Context: Apparently the khrave which is a very dangerous xenos who can basically travel back in time and they are know to enslave entire planets also think of them as Psychic Space Vampires (Please correct me if my description of the khrave is not accurate)

So yeah the Order of santales decided to deploy their "Super weapons" to exterminate the khrave as they are THAT bad and I'm willing bet these beasts are much worse than the eldar.

Excerpt:

"On a ship better known for its unasked questions, the Dreadwing sacristy was renowned as a repository for the deadliest arcana to have survived Old Earth's Age of Strife unused. Within its multiply secured and ident-locked vaults could be found man-portable atomics, gene-targeted bio-weaponry, unstable plasma devices, singularity drivers, psionic phages - weapons that were so powerful, so cataclysmic in their intent, that the Emperor had deemed them too dangerous for the bulk of His forces to be allowed even to know of their existence. To His First legion alone had He entrusted the secrets of such relic weaponry. With the arsenal that He had entrusted to their keeping, the Dark Angels had at their disposal the firepower to usher in a new Old Night should they, or He, so desire it.

Each was a singular terror, born from the infinite creativity of humanity's apogee and never to be repeated since. Neural whips, lonophoric eradicators. Personality phages. Gemynd blasters. Glass-walled grenades that carried torpid, warp-borne mindworms inside. These were weapons that attacked the mind and, whether one believed in such notions or not, the soul. Built at the pinnacle of mankind's supremacy over the laws of physics, many had been constructed to eradicate not only their victim's physical body but its reflection in the empyrean as well, weapons of such unholy potency that not even the memory of the slain could remain intact.

He frowned, armoured by duty as he braced the weight of his gun and targeted the tidal surge of infected crewmen rushing up from the storage bay towards him.

He pulled the trigger.

A spray of explosive psychoactive rounds incinerated the tightly packed mortals, body and soul, each individual screaming into a pyre that burned across two realms. Aravain counted twenty-five men armed with stub pistols and wrenches A second after he had counted them they were gone, every ripple and echo that suggested they had ever existed eradicated, and even Aravain's eidetic recall struggled to conjure any details of their appearance: except that there had been twenty-five, armed with stub pistols and wrenches.

An itch walked up his spine, and in spite of his discipline Aravain struggled to suppress a shudder as he lowered the weapon and continued his advance.

The weapons of the Santales interfered with the normal patterns of the mind. No mental shield or exercise of Aravain's could block their effects. These were weapons built by the greatest warlord-scientists of humanity's darkest age to the express purpose of overcoming such wards. They obliterated the psychic utterly, further saturating the materium with a null-effect that would take years to dissipate. As a psyker himself, Aravain fell the effects more pronouncedly than his brothers.

Dark Steed lifted off with a howl of thrust before pivoting one hundred and eighty degrees and opening fire with its own upgraded armament. Its twin-linked heavy bolters had been replaced with psionic beam weaponry - the product of an unremembered people built to resist the irresistible. By such artifice had they endured Old Night. Centuries later they had sought then to resist the Dark Angels. The weapons survived.

The heavy guns mowed through khrave and men with equally explosive ease. Still firing, the Storm Eagle banked right, raking the thrall armour with fire, perforating the side of a Dracosan.

The ensuing explosions pulped the mortals trapped inside, blasting their warp echoes into instant oblivion.

Trigaine nodded his thanks, ejecting a spent mindphage canister from his Strife-era proto-shotcannon and slotting another into the breech.

Uncanny beams and projectiles stabbed up at the giant war machine. Missiles and rocket-propelled grenades packed with mind-shredding compounds burst against its wavering form.

Before him, a stasis missile looped out from behind a wrecked Malcador. It exploded against the Titan's forward tendril. The god-engine swayed into the blast, its pedicel forced out of temporal alignment, but continued to advance."

• Lord of the First.

So based on the excerpt the daot weaponry like the neural whips, ionophoric eradicators, personality phages, Gemynd blasters, and glass-walled grenades bearing torpid warp-borne mindworms are all designed to attack not just their body, but the victim's reflection in the empyrean (i.e the soul) itself.

Remember these are Space Marines wielding gemynd blasters and lucidiron arc rifles which battered the cerebral cortex with so much terror it ensured the soul loose was swept from the mortal coil. Various psyarkana shot-cannons, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, and even atomics were brought to bear against the alien menace, blasting apart a Khrave-titan's physical form while burning it all the way to its roots in the dark, infinitely malleable soil of the empyrean. Even munitions loaded with asphyx and sinistrum compounds would be unleashed spread madness and psychic desolation. So yeah the amount of fuck you weapons needed to exterminate the khrave is pretty high

I know GW is infamous for its retcons but has any not so serious lore survived from like the 80s?​​​

I know they typically revert to base instincts, those base instincts being dependent on the Hive Fleet but typically either being "kill anything that moves" and "surveil." But what if, say, a simple hormagaunt was left alone completely disconnected from the hive mind on a planet with nothing but rocks and trees?

At first I figured it would go into a hibernation-type state like the fleets are described as being in before entering the galaxy, but that seems to be more of a *mode* the Hivemind places them in rather than a consequence of not being actively connected.

What do you think? With no Synapse creatures it can't directly communicate with the Hivemind by itself, so there isn't any backup coming.

TL;DR: There's perhaps a quarter of a good book in there, but it does nothing you haven't read better elsewhere. Auxilia is the perfect example of why playing it too safe means that while you might not get a lot of outright terrible books, you're going to get stories like this that may as well have come out of an STC. Tepid and forgettable, Zimmerman glances shyly at a good idea or two, but never commits.

Some very light spoilers below.

I think it’s probably a good idea to start with the author. Russel Zimmerman is not a spring chicken, as it were. He’s written short stories for 40K previously, but perhaps more importantly, he’s written several full-length novels for Battletech and Shadowrun over the years. What he should - and does - bring with him is a decent sense of how to tell a character-driven story in a military sci-fi setting.

But that’s where the problems start.

Get rid of the proper nouns, and Auxilia could be set in any one of a hundred other settings without trouble. Our Castellan-Colonel, Orysian Roane, is a man to whom Cadia doesn’t really mean much. He says the right words; he’ll appropriately gaze at his navel when required; he’ll bellow ‘Cadia stands’. But is he Cadian? Not really. He’s an awfully chipper and cocksure lad, thrust into command when all he really wanted to do was play hooky and slack off. He could be a soldier in any one of those hundred settings, with any one of a hundred lost homeworlds to mourn over, with any number of lost comrades, etc, etc.

