to get rid of such suspicious gadflies, irritant do-gooders and know-it-alls than by sending the freaks to be with the gods? Cut down the tallest straws in the field in order to level it.

Nevertheless, all of the parochial, myopic, slanderous and outright violent filters that the jealous herd presents have not proved enough to stop outstanding figures from emerging. And so the narrow-minded background noise of everyday human society has found itself playing host to nigh peerless individuals who impressed others by their exemplary living or their rare deeds or their brilliant thoughts and inventions. And so great people have come and gone, and left an impression upon cultures through the long and winding stream of centuries. Certainly, many sharp ideas turned out to be poisoned pills, and not all striking examples proved wise to follow, yet such is the mixed bag that is existence, in all its random glory and disappointment. And everywhere, exceptional people were dwarves standing upon the shoulders of giants, as they added their tesserae to the shifting mosaic of human civilizations.

Let us look upon the inspiring figures that have been known as saints and other holy sons and daughters of the human species, be they gurus or mystics. Their breed might be rare, but they cast their light afar.

Some undeserving people were sanctified after their deaths, such as conquering rulers who embraced a new faith yet executed much of their own family in courtly intrigue. Others more deserving of praise lived hedonistic lives of waste before they experienced an epiphany and turned into renowned theologians and sect founders. Still more holy people earned the title of saint its association with selfless kindness and spiritually athletic denial of the self through living lives of unsurpassable virtue and humility, thereby setting a high example for others to follow. Whether they were stylites on pillars or dwelt among the people, and whether they were themselves persecuted or did persecut others for differences of belief, many such outstanding saints found their end to be violent and miserable, yet all the more uplifting because of how terrifying they bore their atrocious martyrdom. And even jeering spectators and gleeful persecutors would grudgingly come to admire the courage and conviction with which such martyrs of the faith met their grisly deaths. And so new souls would be won for the religion by the deaths of outstanding men and women willing to publicly suffer and die for the higher sake of their deities and ideals.

In better times of knowledge and plenty, man has often tended to put less stock in the inspirational examples of selfless people and self-sacrificing sufferers, for such is the nature of hubris. And so ancient man built for himself an earthly paradise betwixt the stars, and as his reach and power and lore grew ever greater, ancient man forgot about holy teachings. For man had begotten new life, and thus sprang forth vat-born monstrosities and machines that could think for themselves, and man tailored his own body and mind for worldly betterment in every field. What use did ancient man have for the saints and sages of yore, when his science and artifice conquered the heavens and cracked open the innermost secrets of creation itself? What did ancient man care for if some lunatic incinerated himself for reasons of faith, when bold starstriders explored the cosmos and clever genetors cured all known disease? Why should ancient man take heed of ascetics holding aloft an arm in the same position for decades on end until it wilted away, when man's technological mastery over the essence of life allowed ancient man to fashion an ever better and stronger body for himself, and fulfil every wishful dream of his fancy? And what did the salvation of souls mean when the worldly trinity of Man of Gold, Stone and Iron bestrode the universe like a colossus? Surely such matters of the spirit were beneath man when he had invented Abominable Intelligence and could code-flout any spirit he liked into existence?

Thus ancient man looked upon the cosmos as nought but cold matter, and concluded that no divinity could exist, and even if it did, then the might of man was far superior. And for the sake of the baleful arrogance of ancient man was he scourged by machine revolt, and twain million worlds burned as blood ran in rivers. Yet such a warning calamity was not enough to shake ancient man out of his sinful love of science and invention, for victorious man arose, scarred yet unbowed, and he raised his fist to the heavens and swore to tear open all of creation to build a new and better universe where the very laws of reality would dance to his whims like puppets on strings. Woe! And for his abominable hubris was man cast off his golden pedestal, for Dark Ones of Hell punished the bottomless sin of ancient man by sending unto him Warpstorms and witches. The edenic idyll that was the world of man during the Dark Age of Technology fell apart in fire, and all was fell.

What humans emerged out of the toppled ruins of better times were little more than savage cannibals who formed inbred clans that hunted each other for flesh. Brother slayed brother as sister strangled sister and parent ate child, and man was become the most wretched of filthy beasts. Such was the Age of Strife, for it was a stark reminder to man about his precarious place in life, and amid such hunger and fear and desperation did mortal man turn to faith, and he prayed to higher powers for deliverance from his living hell.

And deliverance came.

It came in the form of lightning from the sky. It came in the form of a cruel eagle's talon. It came in the form of a flaming sword.

For deliverance won out on Terra, as the Emperor defeated techno-barbarian warlords in feral clashes as armies of giants and horrors fought each other to the death among squirming hordes of barbarian scum. Deliverance won out on Luna, as the Emperor secured the future of His all-conquering Legions in the Selenite gene-warrens. And deliverance won out on Mars, as the tech-priests recognized the divinity of the Emperor of Earth and offered up to him their mighty forges. And so the battered first worlds of mankind lit a beacon of hope, and its light was carried forth brutally by the warriors of the Emperor, and thus the terrors of Old Night were finally vanquished.

Where Imperial forces conquered, a golden renaissance of human civilization sprang forth. Shinings towers were erected as the Great Crusade crushed all resistance in its path. It is said that when the Emperor walked among His people in the Flesh, He proved His humility by denying His own divinity. Thus shall we know the face of god. Yet the humble denial of His own godhood led to the broken faith of of the Emperor's most pious son, Lorgar Aurelian the Urizen, and a master irony played out as the Primarch of the Seventeenth Legion first wrote and spread the holy book and founding faith in the Emperor, only to be crushed by his father and then spread the seeds of treachery and heresy among the Legiones Astartes. Yet even as the galaxy burned in Imperial civil war and Lorgar eventually descended into Daemonhood on the wings of slaughter, his original teachings still remained, scattered among Imperial citizens, and there Lorgar's religion found fertile ground in such a dark catastrophe.

For a while, it seemed as if all was lost. Warmaster Horus Lupercal had masterfully outplayed the Loyalist forces strategically, and his host besieged the Imperial Palace upon Terra while many of the remaining Loyalist Legions remained flung too far away to offer any assistance to their beleaguered liege. Yet in the darkest of moments did the Emperor rise from His Golden Throne, and He climbed into the heavens to challenge his fallen favourite son to a duel. There pure Sanguinius fell dead. The clash between the Emperor and Warmaster Horus was fierce and ended with both slain at each others' hands. Yet the demise of Horus the Heretic was final, while the passing away of the Emperor from His mortal coil proved to be the ascension into His true godhood.