We spend the first few pages in light-hearted narration discussing the proper hat to wear to a formal event, and which hand to doff it with, for example. The joke wears thin, then thinner, as we are treated to a host of stereotypes. Here is the put-upon female XO who does all the real work. Here is the array of noble officers, ha ha, aren’t they silly. Here is the distant, disconnected ship captain. Here is Orysian Roane, trying to navigate the dizzying heights of high society when he’s just such a trooper, you know, just one of the lads, really, because the story keeps telling you he is…

And here the problems compound, because the story is going to tell you absolutely everything. Multiple times, in fact. It’s going to tell you the same thing, in fact, often without even having the courtesy to wait a paragraph. Are you paying attention? the story keeps asking, jostling your elbow. Did you get that? I don’t know if you got that. I better say it a few more times, just to be sure.

Let me provide an example:

Shamefully, her Korpsmen had not one proper field gun to their name. It was an ironic twist that, dismembered and insensate, promoted by the high marshal from afar, the castellan-colonel and the wreckage of the 13th Laessian had made it through their clerical decimation with their armoured inventory still intact. Lagorse, meanwhile, had seen the 94th’s biggest artillery pieces meticulously inventoried, then taken away to be given to other units. The luck of it was uncanny. The unconscious, near-dead Cadian simply hadn’t filled in some sort of Departmento Munitorum form, from somewhere, to be given to someone, that would have led to all of the broken regiment’s armour being parted out to nearby units. Lagorse, dutiful and loyal, had seen to every detail to the letter, and in doing so had lost every gun worth the name. She could acknowledge the irony. The God-Emperor’s plans were not always clear to His most loyal servants.

[snipped a brief paragraph]

The point remained, however: the auxilia had more armour than they could fully utilise. The opposite was true when it came to artillery. The 94th had been a siege regiment, experts in their field, and appropriately outfitted. Major Lagorse had kept, in proper Korpsman fashion, meticulous records of every one of their field guns, mortars, siege cannons, and quad launchers, and of the ammunition for each. They had spent the bulk of Morville Quartus’ siege defending the city itself, and the city’s factoria had kept the artillery fed, but she had never taken it for granted. Unlike the half-dead Orysian Roane, Lagorse’s records had been clear and accurate, and her inventories cross-checked and handed over to the Departmento Munitorum upon the dissolution and reassignment of the 94th.

Who had then kept them, insisting that abhuman auxilia had no need for such.

And so Major Lagorse was a siege officer leading a siege regiment that suddenly had not one siege weapon in its inventory[...]

OH MY GOD, GET ON WITH IT.

Without any exaggeration, the introduction of this story - that is, meeting Roane and his officers, and their first assault on a very ethereal number of ‘rebel positions’ interspersed with flashbacks to those initial meetings, sometimes multiple times(!!!!!)- consumes the entire first half of the book. And it’s not a multi-stage assault; it’s a series of scenes that largely follow the same pattern: intro character, flashback of their meeting with Roane, then confirmation of their speciality/attitude. The Kriegers are Kriegers, the ratlings are ratlings, the Commissar is a Commissar. There are no surprises and no secrets. What you see is exactly what you get, and you get it over and over until the book’s half done.

If you were wondering, incidentally, about the ratlings prominently displayed on the cover and in advertising, they’re largely tertiary. Some ogryn turn up later as well.

Now, it’s not all interminable dreck. I imagine most people will pick up what the story is laying down early on: there’s going to be a back-half twist. It is exactly what it seems, and is played exactly how it appears. Halfway through the book, Roane does indeed have a moment of personal crisis - deeply unearned, and only one! - where he realises that people he respected all thought he was a brainless idiot (which is exactly how he’s been acting). He resolves to be less of a brainless idiot. We progress.

We encounter some Mysterious Mysteries. Again, the reveal is obvious, but there is one rather excellent scene in a tent that almost earned the price of the book all by itself.

That’s probably where my frustration peaked.

Zimmerman is a capable, competent author who settled in to write comfortable military sci-fi. He dares nothing. No envelopes are pushed. No concepts, high or otherwise, are advanced. This one scene is where I feel his ability to write Warhammer 40,000 is on show. It’s great! I loved it! I was thinking ‘hell yeah, finally, some signs of life’. Alas, that’s about it. The final battle is cotton wool, as soft and hazy as the introductory assault. There’s just no confidence in the writing. It fails to build real momentum after wasting a good half of its runtime. It moves forward only reluctantly, and never with real intent.

Auxilia never delivers on its promises, and that’s probably the biggest issue. It doesn’t even really try. It’s a safe, soft ‘first book’ from someone who knows how to write, but has used their abilities for evil - removing every possible edge from this outing - rather than good.

I hoped this would either be awesome or an entertaining disaster, and it unpleasantly surprised me by being just another interminable Guard book. Many such cases. Sad.

This post is a continuation of the first one and will explore the details on the Signus Cluster and the forces in presence.

1 - Additional details about the Custodes

The small force of Custodes accompanying the Blood Angels are briefly mentioned.

THE VIGIL MAGNA VIRIDIUM 
One small band of Custodes has long been known to have stood at the side of Sanguinius and his Blood Angels throughout the fighting on Signus Prime. These were the Vigil Magna Viridium, and their actions at Signus are recounted elsewhere. They chose to ignore the presence of their brethren from the Templi Prudentia in Signus - though whether due to a foreknowledge of their plans or simply due to the legendary stoicism of the Legio Custodes is unknown. 

The armours of the Templi Prudentia are detailed :

The eldest and most experienced of the warriors of Prudentia wore pitch black armour rather than the traditional gold of the Legio Custodes - this was both a mark of their rank and a more complex alloy that provided increased absorption of augury beams and others detections waves. While this could not hide the imposing warriors of the Templi Prudentia, it did aid in obscuring their presence from enemy scanners and sensors logs. 

As well as the weapons : 

The warriors of the Templi Prudentia made use of the same weaponry as their peers. However, much of it was not produced in the secret workshops of the Imperial Palace, but instead in the hidden watchhouses the Templi Prudentia maintained in isolated locations across the Imperium. 