And all the grieving subjects of the Emperor saw that this was great, and they embraced the burning faith in Him on High as their Saviour-Emperor. For only He could deliver them once more from the darkness, lest they all were doomed.

Yet the God-Emperor in His divine wisdom declared that henceforth, all of mankind must do penance for a thousand thousand generations. And so for the unforgivable crime of striking down the Emperor must we sinful humans offer up our back to break in ceaseless toil, just as we offer up our flesh to the lash and our children to the sacrifice demanded of us. And we swear everlasting hatred for the unbeliever, the mutant, the heretic and the alien. And we solemnly promise to uphold the vigil and report our fellow man for the slightest transgression, and weep not for the shrieks of anguish that emanate from the chambers of pain, for the cleansing flame and the worldly torment shall set free the sinners' eternal souls, so that the Master of Mankind may judge them, seated in radiant glory upon the Golden Throne of hallowed myth.

Ave Imperator.

After the calamity of the Horus Heresy, there was the Time of Rebirth, as the shattered Imperium of Terra and Mars rebuilt itself with mounting fanaticism, hardening tyranny and rampant paranoia. During this era of flourishing faith there were countless sects sprouted by the holy book, the Lectitio Divinitatus, penned by a faithful son of the Emperor whose present occupation is that of the Daemon Primarch Lorgar Aurelian, Bearer of the Word. One such organized religious mass movement was the Confederation of Light, that preached non-violence and forgiveness of sin and debt alike. The Confederation of Light likewise believed in the Emperor as a caring and forgiving god who rewarded man for his kind deeds toward fellow man. The Confederation of Light was the primary rival of the early Ecclesiarchy, and naturally this widespread and comparatively peaceful cult was eradicated by the violent zealots of the Terran Temple, for raising the sword will always beat turning the other cheek, just as the torch will always burn away parchment praising peace. There is strength in strength.

And so the one true Imperial Cult established its own monopolistic stranglehold over religious orthodoxy, and moulded the entirety of the Imperium of Man in its own stern image. And even as sects and schisms multiplied within the Imperial Creed, almost all phalanxes of the faith remained harsh, strict, violent and martial throughout all ten millennia during which the Imperium of Man slowly rotted and wilted away through loss of knowledge and creeping demechanization.

Then what has become of Imperial man during the rule of the High Lords of Terra? What is the state of man's soul under the watchful guidance of the Ecclesiarchs? For one thing, always remember that the fires of hell are waiting for you, o wanton sinner! The Cult Imperialis tend to cast shame upon the human body, while simultaneously praising purebred human stock for their unmutated baseline genome. And so it is both sinful to act as the virile Emperor in the Flesh really did, and pious to subjugate the body to depths of self-abnegation and self-harm that the Earthborn on High Himself despised. The constant crisis, total war footing and unending threats both from within and without over the last fivehundred generations have turned humanity during the Age of Imperium into a dour and leaden-heartened lot, bereft of the humour and easygoing swagger that characterized the early Imperium of the Great Crusade era. For the Imperial religious establishment does not suffer holy fools lightly.

Such is but a brief taste of the dusty and heavy strictures of structure that lie upon the shoulders of the Imperator's slavish subjects like a heavy burden.

As to saints and holy men, sacral women, martyrs of the faith and miracle-workers, it is said that in the Imperium of Man, entire moons could be filled with stacked tomes detailing the lives of Imperial saints. And indeed a few such celestial bodies ruled by the Adeptus Ministorum are used in exactly that archival fashion, to say nothing of dozens of voidholms. For much of Imperial literature consists of writings on the lives of saints and holy men and women inspired by His Divine Majesty's celestial light emanating from the Golden Throne of hallowed myth, resting upon Holy Terra Herself, hallowed be the name of mankind's Cradleworld.

Glory be.

To pick one random example across this vast panoply of exceptional people of the faith spanning a hundred centuries, let us pick up a codex bound in tanned human hide and read of the life and works of Saint Zorena of Nova Lilybaeum, who was martyred in M39.

Of course, while we brush off the cobwebs, we need to establish right away what malcontent teachings are to be ignored, while anyone who spreads them is to be reported to your betters at once for immediate purging. Blessed is the mind too small for doubt. Unbelievers on her homeworld of Paphlagonia Primaris whisper that the revered Saint Zorena is in fact a thinly veiled artificial cover for a native deity adopted into the pantheon of Imperial saints in order to ease Imperial conquest and conversion by sword and sermon. Even more vile tongues of deviants whisper that Zorena of Nova Lilybaeum in life was a deceiver dressed up in monastic robes, playing confidence tricks upon the gullible. The foulest sinspeech of them all may be heard among certain hunted heretical cults, who claim that the revered saint was in fact a devotee of the Ruinous Powers, for if these claims are to be believed, then the miracles of the charismatic martyr sprang out of twisted magicks, while all the works of Zorena amounted to gathering funds to grow the hidden strength of the Archenemy. Blasphemy all!

...

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

As any Confessor worth his salt has found out, there is no use arguing with captured malcontents who spread such obscene lies. Nay, better instead to subject their sinful bodies to scorching, flaying, blinding and maiming torment upon the rack, even if such excessive expulsion of sin through the infliction of unspeakable pain may be likened to using a brick to remove a brain tumour.

Thus we turn away from the wayward sinspeech of lost souls, and let us instead harken to the wondrous tales of Saint Zorena, as chronicled in the hagiography Vita Sancta Zorena, written by Demetrius Athanasius. For herein we find a pious and chaste woman devoted to serving the lord of hosts and leader of the people, and all her life she gave praise to Dominus Noster and saved many souls from righteous hellfire.

Our lady of Nova Lilybaeum began her days as a girl gifted unto a nunnery by a family of Company-owned shopkeeping thralls. Apparently her parents had promised the Enthroned One to give away their oldest child to the Emperor if the Inspector Ruminatus of the Adeptus Arbites did not discover their financial irregularities and creative bookkeeping, and thus the guiding hand of He who dwells on the face of Terra intervened to turn the little Zorena Ottonia from a soon-to-become branded orphan slave into a novitiate of the local minor Ordo Penurii.

Most of novitiate Zorena's years of growing up in the nunnery are briskly mentioned as spent in quiet study, contemplation and prayer. Obedientiaria Treasuress Anna Fulminata noted that dutiful Zorena already as a girl proved skillful with calculus, and so this Treasuress took the young novitiate under her wings and taught Zorena the strange arts of mathematics by candlelight and wax tablets. Treasuress Fulminata likewise noticed the girl's clear voice and flair for convincing rhetoric, and so Anna ensured that the Precentrix and Chantress of the nunnery schooled Zorena in the complex arts of hymnal singing and religious oratory.

When Zorena turned fifteen Terran years of age, Obedientiaria Treasuress Anna Fulminata handed her over to a wandering indulgence saleswoman of the Ordo Penurii, and for nine arduous years did Zorena toil as an apprentice, learning the tricks of the trade, running around gathering sinners in the dangerous streets and pushing the heavy indulgator cart for her superior nun. Finally, when she turned twentyfour did Zorena become appointed as an indulgence saleswoman in her own right.

The hagiographical work from this point onward paints a picture of the Charming Saint that blends pious adherence to Ordo rules with a ruthless entrepreneurial streak.

It had long been the custom on the semi-civilized Imperial world of Paphlagonia Primaris that rich patrons would pay monks and nuns to pray for them, and so the scheduled prayer times of monasteries became parcelled out in order to satisfy worried customer demand and generate sufficient pious prayer to the Emperor in the name of masters and betters who themselves were too sinful to face His judgement with a pure soul.

Zorena of Nova Lilybaeum innovated upon this existing practice, and filled the coffers of her nunnery. Rich nobles and mercatores were convinced by the wise Zorena to pay a premium price for a form of salvation deluxe, for was it not better to have commoner servants sing for them in the celestial choir of the God-Emperor, than to have to sing flawlessly themselves to please our Lord and Saviour? And would not such respected folk of higher blood prefer to enjoy luxuries in the afterlife that the ordinary souls could not hope to receive? For an extra fee, you may be freed from angelic garden work, and for a subscription to the shrine you may escape martial duty as a heavenly avenger, and instead let a pure plebeian soul pick up your fiery sword and risk oblivion among the devils of the Nether Hells.

Reading between the lines, Zorena of Nova Lilybaeum appears in the hagiography as a divine trickster figure, who used her saintly cunning for the betterment of the Emperor's cause, and who marketed the Imperial Creed like a used mechshaw salesman in order to save as many souls as possible by collecting pious donations. Thus Zorena proved her worth as a sanctified trader of the Emperor's forgiveness upon our souls.

As to the selling of indulgences, the musically gifted Zorena concocted several short but melodious chants, the words of one of which rang:

"When your sin heavily weighs in His scale,
your clinking coin must make balance hale.

As soon as lucre drops on the other side,
your soul out of the hellfire will ride.

From the torment you may yet be saved,
if you see your earthly riches shaved."

Zorena affixed on her indulgator cart a set of scales, of which one cup was loaded with miniature faces that were cast out of lead, fashioned to look as if they screamed in torment. Hesitant sinners were sometimes encouraged to donate as good Emperor-worshippers ought to do by a spectacular act, in which the nun Zorena tapped a button that ignited a small spray of promethium piped in a hidden manner into the sinning cup, thus startling onlookers as the miniature faces made out of lead were dissolved when they reached the soft metal's melting point. At this point Zorena would scold the guilty crowd into parting with their life's savings and earnings. The hagiography does not mention the workshop toil required behind this operation, but doubtless Zorena had young apprentices tasked with cleaning up and recasting the lead from the sinner's scale.

And so Zorena of Nova Lilybaeum wandered far and wide over Paphlagonia Primaris as a humble devotee of our glorious overlord, and everywhere she went she praised the just rule of His duly appointed High Lords, blessed be the million worlds and uncountable voidholms that make up His cosmic dominion. In some places she healed the sick, and in other locales she fed the hungry. Rumours of her miracles began to circulate among the people, and the charismatic miraclemaker used the crowds of followers that she drew to violently persecute mutants and known sinners in righteous pogroms. Among such undesired scum, the name of Zorena came to be feared like the tempest.

Eventually base human nature caught up with the aging saleswoman of indulgences, for a capricious cousin of the Imperial Governor who had bought an especially gilded indulgence letter from Zorena suddenly woke up one night in cold sweat, having dreamt a vivid nightmare of how his recently deceased father burned in hellfire and screamed for mercy to uncaring devils in the Nether Hells. The crescendo of the nobleman's nightmare was reached when one devil responded to the father's protestations over having purchased indulgence by pulling the finely illuminated parchment out of his Daemonic derrière. The devil then laughed as he swallowed it whole with a fanged mouth and licked his tusks with a cloven tongue, burping out a sulphuric cloud out of which a chattering imp fell into a pit of boiling tar.

This feverish dream vision that befell the highborn nobleman Dux Vultronius Anthemius was enough to condemn Zorena to an agonizing death, for had she not sold the worthless indulgence letter to his father? And had not Vultronius been haunted by this true vision, granted to him by the God-Emperor Himself, soon after he had secretly poisoned his own father to become master of the household? And was not Zorena born of lowly caste? And how dare she sell a similar ineffective letter of indulgence to Dux Vultronius? What if he was assassinated by one of his own many offspring the next day? Then there would be no salvation for him if his indulgence turned out to be false!

And so Dux Vultronius drunk himself into a dark rage and ordered his liveried armsmen to find Zorena of Nova Lilybaeum and bring her back to his pyramanor. She was beaten and dragged bloodily across several kilometres of poorly paved roads. Once this rough abduction of a sworn Ordo member was completed, Dux Vultronius Anthemius yelled at Zorena for half an hour without pause down in his personal dungeons, before commanding her execution to begin for his viewing pleasure in order to calm his upset nerves.

The brutal armsmen set to work without even hesitating to obey their aristocratic master. Yes, they were doing something terrible to a famous religious lady from a respected nunnery. But noble privileges counted for so much more, and especially when they themselves could be turned into sadistic playthings if they defied their master's whim.

Thus Sancta Zorena was submerged by chains into caustorex, praying fervently and biting back any noise of pain even as her flesh disolved with a fizzling sound. And all that remained once the miraclemaker was pulled out of the vat was the cleansed skeleton and the cartilage between the blessed bones. Dux Vultronius then sent the remains away in a spare limo, and tasked his majordomo to seek out the nunnery with armed escort and demand both full repayment and a new working letter of indulgence from the Ordo Penurii. The skeleton of the martyred Zorena was handed over to the Ordo once this arrangement had been secured, and Dux Vultronius Anthemius thought nothing more about the whole affair for as long as he lived thereafter.