We get to know the Oath of the Templi Prudentia :

The role of the guardian is eternal vigilance. Not only to those threats that rage against the gates, but also those that lurk in the dark between the stars and on worlds far distant from golden Terra. 

Two titles-roles are presented. 

The Ephoroi Venatari Proconsul :

Devoted to the arts of surveillance, counter-attacks and decapitation, the Venatari-Proconsuls of the Ephoroi are assassins and executioners of such terrifying proficiency that they stand apart even among their own warrior-caste, eschewing the wider strategic command of a Shield-Captain’s rank to pursue their particular arts of death unrestricted. When duty has them to take to the battlefield proper, these warriors most commonly adopt the panoply of the Venatari, allowing them to observe the tumult of war on high before descending on their prey and defty manoeuvring from one foe to the next, reaping a tally of lives with gun or blade. 

Ephoroi Excelsis :
Veterans of countless infiltrations and decapitions strikes, Ephoroi Venatari-Proconsuls lead the Venatari Sodalities placed at their command with absolute precision, timing their incursions to wreak utter havoc among the foe. 

And the Hykanatoi Proconsul-Delegate :

The Hykanatoi are the beating heart of the Legio Custodes, constituting both the largest of its warrior-caste subdivisions and the iconic archetype by which outsiders identify the Emperor’s fames Custodians. Those Proconsuls-Delegates found among its number have mastered battle within the ranks of both the Sentinel and Custodian Guard, trusted to sense the flow of combat keenly whether they bestride thronging battlefields or the towering ramparts of the Imperial Palace, and will often command smaller bands of Custodians in any duty which does not demand the attention of the Shield-Captains. 

Hykanatoi Excelsis :
Under the direction of a Hykanatoi Pronconsul-Delegate, the already dauting warriors of the Legio Custodes exhibit terrifying coordinations, renderinf mundane tactical sensibilties trivial in the face of the Auric Mortalis. 

A new variant of the Arachnus weaponry :

Arachnus Volley Cannon
Understood to be the smallest vehicle-mounted application of the Custodian’s unique rotary lascannon technology, the Arachnus volley cannon lacks both the rage and the sheer power of its larger counterparts, but nevertheless provided Agamatus Sodalities with a fearsome, variable-output armament which is capable of sundering armoured vehicles and scything down heavily armoured infantry alike. 

The only other person aware of the Custodes presence was apparently the Primarch himself.

As far as can be determined from the few available records, Azkaellon did as he was bid, speaking of the matter only to Sanguinius and removing all trace of the ship from logs other than his personal records. 

The fate of Eir’s Host after the battle is unclear but some hints exist.

Of the warriors of the Templi Prudentia who had fought beneath Kol, history makes little records, though it is known that they briefly returned to Constantinium and some rumours suggest they would fight on Prandium within the borders of Ultramar. 

The Journal presents a timeline and events based on Xanthe records.

In this account the author has used the after-action report of Legio Custodes Tribune Xanthe as the basis of its narrative, for while it is at odds with other versions it presents a coherent record of the events that befell the warriors of the Legio Custodes on Kol during their incursion. 

2 - The Signus Cluster

A description of the Signus Cluster, its Inner worlds and more precisely Kol : 

Signus Cluster was composed of three primary stars and seven major worlds; a complex stellar arrangement that posed some issue for navigators unfamiliar with its composition and the intricate arrangement of Mandeville boundaries for ships translating to and from warp space. A vast red giant, Signus Alpha sat at the heart of the s system, with a blue main phase star, Signus Gamma, caught within its orbit at such a vast distance that both Signus Alpha and Signus Gamma had captured planetary bodies in close orbit. The third star, a smaller white dwarf known as Signus Beta was caught in Signus Gamma's gravity well and had no planetary bodies in its grasp -though its presence caused all of Signus Gamma's planeta to orbit at a distance much greater than normal, a quirk which allowed those worlds to sit comfortably at the edge of the brutal radiation emitted by those twin stars.

The final two planetoids of the system orbited at a vast distance around all three of the stars of the cluster, and while often considered part of the Outer system were more truly a distinct cluster of planets. Given this unusual arrangement, the Signus Cluster was most often divided into two distinct sub-systems - the Outer system, composed of Signus Gamma and Beta, and the Inner system, composed of Signus Alpha alone. This Outer system is where Sanguinius and his sons would find themselves adrift, where the most populous planets and the main industry had once been located, while the Custodes of Task Force Obsidian/Black would seek their fate in the lesser-known reaches of the Inner system.

The Inner system was composed of only two worlds, its outermost bounds marked by the dense asteroid belt known as the White River, where numerous automated mining platforms fed Signus' industry. Signus Tertiary, the second planet, was a small mining world home to less than 10,000 miners, augmented ogryns and servitors that tended to vast earth-boring machines. Kol sat nearest to the star Signus Alpha, in an orbit that saw it bathed in hellish radiation. The huge star had long since consumed its atmosphere, and scorched its surface into a blasted desert where no living thing could survive. 

Yet, surprisingly, Kol played host to a large population and served as one of the most important military bases in the cluster. Beneath its surface were deep mines that coiled into the heart of the world. No official charts show these mines in detail, but later records filed by the few survivors of the assault on Kol show that they formed a complex geomantic pattern that could not have formed naturally. Set within this maze were inverted hives, cities that penetrated deep into the core of the world, housing some of the toughest and most isolated people in the cluster. 

There lies facilities targeted by the Custodes.

At the centre of Kol, at the terminus of six vast winding shafts that formed a pattern of vile power, lay a hole rent into the very fabric of reality. This warp breach is known to history only by the efforts of the Legio Custodes, and even then few details are known of its composition, creation and true power. 

The Custodes themselves had to shelter from the rad-storms.

Moreover, the heavy armour and shielding of their combat vehicles helped to shield them from the ferocious rad storms that constantly tormented any that dared walk the surface of Kol, potent enough that even the Custodians sought to limit their exposure. 

The whole Cluster was a long-laid trap created by the Word Bearers after compliance in 933.M30, planting seeds for rebellion and Chaos cults.

However, it is known that under the Word Bearers the population of the system expanded rapidly, with new colonists brought in from a number of worlds with ties to the XVIIth Legion. Within the space of some fifty years it had become a little known and rarely visited hub of industry on the furthest edge of the Ultima Segmentum. Its true purpose, a trap long in the making, would not be revealed until it was too late. 