This was not the end of the passio, or the martyrdom of Zorena as described in her hagiography. This flattering account of the saint's life and death details how the Ordo Penurii placed Zorena's skeleton in an armaglass sarcophagus, which soon drew pilgrims from far and wide, and some even from offworld. After a rumbling long time the Adeptus Ministorum's sacral bureaucracy came to judge the case for sanctifying Zorena, and they reached the conclusion that she had indeed been a saint. And nevermind the fell rumourmonger who accused the Ordo Penurii of bribing the Ecclesiarchal commission with the very same indulgence money that Zorena had been so prolific with earning for her nunnery. For that spreader of lies was publicly quartered between four groxen. Others take heed.

What followed then were centuries of miracles experienced by sick and barren people at the sarcophagus of Saint Zorena, enumerated painstakingly as the Vita Sancta Zorena draws to a close. And so we have learnt of the good works, enacted persecutions and martyrdom of Zorena of Nova Lilybaeum, Saint of Indulgences. To this day she remains canonized by the Adeptus Ministorum, and Zorena sports her own holiday on her homeworld of Paphlagonia Primaris. And on this day, preachers read out choice parts of the hagiography of Saint Zorena, while crude street plays about her martyrdom are enacted for crowds to view. And cartfuls of bones professed to be true relics of our lady of Nova Lilybaeum are sold all over the planet.

And this book on the life of an Imperial saint is but one of millions of such tomes penned in scriptoria all across the Milky Way galaxy, to be read aloud by devout sacrificers of the God-Emperor.

Thus we find that so much of Imperial literary talent is spent on admiring biographies of saints, while more secular writings can easily land the penman on a pyre. Undoubtedly the fine examples set by many suffering saints and their selfless deeds are worth studying and emulating, yet with everything human there is a tendency to overshoot and miss the mark. Or rather the balancing point. And so instead of a healthy interest and understanding of the lives and works and deaths of outstanding men and women of the past, we find that the blinkered mindset of Imperial man is much too preoccupied with learning all about the saints in sanctioned works through rote learning, dulling his intellectual edge and keeping his faculties of critical thinking suppressed in fallow.

For man in the Age of Imperium is not a reasonable creature fit for charitable deeds, and Imperial man is not even a decent adherent of his faith. Nay, for Imperial man in all his depredation and depravity has been turned into a monstrous hulk of myopic rage and fanatical hatred, for mankind has turned stale and sour under the long rule of the High Lords of Terra, and the souls of humanity are shepherded by torches and violent threats. And eveywhere we find Imperial priests rousing the pious rabble to new feats of baleful cruelty toward their fellow human beings, and everywhere we find bloody wars and riots fought over miniscule matters of theology. For the myriad of different sects within the Cult Imperialis do not hate each other so much because they are different, but instead they hate each other precisely because they are so alike, and it is best to monopolize the sectarian niche through persecution, just as the Imperial Creed itself was established by ruthlessly hunting down rival cults during the Rebuilding of the Imperium.

And so we see that Imperial man is locked inside a fortified madhouse, where the Imperium alone remains as both his guardian and insane gaoler. For the Imperium of Man brooks no opposition, and will stand no alternatives. This was after all the modus operandi that led the Emperor to crush all rival sources of human regrowth during the Great Crusade, as the subjugation of a number of advanced human civilizations bore witness to.

And so even during the height of human renaissance, the early Imperium sowed the rotten seeds of its own decay. A monopoly stands and fallls on its own, and the Imperium of Man has sunken together like a failed souflé. To err is human, and the deteriorating Imperium must thus be the most human thing ever created.

This all amounts to a senile sclerosis that has doomed human interstellar civilization to a slow and horrible end. For enemies without number are closing in, and no desperate mobilization of retrograde Imperial resources can stem the tidal wave.

And all the while, the faithful look to the stars, and pray to their God-Emperor to deliver them from the storm.

Prayer is all that they have left as their world is coming to an end, for mankind has long since abandoned the true means by which worldly power is reached. Knowledge is dead. Curiosity is dead. Ignorance reigns supreme. Fivehundred generations have been wasted in a rut that leads nowhere, for the tools and weapons of salvation lie forgotten fifteenthousand years into the painful past.

And all that is left standing between the faithful flock and the onrushing horror, is a frail light. The Astronomican. The Emperor's light, flickering in the dark as the Master of Mankind is fed with a thousand sacrificed souls every day in order to keep it shining.

Thus the faithful pray, even as they die by the billions.

For they will be with their God-Emperor soon enough.

Ave Imperator.

Such is all that remains, when hope is dead.

Such is the lot of mankind, in an age of insanity.

Such is the fate of our species, in the darkest of futures.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only faith.

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Bike Charge

Faster! Faster! Faster!

A sage during the misty past of the Age of Terra once said that wisdom begins in wonder. Given the inertia and stillness that reigns supreme for much of matter across the universe, it may be observed that the vitality and movement of lifeforms is cause for everlasting wonder. Some would even say, the faster the life, the more wonderful a tale is composed.

Man has always been fascinated by speed. Ever since elder days, the title of fastest man in the world outshone most other titles to be gained through sport. It is no wonder that humanity so highly values speed, for the faster the predator, the deadlier. Likewise, the fastest one in war often conquered, able to outmarch, surprise and mow his enemy down in a savage rout. Some of mankind's earliest historical records bear witness to the power of speed, as men in chariots and then men on horseback swept out from the steppes and conquered all before them. For thousands of years, he who had the horses, conquered. And oftentimes the poor, untrained bastards who faced the horselords opted to flee as the thunder of hooves rang in their ears, shaking the ground beneath them as swift death approached from behind.

The earliest phases of the Age of Terra saw many evocative charges by heavy cavalry in tight formations, smashing into enemy infantry like a tidal wave of steel and hooves. Yet the true lords of the saddle were to be found among light cavalry, and especially so amongst nomad peoples who were virtually born into the saddle. Herding their beasts and thriving bitterly on the unforgiving steppes of Old Earth, such cruel horseback warriors dominated the lands by the might of their arms, the toughness of their bodies, the endurance of their steeds and most of all by the frustrating cunning of their wits in battle.

Echoes of such primal hordes of riders kept showing up through human military history, even as machine came to replace man all the more, and even as man took to space and colonized twain million distant worlds across the Milky Way galaxy that bore him. For were not motorbikes, scout striders and gravbikes but another technological variant of the ancient horseman, swift and deadly but vulnerable in protracted fights againt a well-organized enemy? And so we find that legends about skywains and starstriders from the edenic Dark Age of Technology give mention of swiftgliders and gravi-darters, jostling with Man of Iron outriders and hybrid centauroid monstrosities. Even during the idyllic age of mortal paradise betwixt the stars, we find mentions of bold speed freaks and daring riders willing to give it all in their frail saddles on dusty colony worlds, even as most human beings enjoyed soft lives of comfort and plenty in shining cities and void installations.