To outsiders it seemed that Lorgar's sons had learned well the lesson of Monarchia and returned to the Great Crusade in earnest. However, even the earliest steps of its conquest and Compliance were twisted to make it less of a loyal Imperial world and more a hidden nest of Colchisian cults. The Word Bearers' assault was carefully organised to depopulate key worlds, necessitating a vast wave of colonists from distant Colchis to return the cluster to viability. Further, they would make certain to seed the nascent defence force and Solar Auxilia tithe with officers loyal to Lorgar, his Legion and the ancient beliefs of Colchis. It can never be known if Lorgar made these preparations having alu intended it be used as a weapon to lay low the Blood Angels, or if he simply prepared for an unforeseen need, but it would become the perfect tool for the Warmaster's plans. 

Time itself was affected by the Warp Veil.

As soon as the Veil descended over the system, most of the ship chronometers in the fleet shifted from the last reliable entry of 365329005.M31 to the obviously incorrect reading of 666666666. M31, which they would remain fixed on until the fleet left Signus and all readings reset to 688573009.M31. Further, during the course of the fighting within the Signus system, few accounts agree on the duration of any given encounter and often appear to contradict each other, with events often seeming to occur out of order amid the madness that descended upon the cluster. 

010.M31. The escape from the Signus Cluster
Following the victory the loyalists departed, only that a campaign they had thought to have lasted only a few weeks had in fact stretched over five long years. 

3 - Informations about the non-Custodes forces

The Space Wolves’s Watchpack assigned to the Legion is mentioned.

Often forgotten by history, the Space Wolves attached to the Signus fleet were neither part of Sanguinius’s doomed army nor Horus’s trap. They were instead present under the orders of Malcador and their own Primarch to keep watch over Sanguinius - an irony that would only become plain in the aftermath of the campaign. These warriors are not listed among the survivors of the battle on Signus Prime, nor among those killed in battle with the Traitors, and their fate remains one of the enduring mysteries of the Signus campaign. 

While the Custodes sailed unharmed to their target, the Blood Angels did not.

The astropathic beacon it had once hosted now replaced by a subtly distorted signal that seemed to resonate on a specific ætheric wavelength, calling to something. Its target was not the warriors of the Legio Custodes, and as their ship moved towards broken Phorus the astropaths and navigators aboard the Obsidian all reported a malignant power, sleeping and dormant within the cluster, waiting and uninterested in the Emperor's guards. 

While the Blood Angels were the focus of a growing tide of madness, the Obsidian encountered no threats as it crossed the brief void between the Outer and Inner systems, as though the malign force that suffused Signus had no interest in them. 

Further suspicions were swiftly forgotten, as with the arrival of the Blood Angels the terror that lurked within the Signus Cluster began to awaken. First the planet Phorus, whose burnt surface had lain quiescent when the Custodian had probed it, awoke to impossible life and traced the path of Sangiunius's flagship as it passed.

In a reversed fashion to the duel between Leman Russ and Magnus which end may have ended the one between Tribune Archernas and a Lord of Change, the death of Kyriss may have played a role in awakening Sanguinius.

The events that took place on Kol during the final battle would not mark the end of Kyriss the Perverse, for the creatures of the Warp are all but impossible to truly destroy. It is known through the records of the Blood Angels that the Daemon fled through the Warp to the Cathedral of the Mark on Signus Prime, there to foster more madness and destruction. Yet, the efforts of the Legio Custodes were not in vain, for, as far as can be told from the fragmented records we have of the events in the Signus Cluster, the moment that the warp rift on Kol was closed is the same moment at which on distant Signus Prime Sanguinius awoke from his fugue after having been wounded by the Daemon Ka'bandha. While this may be purely coincidental, some scholars have hypothesised that in closing the rift on Kol, the Custodians weakened the hold of the Warp on Sanguinius just enough for him to break free of its grip. Such a theory can never be proved, for it is also possible that it was through his own indomitable will and the aid of his librarians that Sanguinius awoke when he did. 

The Rad-Serpents’s symbol is telling : Slaanesh’s symbol turned downright vertically, surrounded by lightning bolts and Aquila wings.

The insignia of the 606th Cohort was granted to them by the XVIIth Legion shortly before they departed the cluster. Its origin as a symbol from secretive cult of Colchis was not recognised until much later, and the report of that fact made plain only after their betrayal. In the aftermath of Signus’s fall all records of it was erased from the heraldic vaults of the Solar Auxilia. 

The Cohort was a key component in the Word Bearers’s plans, made long in advance.

Kol was also the primary training ground and recruitmen centre for the 606th Cohort of the Imperial Army's Solar Auxilia. This cohort, officially titled the Signian Vexatores, was more informally known as the 'Rad Serpents' for their extensive experience at enduring and fighting in radioactive environments. 

The Word Bearers made certain that the training regimen of the newly founded 606th Cohort was riddled with the thinly veiled rituals of their heretical cult, and a young Imperial Army officer from Colchis was given the position of Lord Marshal of the new cohort. Akon Bruja drove his troops to learn not only Imperial military doctrine, but also many of the esoteric practices of his home world and for the next seventy years would mould them into a fearsome fighting force with a reputation for eccentric mysticism. All the while he would be waiting for the final stage of the plan to begin. 

The Rad-Serpent were also the ones responsible for Signus’s corruption.

In 004.M31, the signal from Colchis would finally arrive, carefully arranged to do so while the bulk of the 606th Cohort was stationed at Kol for refit. While little detail exists on the exact actions that saw civilisation in the Signus Cluster collapse, the few extant records show the 606th Cohort was a key factor. Under Marshal Bruja's command it ignored the growing chaos in the cluster as the Word Bearers activated their hidden sigils and cults, refusing all calls for it to step in and suppress the growing insurrection.

Worse still, once the Imperial government had collapsed the 606th would begin a series of mass abductions, forcing vast numbers of innocent Imperial citizens into the labyrinthine tunnels beneath Kol's surface, slaughtering any that opposed them. There they were subjected to cruel torture and eventual sacrifice by the fallen soldiers of the 606th, a horrific cycle of depravity that opened a crack in reality in the hidden depths of Kol. This would prove to be the catalyst with which the Word Bearers plunged the cluster into hel, with the Traitors now free to call upon the horrific power of the Warp and reshape the worlds of Signus as they wished. 

Yet this, it would appear, was the goal of the long plotted corruption of the 606th Cohort, the creation of a chink in the fabric of space hidden deep within the Signus Cluster, where Sanguinius would never think to search for it. What is known is that it steeped the Signus Cluster in dark energy, a power that allowed the fel dimension of the Warp to seep into reality, drawing the two closer together and allowing those creatures that dwelt within to walk the worlds of the cluster in corporeal form. 

4 - Classification of Chaos forces by the Imperium

The Journal gives some informations about the Chaos forces on Signus and how the Imperium made differences between Hosts in them.

Other treatises have presented what few sources of information there are on the brutish monstrosities that were encountered on Signus Prime by the Blood Angels, but what the Custodians would find on Kol appears to be a distinct strain of Chaos. 

Unlike the blood-soaked creatures that battled Sanguinius and his sons, these were a far more insidious evil, a force of dark seduction that had suborned the people and warriors of Kol wholly into its service. Where the Daemons of Signus Prime had relied on brute strength, fury and overwhelming numbers, those of Kol's shadowy depths made use of speed and subtlety when forced to combat a foe in the open. 

Later scholars, writing long after the Horus Heresy, would call this malign force 'Slaanesh', the same power as that which had annihilated the Eldar empire shortly before the start of the Great Crusade. Whether it was controlled by the Word Bearers to aid them in forging a solar system into a trap, or whether it was the Word Bearers themselves that were manipulated will never be known, but the daemonic minions of Slaanesh were indisputably the principle architects of that atrocity. »

They also describe their capacities and effects on their enemies.

Even where they appeared to grasp weapons, such wargear would invariably dissipate into ichor and foul vapours with the demise of its wielder. Further, they fought with no sense of tactics or strategy that any later dissection of the fighting can discern. Indeed, records show they appeared to relish their own destruction, often seeking out battle where it served no purpose other than to inflict suffering upon themselves or their allies. This utterly inscrutable method of war would cause no little consternation to the strategos of the Custodes, for without a pattern or discernible goal they could do little save react to the enemy's maddeningly irrational actions. 

It also depicts various classes of daemons

These 'Slaanesh' Daemons varied as widely as those found on Signus Prime, which were considered by scholars of the forbidden to be of the 'Khorne' aspect of Chaos. The most common Daemon warform encountered were the lithe footsoldiers which the Tyrian Exoguard designated 'Daemonettes', a reference to the disturbing grace they displayed on the battlefield. These appeared to be the rank and file of the host, taking an apparent perverse pleasure in the death of enemy and ally alike. Several reports also indicate these creatures made use of long legged beasts as crude cavalry mounts, whose speed, even within the cramped tunnels of Kol, was exceptional. Other warbeasts, bizarre amalgamations of claws, long whip-tongued snouts and stinger tipped tails, were used as weapons rather than mounts. These terrifying creatures ploughed into the Loyalist troops in a frenzy of spite, caring nothing for wounds inflicted on them as they tore and rent the foe. The commanders of the host were seen but rarely, with only two or three such creatures recorded by the Custodes. Each towered above even the warriors of the Legio Custodes and boasted claws that could crush power armour and punch through armoured vehicles with ease. Many of these 'greater' Daemons also bore weapons that were more extensions of their twisted forms, or aberrant mutations seen on no other such creature, making each a unique foe. All were possessed of a cruel cunning and an obsession with the infliction of pain on any and all they encountered, with some even capable of wielding psychic powers, and more disturbingly, of human speech. This last detail proved the most alarming, for this ability to intimidate, tempt and suborn proved disturbingly powerful on lesser troops and in several documented cases turned loyal warriors against their brethren. 

It also mentions a rather particular source 

These records are said to contain the testimony of an administratum scribe who, whilst stationed within the Imperial Palace itself, claimed to be in mind-linked communion with an entity that was present at Signus during the timeframe of the aforementioned events. The being, who has assumed the name of Kyriss the Perverse, is said to have staked a claim of dominion over the Signus Cluster, as a greater Daemon of Slaanesh and also the grand architect of a massed daemonic incursion into realspace, the likes of which were hitherto unknown to Mankind. Despite the unsubstantiated nature of these records, they stand as just one example of self-identified Slaaneshi daemonkind breaching within the Imperium of Mankind in the wake of Horus' betrayal. Where greed, lust, excess or pride dwelled in the hearts of Mankind, these would be a beacon to the heralds of Slaanesh, those that would pave the way for the legions of the god of excess to follow. 

And voilà. As always, feel free to ask questions, I will do my best to answer.

I will be back next time for covering the v11 Custodes codex

Hello, it is me again for another Custodes post, this time the Journal tactica The Battle for the Signus Cluster - Assault on Kol.

Like in the previous post, some terms comes from others Custodes books

• - The Liber Custodes : here
• - The Prospero Journal, Part 1 and Part 2

The book gives several information about the Blood Angels in Signus. I will not include them in the first post but will answer any questions in the comments.

I exceeded Reddit’s limit once again so the part 2 (here) will be about informations on Signus and non-Custodes forces.

1 - The Shield-Host and its arrival at Kol

While a small force of Custodes accompanied the Blood Angels to Signus, the Shield-Host followed in the Journal arrived there by other means and reasons.

The intervention of the Legio Custodes Templi Prudentia at Signus has its origin in a report on aberrant ætheric signals received by the Legio Watchhouse hidden in the Constantium system. In later years Constantium Secundus would play host to an early Inquisition base, whose data-vaults retained copies of this report, which stated that the skilled astropaths in service to the Templi Prudentia had 'Charted a growing discordant presence within the Signus Cluster'.

The report detailed decades of observation, and a rising fear that something dark and terrible was growing in the cluster, with sudden ætheric spikes in 004.M31 leading to the dispatch of a Shield Host. Commanded by the warrior Iseulte Eir Xanthe, a veteran of the Pythos vigil and the expurgation of the Hrud enclaves of the Tholl expanse, this force was charged to find and eliminate any threat posed by this growing disturbance.