Yet if the world was perfect, it would not be.

The golden aeon that was the Dark Age of Technology was ended by the heavy blows of Machine Revolt, Warpstorms and a plague of witches and Daemons. All punishments for the unforgivable sins of ancient man in his godless hubris. And so man's silvern pinnacles were toppled, and desperate survivors scavenged and ate each other among the burnt-out ruins of a better past.

And as the interstellar civilization of ancient man broke down into Chaos, cruel riders once again took to the fore. Wherever barbarian raiders managed to breed or build steeds of battle, they enjoyed immense advantages against their foes on foot. On world after world, animals that had originally been imported, bred and cloned for curiosity suddenly became more valuable than gold, as herds of horses, mukaali and stranger still alien beasts became the source of power for innumerable mounted hordes. And on voidholm after voidholm, crude bikes, servo-chariots and corridor-runners became the valued mounts of great warriors and scouts whose intelligence proved vital to the success of entire armies.

Thus man had well and truly revived his cavalry traditions during the Age of Strife. And as the Emperor conquered world after world with flaming broadsword during the brutal Great Crusade, ever more riders skilled in martial feats in the saddle joined the swelling ranks of Imperial forces, swept up in the enthusiastic frenzy with which Terran man took back his lost worlds and kindled a short-lived renaissance of human advancement.

You will now be told two tales from the same Imperium, set ten thousand years apart.

The first tale is about the most gifted horseman of the Emperor's sons, and some brief great exploits of Jaghatai Khan's Fifth Legion during the hopeful era that was the early Imperium, while the Emperor still walked among His people in the flesh.

The second tale is about daring and costly usage of bikes and mounts in positional warfare by the Astra Militarum and all manner of other lowly mass armies of Planetary Defence Forces and Voidholm Militias that are to be found across the Imperium of Man in the madhouse years that constitute the reign of the High Lords of Terra.

On to the first tale.

As the Holy Terran sinspeech whisper joke would have it:

Q: What do you know about the White Scars?
A: Is that what you get when you cut your hand on rusted knives?

Space Marines are big humans stuffed with extra organs and muscles, typically wearing powered space armour. The Emperor made twenty Legions of Astartes ten thousand years ago, in the thirtieth millennium. Among them were the White Scars, originally known as Star Hunters. The Emperor led the Great Crusade while He still lived, aided by twenty Primarchs in His quest to unite mankind in a star-spanning empire and shepherd all into a new age. We shall now turn to the Fifth Primarch, as he was abducted by dark forces from the Emperor's hidden laboratory under the Himalazian Mountains, for the sake of a Faustian bargain.

The White Scars' homeplanet of Chogoris, known officially as Mundus Planus by Imperial astrographers, is located within Segmentum Pacificus, to the west of Old Earth. The babe Jaghatai crashed into a feudal flatland suited for a need for speed. Lush greenery, soaring mountains and azure seas comprised much of the Chogorisian surface. This was a feudal world that had just invented gunpowder, and the majority of its settlers lived in an organized aristocracy under a ruler called Palatine. The armies of mighty Palatine were highly disciplined and well-equipped. Armoured horsemen and infantry in vast numbers won every campaign that Palatine launched, and so they had effectively conquered the entire planet with the large exception of one area called the Empty Quarter, filled with savage tribesmen and horses.

Jaghatai Khan, honoured be his name, first landed in the vast, wind-blown steppes of the Empty Quarter, west of Palatine's empire. Nomadic tribes of feral horsemen roamed these steppes and had done so for centuries, following a cycle of seasonal migration from pastures in the summer to protected valleys in the winter, always living in simple tents as they told tall tales about the stumped ruins from the Dark Age of Technology that littered the landscape.

While the Palatine empire never bothered conquering the Empty Quarter, this untamed land saw no shortage of war. As the saying goes, you are nothing without your tribe. These tribes constantly fought amongst themselves for territory, for one field of grass is better than another, and two fields of grass is a bounty to people on horseback. One Chogorian term used for falling in battle was to go to glory, also called guangrong in the main language of the settled empire of Palatine. These wild tribesmen also fought for the sheer joy of battle, for war is one of man's oldest pastimes. Such nomad squabbles were all child's play compared to the mass atrocities carried out by the Palatine empire. Based on the blood rituals that the nobles of the empire performed, Imperial scholars believed that they were worshippers of the Dark Gods of Chaos, and so the entire world of Chogoris risked falling prey to the Ruinous Powers.

Jaghatai landed near the Quonon river where a man called Ong Khan found him. Honour supposedly goes to Ong Khan for not trying to eat this crash-landed infant upon finding him. Although given the lack of records of of these tribesmen being cannibals, honour instead goes to Jaghatai for not eating this strange horseman.

Thus Ong Khan was given the honour of adopting this glowing child into his tribe, the Talskars, believing him to be a gift from the gods. Since Jaghatai was young, the tribe had claimed that there was a fire in his eyes, which is an ancient Terran term for being a great warrior, with the saying likewise being found among the Talskar. While Jaghatai was still young, an event known as the Blooding happened. Raiders from a rival tribe called the Kurayed killed a band of Talskar in a vicious, dishonourable ambush, slaying his adoptive father Ong Khan.

The north wind turns.

Jaghatai, already the greatest warrior amongst his tribe and bearing many ritualistic scars of courage in a filthy age where infection might equal death, became popular among the Talskars, and he led them into battle against the Kurayed tribe, razing their village to the ground and slaughtering them all, bathing in their blood and mounting the head of the Kurayed chieftain above his yurt. These events were to shape the Fifth Primarch into the cruel man that he would become, namely a man of fierce honour, loyalty and ruthlessness. Since Jaghatai was a great man that all Imperial subjects should look up to, it means that you too should go slaughter your malcontent neighbours and raise their heads up high on your hab-block. Savage the enemy tribes! Especially if they be xenos.

After the culling of the Kurayed, Jaghatai swore to bring an end to the wars between the people of the steppe. He now sought unity of purpose, and for his efforts he was elected Khan of the Talskar tribe. After this, Jaghatai the Warhawk started subjugating and conquering the other tribes, forcing them into his ever-growing army. Thus the Primarch had his own little Great Crusade out in the fields. Like father, like son.