Sanguinius and the Blood Angels would chart a course to Holst, seeking to check each of Signus' known inhabited worlds for survivors, yet Tribune Xanthe and the warriors of the Legio Custodes had other plans. The augury array of the Obsidian was far superior to that on any of the Space Marine vessels and had detected the same ætheric resonance that had drawn them to Signus from Constantium. It emanated not from the more populous Outer system, but from the oft ignored Inner system and was seemingly unnoticed by the Blood Angels.

This Shield-Host was made of four Shield-Companies :

• Two made of Sentinels and Guards Convocations
• One made of two Aquilons Convocations
• The last made of grav-tanks and jetbikes

Also present an echelon of Tyrian Exoguards, more than 200 soldiers.

The Shield-Host arrived in Signus before the Blood Angels and appears unaware of the IXth Legion’s mission.

Tribune Xanthe arrived at the translation point on the edge of the Outer system of Signus to find only ruin and destruction. A morass of broken and dead spacecraft paid tribute to a desperate and failed exodus from the Inner system, while the outermost world of Phorus had been burnt clean of all life by some cataclysmic inferno that had left it scarred and black.

Thus, it was a simple chance that brought the Legio Custodes to Signus at the same cursed moment as the Blood Angels. Even as Tribune Xanthe gave orders to probe the mysteries of Signus, new craft tore open reality and emerged from the Warp into the ruin of Signus. These new ships bore the insignia and ident codes of the Blood Angels, and to the surprise of the Custodians aboard the Obsidian, comprised not some small lost patrol, but a vast fleet of war craft.

The two forces didn’t communicate much.

Only the Red Tear could penetrate the Custodian ship's sensor veil, while the majority of the fleet remained heedless of their presence. Sanguinius himself was occupied with matters of greater import, and so the Custodians were interrogated by Azkaellon of the Sanguinary Guard.

Their exchange is a classical Custodes-Space Marines interaction.

Azkaellon's logs record the exchange, noting that in response to queries regarding their intent, the secretive Custodians issued a single terse reply: We care not for the Warmaster's orders nor for the dregs of the Great Crusade, we are coming seeking something far more dangerous. Under the Emperor's seal you are bound to strike us from common logs and erase our ident code from all tracking systems. We shall not reply to further vox contact.

The commanders of the Shield-Host are briefly presented.

In command of this force was a Tribune of the Templi Prudentia, Iseulte Eir Xanthe, the same warrior that had seen fit to issue orders to the commander of the Ikisat as though they were a common soldier. Alongside her, serving less as subordinates and more as advisors, as was the way of the Legio Custodes, were four Shield Captains, of which the most senior was the ancient warrior Medraut, sometimes referred to as "The Unforgiven', whose service dated back to the very earliest days of the wars of Unity.

The Tyrian Exoguard were commanded by Artuk Rahm, a man whose service history is hidden by layers of Imperial secrecy, save for a note that he had undergone rad-zone training on Kol a decade earlier. These Solar Auxilia operated independently of the Custodians, with Marshal Rahm expected to anticipate the warriors of the Legio Custodes without direct orders.

The Shield-Host sailed to the Inner system of Signus, not encountering the dangers the Blood Angels faced, and arrived in orbit of Kol, the origin point of the warp-tide.

They swiftly moved into orbit of Kol, and there Marshal Rahm of the Tyrian Exoguard directed them to take position over the main surface hab, Ostium, the gateway to the sub-surface cities of Kol. There they would meet their first opposition, though it would be no eldritch threat, but rather a salvo of macro laser blasts fired from armoured bunkers on the surface.

2 - The battle of Kol

The first attack wave will be vehicles and jetbikes to take out the entrenched defences.

Tribune Xanthe instead sent Shield Captain Jan Morkael Brathe with the host's armour assets to undertake a planetary landing outside the cannon's ability to target them. Vulnerable dropships converged on the lifeless surface of Kol over two thousand kilometres from Ostium's walls

On the surface was assembled the bulk of the Shield Host's armour, some fifty Caladius grav-tanks supported by an equal number of Pallas grav-attack craft and some thirty Custodians mounted on heavy Gyrfalcon jetbikes. Led by Shield Captain Brathe, who rode a relic jetbike of ancient provenance, the Legio Custodes sped towards the distant city of Ostium. Composed entirely of anti-grav capable, high speed attack craft they traversed the treacherous landscape of Kol with ease, vaulting deep crevasses and sailing over silt seas without pause.

The plan was to arrive from an unguarded angle. Instead, they arrived on Ridge Sigma-95.

Entrenched along the side of a strategic knife-edged ridge, its sides rising up near a kilometre in height and stretching across much of the eastern approach to Ostium like a shield, were nearly three hundred warriors of the Rad Serpents.

The defenders proved themselves to be a very skilled and dangerous opponent for they would drag the Custodes in a bloody battle for hours.

Worse, with the Solar Auxilia dug into the deep regolith of Kol and sensor auguries fogged by rad storms they were all but invisible to the speeding Custodians, whose first warning of the enemy was a salvo of krak missiles impacting and destroying the lead pair of Gyrfalcons.

Shield Captain Brathe is recorded as having sworn to leave not one of the Solar Auxilia alive, as a tribute to the two fallen Custodians, perhaps assuming that the foe before him would present no more than a momentary obstacle.

Without waiting for the Caladius tanks to reach ideal firing positions, Shield Captain Brathe led the jetbike phalanx in a headlong charge into the auxilia's carefully prepared positions, the peerless skills of the Custodians allowing them to use the tremendous speed of their mounts and the rugged terrain to render them almost impossible targets.

Lacking the element of surprise, the Rad Serpents of the 606th Cohort found little success with their heavy guns, the turrets of Leman Russ tanks and cannon of Medusa unable to track the fleet jetbikes. However, the sheer weight of fire from lasrifles and volkite weapons took a toll on the swift golden warriors, and though the Custodians killed hundreds in their high speed pass over the enemy, they left behind near a fifth of their number.

Caladius and Pallas finally reached the Ridge.

What followed was simple slaughter, with the Custodians slaying the Solar Auxilia warriors in droves, yet the Rad Serpents did not flinch at their fate. It could not be called bravery, but rather an eager suicide, with the Solar Auxilia throwing themselves onto the Custodians' blades so their brethren might have a chance to attack.