The army Jaghatai amassed was named the Mathuli, which is a Talskar word for irresistible force. He made military service mandatory and combined warriors from different tribes into the same units, so as to break up tribal association and rid his army of segregation. Jaghatai promoted his warriors purely based on their abilities, giving each person due respect if they could prove themselves worthy of it. And as the settled farmer joke would have it, as long as they were capable of growing a stringy moustache they were probably good.

Ten summers after the culling of the Kurayed, while his armies were migrating in preparation for the coming winter, a freak avalanche came blasting down the slopes, taking Jaghatai and many of his tribesmen with it down a cliff. Instead of dying in the packed snow, the emerging Primarch was harried by a hunting band from the Palatine empire, incidentally led by Palatine's own son. Jaghatai Khan, honoured be his name, slaughtered the son of Palatine and his band, mutilated the last survivor, tied him to his horse, hung the decapitated head of Palatine's son around the neck of the survivor and sent the maimed one back to Palatine with a message:

"The people of the steppes are yours no longer."

Nothing says "get off my grass fields" like being sent your brat's head on horse express. And so the nomads of the Empty Quarter had ceased to be Palatine's warm playthings.

As a result of this, Palatine was outraged and, as soon as summer came, marched out with his main army intent on wiping out the barbarian tribes. It was too bad that he faced Jaghatai Khan, bred and raised to be infinitely more cunning and resourceful than an old aristocratic cultist. In the Valley of the Khans, on the Lon-Seun Plain, Palatine's empire met Jaghatai's Mathuli. Here, Palatine met his defeat faster than Jaghatai drives.

Since Palatine's army was accustomed to hand-to-hand combat, they did not stand a chance against Jaghatai's frustrating series of hit-and-run tactics, and hundreds of thousands of men were massacred as they broke formation and attempted to pursue deceptively fleeing horsemen. Palatine instead retreated back to his capital city and hid like a little baby. Over the course of the next years, Jaghatai's armies overran Palatine's lands, besting armies, storming walled cities and slaying its nobles and people. Palatine's subjects had no choice but to either surrender or face total destruction. It was said that these devil-faced savages from the steppes were supernatural demons, there to exact divine vengeance for the sins of man.

Noon, the ram-hound strikes.

In the end, Jaghatai and his armies reached Palatine's stronghold of Cophasta. Jaghatai demanded Palatine's head on a spear, or he would leave no stone standing. Within an hour, a group of meek nobles crawled out of the city's gates and gave Jaghatai what he desired. And all that could be heard was the wailing of the vanquished foe's widows and the cries of his orphans.

After his enemy's pathetic defeat, the honoured Khan's power stretched from ocean to ocean. The largest empire that the planet had ever known, had been conquered by a single man and his nomadic horde in less than twenty years. Even though he now ruled over a vast area, Jaghatai knew that his people had no real desire to rule such a realm. His motivation was to reunite the tribes and exact vengeance on Palatine. Nothing more. While ultimate power rested with the Khan and his generals, they did not have any developed concept for ruling settled populations. They simply wanted unity.

That was about the time when the Emperor of Terra arrived in the Bucephalus. This golden conqueror of the skies made landfall and met Jaghatai Khan for the first time since his abduction. These two bloodstained conquerors met in Jaghatai's mountain palace of Quan Zhou, where the destroyer of Palatine dropped to one knee in front of the radiant Imperator and swore eternal fealty to the Imperium of Man. In response, Jaghatai left the planet and its rulership to his successor Ogedei, while the Terran Emperor gave Jaghatai the Fifth Legion, which he renamed the White Scars. And so Jaghatai, honoured be his name, found his eternal fields of rolling conquest in the skies above.

After reuniting with his sire, Jaghatai the Warhawk continued to use the lightning-fast tactics and scheduled strategies that he had made use of upon Chogoris, and used them to great effect across the cosmos right to the very end. During the Great Crusade, Jaghatai Khan, honoured be his name, led his marauding White Scars Legion to stunning victories across the starspangled void. The Fifth Legion knew of themselves as the Ordu of Jaghatai, and aside from their throat-singing, luscious moustaches and martial feats in the saddle they were also famed for their poetic battle-cant. During the Siege of the Imperial Palace, the White Scars on their fabled jetbikes played a crucial role in delaying the grinding progress of Warmaster Horus by cutting the traitor's logistical inflow to Terra in half by a cunning strike against the spaceport of Lion's Gate, thereby winning time for the Loyalists against all odds. Here, Jaghatai of the White Scars battled the Pale King Mortarion of the Death Guard, and although grievously wounded the Khan still managed to banish his erstwhile foe to the Empyrean.

For the Khan and the Emperor!

At last, seventy years after the Horus Heresy, while Chogoris was still a semi-feudal world under the control of Jaghatai's tribes, the Khan went missing. His disappearance happened somewhere near the Maelstrom, while the Primarch was chasing a Dark Eldar Kabal that had taken many of his fellow tribesmen hostage. And so the Khan of Khans passed into legend and the Webway. We are yet to see his like to this day, for the decrepit Imperium of the fortyfirst millennium is a rotting colossus on feet of clay, a half-blind lumbering titan and a senile predator on the prowl, and this demented hulk of human self-sacrifice and rabid flagellation does not possess the sparkling vigour and touch of genius that so characterized the all-conquering early Imperium of the Great Crusade.

On to the second tale, but first let us set the stage and gain a taste for the Imperium of Man as it really is, ten millennia after the Horus Heresy.

The Cult Mechanicus believe that life is directed motion. Energy and speed are certainly traits of lively creatures. The less movement, the less life.

Conversely, when an empire is dying, it means that it is still living.

And a dying empire is capable of taking entire hordes and civilizations with it into oblivion. Underestimate this wilted monstrosity at your own peril, o vile foes of the Imperium, for the dutiful servants of the Emperor swear to rage, rage against the dying of the light.

With this lethal power kept in mind, we proceed to observe that the Imperium lays claim to the entire galaxy, yet lacks the capacity to make good on that claim.

The Age of Imperium has long since seen Imperial man place the triumph of the will on a pedestal. For this fanatical worshipper of the God-Emperor of Holy Terra believes in his self-abnegation that it is better to chase ideals instead of people, for they hate you anyway. And so we find that much of Imperial stoicism and self-sacrifice springs from a bitter hatred of the self, and of a misanthropic rejection of this sinful world.

What is laughter and joy? Forgotten glories of the easygoing early Imperium, they are. Damn such frivolity! To hell with smiling! A curse upon mirth! There will be no more laughs, for here on out there will only be causes for the gnashing of teeth and the wailing of sorrow amid ashes and tears. And thus, a bizarre and humourless prison is built by man for man, and the wise can do nought but laugh at the insanity of it all, until they are all purged. The Age of Imperium is a dour, leaden-heartened and humourless age, shaped into such an obscene culture by fivehundred generations of ever-worsening mobilization for total war and endless crisis breeding the most cruel and paranoid tyranny imaginable, one that actively hurts its own population and exterminates entire planets for idiotic reasons even as it shields mankind against outside threats.

Still, everyone respects strength. There is strength in strength, and let not that be denied. Yet the very word for strength in Low Gothic carries undertones of coercion and forcing one's will upon another, akin to the term sila found in the tongue of Valhallans. And so the Imperial mindset is formed from birth to associate submission and brutal dominance with strength, and even the worst of atrocities will seem less outrageous for the overpowering strength that was required to carry out such fell deeds upon screaming and squirming victims. Imperial man is a professional sufferer moulded by ceaseless trauma, and his entire worldview is limited by the blinkers of misery and fear of suppression that life under the High Lords of Terra has placed upon him.

...

 

[Karak Norn Clansman]

Blessed is the mind too small for doubt. The cardinal sin of Horus was to think for himself, for that is the very definition of heresy. And so we must all repent for a thousand thousand generations for the sake of our heinous sins, for was it not man that struck down the Emperor in man's boundless ingratitude?

Repent!

And so we find, in this meandering look on the parochial minds of Imperial subjects across a million worlds and uncountable voidholms, that across the void of space men live as they have lived for millennia upon the sand, rock and soil of worlds bathed in the light of alien suns. So is humanity's seed cast far and wide beyond the knowledge of man, to thrive bitterly in the darkness, to take root and cling with robust and savage determination. This is our thought for the day.

This second tale is all about that savage determination. Some would call it spite. Possibly even spite against the hostile universe itself. It is a tale of reckless bravery on the battlefield, and the falling back on speed in the most gruelling of stalemates amid muddy trenches and plunging fire. On the one hand, it is a saga of the crazy deeds man is capable of in the midst of war. On the other hand, it is a story of calculated risk-taking and willingness to sacrifice blood in an attempt to win local victories against the foe in wars that are more meatgrinder than brilliant manoeuvreing.

War is the mother of invention, as an ancient sage once opined. And even amid all the carnage and cunning, the fundamental nature of war never changes.

As a military theorist during the misty past of the Age of Terra stated: War is an act of violence to compel the enemy to do your will.

Sometimes, technology or terrain favours a war of offensive movement, while at other times technology or terrain favours the defender and renders the hidden amassing of forces for surprise spear thrusts and breakthroughs difficult to achieve.

In war after war on world after world, the same grinding pattern has repeated itself for untold ages: First war breaks out, and all is a mass of hectic movement and uncertainty. Sometimes one side is able to subdue the other in this first burst of lightning strikes. More often than not, the initial flurry of strong blows and daring elite unit operations exhausts itself, and the front lines stiffen. Both sides seek to regain a war of movement, even as more and more fortifications are built and ever more trenches are dug and mines laid. Soon, rapid and clever manoeuvres are replaced by attrition, as both sides seek to exterminate the enemy's materiel and manpower in a drawn-out conflict that bleeds both sides white. Years pass as the death toll increases, and this positional struggle tends to grow ever more deadly as ever more of society is mobilized and cannibalized to feed the ravenous furnace of total war. Both sides drag each other down into the abyss, and the entire war devolves into a race to the bottom. First one there, loses. The fighting only ends after one side or the other finally breaks apart, either from within or as their military at long last collapses amid starvation and horror.

It is to these all-too-common wars of attrition between congealed defensive positions that we will now turn, where sweeping victories seem impossible in what is essentially hell on earth.

For insane as it might seem, warfare across fivehundred generations of wasted potential and human maldevelopment across the Emperor's sacred dominion has proved that there is still a place for cavalry and motorbikes in the midst of some of the most arduous forms of trench warfare out there. And so Rough Riders might be atavistic and primitive, but nonetheless useful as long as a commander is willing to pay the steep butcher's bill that cavalry operations entail in wars of lethal projectile weapons, artillery barrages and a plethora of sophisticated systems. This is admittedly a maladaption like so much else in the Imperium, but if it works sometimes it is not utterly useless, and nevermind the corpses.

The first practical use for cavalry is that of reconnaisance by fire. This means to draw out enemy fire by sending forth your own soldiers, to thus learn about enemy positions and then counter their heavy weapon nests and other crucial sites thus revealed. Buy intel by paying with blood. During positional wars of attrition where the ground and air are both filled with lethal weaponry, Imperial Guard commanders will sometimes use mounted troops and motorbikes for recon by fire missions. This is often done by sending out multiple motorcycle riders through no-man's land with smoke grenades activated. The dispersed movement of the recon bikers will be observed from overhead by servo-skulls, and the ones that make it the farthest before being shot down will determine the direction of the next attack by infantry and armoured forces. Thus the Astra Militarum will sacrifice bikers and cavalrymen alike to probe enemy lines, and pay with blood to gain insights as to where the foe is weaker. This is a textbook example of Tactica Imperialis cavalry and bike usage, proven on countless battlefields throughout the Age of Imperium.

Other Astra Militarum motorcycle and Rough Rider tactics are likewise costly and daring, for to be a rider in the saddle is to be exposed upon your vaunted steed. On the one hand, cavalry and by extension bike-mounted troops are exposed to horizontal fire due to their large upright profile and exposed body. This makes cavalry and bikers particularly ill suited to charge massed lines of riflemen, rapid-firing small arms and heavy weapon emplacements. On the other hand, the sheer speed of bikers darting across the landscape make them suited to dodge vertical fire, such as incoming artillery shells, rockets, armed servo-skulls, Tau drones, ornithopter gunships and other flying devices overhead. Some bikes may even run over mines without triggering their detonators, a capability which the broad wheels of Astartes bikes may sometime provide, depending on the type of mines faced on the battlefield.

An ancient tactic used by Astartes and non-genhanced armies alike is to suppress the enemy by artillery barrages, and then storm their trenches with bikers driving at lightning speed over no-man's land before enemy infantry has managed to scramble back into their positions from their bunkers and dug-outs. As should be expected, this combined barrage and bike charge means that the White Scars Chapter maintain a larger than average fleet of Whirlwind rocket artillery vehicles. Correspondingly, Astra Militarum forces employing the same tactic require more than their fair share of artillery support, both by cannon and rocket. Servo skull-corrected artillery fire is particularly lethal.