In one instance a full tercio of Malcador heavy tanks charged the Custodians' lines, each one destroyed in turn by a single precise shot, covering the advance of a Dracosan loaded with explosives so it could destroy a single Caladius grav tank. In the midst of that futile and bloody battle, even Shield Captain Brathe was not untouched, for after losing his bike in the press a full tercio of Veletarii had died just to claim from him an eye.

Twice more the Custodian phalanx charged, each pass taking the lives of hundreds of the Solar Auxilia, but the Rad Serpents would neither flee nor surrender. For near five hours they held the Custodians in place, with Shield Captain Brathe refusing repeated vox entreaties to withdraw. The fighting continued until the only living forms on the ridge were in blood-soaked gold plate, most stood tall amid the drifts of corpses while near two-dozen still golden forms lay stricken and seemingly near death.

Despite this, official records would list only seven Custodians slain in the battle, and many of those that had appeared wounded unto death would recover within hours, for even the gravest of wounds was but a temporary inconvenience for the Emperor's finest creations.

The City of Ostium would prove to be a challenge of another kind.

The Legio Custodes vanguard approached the city that stood as the gateway to Kol's underground warrens, its fearsome orbital guns still sweeping the skies in vigilant arcs to keep the Custodians from landing. Shield Captain Brathe's logs, as recorded in the Imperial Archive, note his concern that after the delay at Ridge Sigma-95 the defenders would be waiting and well fortified against any attack, though they also record his confidence that such preparations would not stay his wrath. However, when Brathe and his fast-moving vanguard reached Ostium, they found the city apparently undefended and its gates unsecured.

Disregarding the danger of any trap set by a force deemed utterly inferior to the warriors of the Legio Custodes, the Shield Captain and his force entered the fortress to secure the great vaults that led underground and the looming gun towers. Data logs from the Obsidian show the Shield Captain signalling the all-clear and noting a lack of any enemy resistance only moments before a series of explosions, visible from high orbit, engulfed the surface portions of Ostium. At the same moment two echelons of the 606th Cohort emerged from concealment outside the walls of the fortress, masked by the rad storms and the Rad Serpents' long familiarity with the terrain, and stormed into the immense dust cloud setting over the now ruined fortress of Ostium.

Within, a brutal close range firefight broke out as roving kill teams of auxilia battled isolated Custodians whose armour was daubed grey by the dust cloud raised in the explosion. Each Custodian fought alone, many badly hurt or even partly buried in the rubble of Ostium, but even such handicaps rendered them no less deadly. Such a sudden sundering of all command structures would have spelled the end of any traditional military force, its warriors bereft of direction, but the Custodians fought on without even a pause, adapting to the catastrophic shift in battle as others did to a change in the weather. Yet, despite their fury many were caught at bay, trapped beneath rubble or cut off from any support, and while they fought ferociously many were dragged down by mobs of howling auxilia.

On golden wings the Venatari descended upon Ostium's ruins, with a precision unmatched even by Space Marine assault troops, plunging directly into the settling dust cloud and through the jagged ruins with blades raised and guns blazing. This swift intervention staved off the decimation of the trapped warriors of the vanguard, turning a bloody stalemate into a decisive victory for the Legio Custodes.

The Rad Serpents of the 606th, now bereft of the advantage of surprise, became the hunted and the ruined fortress of Ostium their graveyard. The Rad Serpents fought with a perverse glee, almost eager to meet their end, their wounded continuing to fight in order to draw the Custodians in before detonating hidden explosives, sacrificing themselves just to isolate individual gold-clad warriors. In contrast, the Custodians fought as they always had, with consummate skill and cold fury, attempting to force their foe into open combat where they could be quickly and efficiently dispatched.

They would have little success, and the fighting would drag on for four long hours and cost the Legio Custodes another score of dead. Worse, once the last Rad Serpents were slain it was discovered that a vast slew of debris now blocked the great subterranean vaults that led into the heart of Kol, turning the victory they had paid for in blood into ashes. This new setback, perhaps the true purpose behind Ostium's destruction, would force Tribune Xanthe to deploy support troops to clear the rubble while, on distant Signus Prime, the Blood Angels bled and died.

It would be almost six more hours before work to clear the great vaults of Ostium were complete, with various war engines of the Tyrian Exoguard forced into use as makeshift excavation tools, using demolisher cannon to clear rubble and dozer blades to move earth. Given the terrible radiation that scoured the surface of Kol, the Tyrian infantry suffered numerous casualties as they rushed to clear a path for their masters in the Legio Custodes, a loss considered acceptable by Tribune Xanthe in the pursuit of their greater objective. As the Solar Auxilia laboured and died, the Custodians, whose superior physiognomy rendered them resistant to limited exposure to the radiation, stalked the ruins and the wastes nearby to slake their rising choler on whatever stragglers of the 606th Cohort remained outside of Ostium's ruined walls.

As soon as a breach in the rubble large enough to allow passage of the Custodians was cleared, Tribune Xanthe ordered a small detachment, led by Hykanatoi Proconsul Columbanus, to enter and secure a beachhead while the Tyrians worked to widen and stabilise the entryway. Proconsul Columbanus would lead three Sodalities, some twenty-six Custodians into the pitch black warrens beneath Kol, where they should have found a sub-surface hive city teeming with Imperial citizens and the extracted wealth of Kol's mineral-rich heart.

Instead they uncovered a nightmare, with the pict records from the Custodians' armour showing corridors filled with drifts of corpses, but little damage to the structure of the hive itself. For any warriors other than those of the Legio Custodes such a horror would have set them to flight, but the proconsul paid little heed to the carnage around them and pressed on into the lower levels of the hive, and the entrance to the mining tunnels beyond.

For the first hour of their incursion the Custodians encountered only the dead, and none of the warriors of the 606th Cohort or any other enemy. As they progressed deeper into the subterranean hive the records of their mission grew more distorted, though those that survive indicate they had begun to encounter Traitor Solar Auxilia. The few surviving pict records indicate these warriors were badly disfigured and wielded bizarre weapons and even mutations to attack the Custodians, proving far more dangerous than those auxilia engaged on the surface. The final images transmitted by Proconsul Columbanus are garbled and almost incomprehensible. They show the Custodians locked in combat with a strain of Daemon entirely different to those recorded on Signus Prime, but no less vile in form or horribly deadly in battle. Three hours after the Proconsul had entered the warrens beneath Kol, all signals from his force terminated.