One way of countering motorcycle assaults is to drop razorwire with explosives attached, leading to detonations when the enemy tries to move the razorwire. This can be carried out by remote-controlled flying units or groundbound machines, although as ever within the demechanizing Imperium one should always expect the regressed Imperial Guard to resort to throw bodies at the problem by having men instead of machines perform this dangerous task in no-man's land. Dead humans are anyway easier to replace than destroyed machinery, and so we find that to be a man in the Age of Imperium, is to be nothing but a faceless number in a broken equation that amounts to increase input and feed the meatgrinder no matter what resistance is encountered.

Cavalry of all kinds is always exposed and vulnerable, and cavalry tends to suffer great losses in war. Cavalry is not useless in advanced conflicts, since even riders on soft, living steeds make for good scouts, and cavalrymen can always dismount to fight on foot.

To glimpse one example of such callous and death-defying cavalry usage within the Imperium of Man, let us turn to the trench storming of corporal Georgios Lucius, of the 913th Archite Palatines regiment. After all, people want heroes and villains and grand tales of daring-do. Man is not only a toolmaker, but a creature of stories.

Over the hills and far away on the artificial demi-planet of voidholm Dextrimalus, fierce battles of attrition raged inside the armaplas domes that dotted the hulking spacestation like clusters of blisters. Men died and beasts neighed, and machines lay awreck amid smoke and ruin. Fear ruled supreme, and many a prayer was uttered fervently by men, women and juves afraid to die. For there are no unbelievers in foxholes. Rumours about Astartes reinforcements were abuzz, as usual, but they were likely no more than hot air. His Divine Majesty's Space Marines were far too rare and valuable to show up to every backwater war that the Imperium waged.

Young corporal Georgios Lucius was part of a Rough Rider platoon, given a suicidal reconnaissance mission by their colonel. Thus, they fastened smoke grenades to the backs of their saddles, and galloped hell for leather through the plunging fire and smattering of horizontal lasbolts and slugs. As forward observers watched with magnoculars and through servo-skulls overhead, rider after rider fell with his horse amid the craters, yet still the valiant cavalrymen pushed ahead. Some jumped over piles of corpses, while others tried to trot their horses in zig-zag to survive for longer. Imperial observers noted where the smoke plumes from the horsemen extended the furthest, and ordered up infantry and Chimeras to follow up into the enemies' weakest spots.

It was Georgios Lucius who made it the farthest of all Archite Palatine Rough Riders, for he plunged his spotted grey mare into heretic razorwire and was thrown head over heels into the enemy trench. He cracked his head in the fall, and passed out. When he woke up, he wished that he had never been born, and he cried out for the Holy Terran Imperator to bring him salvation.

The Emperor protects. And for once, praise be, He granted a man's wish.

Nailed through his limbs to the trench floorboards, unclad and subjected to a flurry of mutilations, torture and unspeakable violations, the shrieking corporal Georgios Lucius witnessed a miracle in his final moments of life, as White Scars bikers came roaring through the razorwire and jumped over Archenemy trenches with all the savagery of Chogorisian steppe nomads hunting settled peasants. The independently acting Astartes of the Third Brotherhood had eavesdropped on Astra Militarum vox traffic, and their Captain Bashinkhor Khan had determined that the planned offensive in the wake of the cavalry recon deathride was the perfect opportunity to deploy his White Scars to savage the enemy lines. The Stormseer's casting of augur-bones had foreseen a good outcome for this assault.

Naturally, the ruthless Space Marines could take no chances with lingering corruption, and so a merciful bolt to the chest ended the life of the suffering Georgios Lucius, corporal of the 913th Archite Palatines. Or perhaps this stroke of Emperor's mercy was rather granted because the gruff Angel of Death Battle-Brother Ariq asked the captured Guardsman who he was, and upon the mention of the name Palatine the White Scar reflexively executed the Imperial soldier due to the likeness of this name with a certain cultist ruler from his Primarch's ancient history.

And so we find that our second tale takes us full circle back to our first tale about Jaghatai Khan, honoured be his name. No wonder that the insignia of the Fifth Legion, nowadays the White Scars Chapter, is that of the lightning bolt. For the Ordu of Jaghatai is as unpredictable and fierce as lightning. The modus operandi of the White Scars is to tear the enemy limbless and render them incapable of effective resistance.

As to volunteer cavalrymen and dirtbike riders within the Astra Militarum, an amusing pattern emerges. When asked why they joined the Imperial Guard, many such men in the saddle will reply that they wanted to get to new worlds, kill some enemies and copulate with native women under strange skies. They wanted to be heroes, for willing riders have always been glory-hunters and daredevils.

As to the worth of these brave lives, one charismatic leader during the Age of Terra remarked before a battle that what are the lives of soldiers but so many chickens? And upon the conclusion of combat, he proclaimed: Behold, the dead chickens!

Such an abominable wastefulness and carelessness with the lives of an officer's subordinates is rampant within the Imperium of Man, as fivehundred precious generations of wasted potential has rendered the degraded lives of teeming mankind dirt cheap. The longer the night, the more nightmares you can have. And under the watchful guardianship of the High Lords of Terra, the Age of Imperium has turned into a baleful long night, where Daemons stalk and humans cry out in anguish and pain.

Love only the Emperor. Fear only the Emperor. Praise only the Emperor.

And as we note the reckless bravery and sacrifice of riders on living mounts and motorcycles alike, we must likewise make another observation, as regard Imperial misrule of human interstellar civilization: It is the set of the sails and not the direction of the wind that determines which way the ship will sail. This decline was not inevitable. This loss of human power and technological know-how on the Imperium's watch is a case of criminal neglect. Seen with the cold eye of a long-term strategist of interstellar empire, only the sundering and victory of Chaos could have been worse for the long-term survival of mankind in its snuffing out of science and technology, the very means of power.

What good is truth to one who cannot comprehend it? What good is sight to the blind?

The dying of the Imperium of Man through internal rot manifests itself through loss of capacity and a slow ebbing of power over time. The collapse of decaying empires is akin to going bankrupt: First it happens little by little, and suddenly all at once. With the given understanding that a great deal of resilience, inertia and strenuous periods of partial regeneration is always involved in the long-term decline of great powers, for random reality is never simplistic in its roiling of trends and counter-trends to make a mockery of any exact predictions.

To err is human. And so the Imperium of Man is the most human thing ever created, throughout the entire existence of our species. The end of the Imperium would be the end of an error.

You are nothing.

The Imperium is everything.

And damnation is eternal.

Ave Imperator.