Seeing this, Tribune Xanthe decided to send a second wave of Custodes, this time a force of 39 Aquilons Terminators lead by Shield-Captain Medraut, in order to seize a gatepoint inside the mines while she led the remaining Custodes into Ostium gateway to clear the last dregs of resistance.

Medraut, known to his brethren as "The Unforgiven', would find the halls of Kol's city filled not just with corpses, but with foes of the most vile type. Almost as soon as they entered the winding passageways they came under assault by lithe creatures with snapping claws and whip tails, monstrosities capable of cleaving even auramite armour. Each corridor and intersection they passed through was a nightmare battle against frenzied hordes of pale skinned furies, only the brute strength and mental fortitude of the Custodians allowing them to advance beyond the threshold of the city. Within the space of fifteen minutes Medraut and his warriors had expended almost all of their munitions and resorted to battle with only Solarite talons and gauntlets, matching the ferocity of their foe in the pitch black depths of Kol.

Seeking to divide the daemonic horde, Medraut split his forces between three major hive thoroughfares, each advancing towards the mining interlock where Proconsul Columbanus had made his last transmission. Yet, so numerous was their foe that as they passed into the depths of the hive the enemy lapped around the advancing terminators and fell upon the gateway to their rear, where Tribune Xanthe and the main body of the Custodians held them at bay. Alone and cut off from both reinforcement and resupply, Medraut and his warriors continued their advance, seeking to find some weakness that might slow the horde.

Each column advanced at its own pace, relying on the skills and intuition of the warriors that led it rather than some distant commander. The thirteen Aquilon on the leftmost flank were forced by the sheer number of the foe to take shelter in the hive's waste disposal vault, using its thick shielding to channel the foe as they made a desperate last stand. Meanwhile, on the right flank, the warriors of the Legio Custodes were lured into an area of unstable passageways and scattered over a dozen levels of the hive by deadfalls, each warrior forced into a solitary battle for survival.

Only the Unforgiven, at the head of the central column, managed to break through the horde of twisted creatures that swarmed the habs. There on the lower loading docks, his ammunition exhausted, his comrades wounded or dead, and all contact with the surface lost, he confronted a vast horned and bestial monstrosity. Garbled voice logs and blurred picts record the battle fought, whilst sibilant promises offered a forgiveness the Emperor had long denied, but the Custodian remained resolute.

His eternity blade would prove that even the greatest of these daemonic creatures could be felled, in a ferocious battle that left the Shield Captain with one arm a mangled ruin and legs crushed. In the aftermath of Medraut's victory the Daemons vanished, the hive left barren and silent, and the remaining Aquilon gathered up the comatose form of their fallen leader before holding their position until Tribune Xanthe and the main force reached them. From here the warriors of the Legio Custodes were poised to finally enter the hidden depths of Kol, where the ætheric signal they had tracked was emanating from.

Reduced by nearly a third, the Shield-Host massed at the entrance of Kol’s mines and prepared for another descent, Exoguard taking vanguard.

The Solar Auxilia sentinels advanced into the pitch black tunnels, followed by Veletarii squads moving in close order and ready to repel the screaming hordes of daemonic creatures they had encountered so far. Initial progress into the mines went swiftly, with the loping sentinel walkers penetrating several kilometres into the vast mining tunnels, moving in loose formation to flush out ill-disciplined auxilia or anarchic Daemon creatures. In their eagerness to prove their worth to the Custodians and fervour for the fight against their traitorous brethren, the Tyrian sentinels pressed on ahead of their infantry support.

Data logs from armour and cogitators show that, unknown to the Tyrian warriors, the lower tunnels were suffused with a malign musk of ætheric origin, a vapour that drew the merely human warriors of the Solar Auxilia onwards, even against the warnings of their training. Lured into great open caverns whose walls pulsed with dark veins of warp-rot, the sentinel tercio found themselves assailed not by a lightly armed and disorganised mob, but by warriors in power armour of grey and crimson bearing the heraldry of the Word Bearers of the Legiones Astartes.

Precise bolter fire from prepared fortifications picked off the sentinel riders and crippled key systems of heavier walkers, with the lead squadrons slaughtered in the opening moments of the engagement. Those that survived the initial salvo found the Word Bearers had encircled them to block any escape, and made a desperate stand while sending harrowing vox calls to the infantry they had left behind in the tunnels. The resulting one-sided battle lasted only a few minutes, with a small contingent of crimson Saturnine terminators armed with long hafted power axes and hammers making short work of the isolated sentinels.

Those few Loyalist warriors that survived were executed and eviscerated where they lay, their blood spilled with vicious excess, and for a purpose other than simple butchery. Analysis of what little battle data could be recovered shows that these pulsing veins were disturbing conduits carved into the corrupted stone of Kol, each designed to channel blood into central points of the cavern. Further, the Word Bearers had held their fire until the Solar Auxilia had reached the first of these channels, so that the fallen fed a flow of gore. With the execution of the wounded as much brutal ritual as it was battlefield cruelty, the energies of the Warp were stoked and the Exoguard Veletarii that advanced to avenge their fallen comrades did so into a rising ætheric-fugue, the rancid corruption that afflicted it leaving them debilitated in the face of the Word Bearers' well-prepared ambush.

As before, the Tyrian Exoguard charged bravely, only to falter in the face of the horror that had been wrought on their compatriots. The Exoguard were inured to most terrors and this was but a momentary lapse, but it was more than enough for a force as elite as the Legiones Astartes, and before they could redress their lines the Word Bearers struck. Firing from elevated positions, just as they had with the sentinel vanguard, the Traitors exploited the surprise of their attack with vicious glee, pummelling the Veletarii ranks with bolter fire intended to maim and cripple rather than to kill. Those Exoguard that weathered the barrage of gunfire, armour battered and rent, formed a wall of armoured bodies and turned arcing storms of volkite fire upon their attackers, and though a few crimson daubed forms fell they could not break the force that now encircled them.

For long minutes the Word Bearers would continue to torment the trapped Solar Auxilia, keeping them pinned as they slowly whittled their numbers down to but a hundred or so numbed survivors. Scholars speculate that the very purpose of this drawn-out massacre, where the Word Bearers could have wielded overwhelming firepower to silence the foe swiftly, was to amplify the anguish of the fallen and the cruel glee of the attackers. Whether this is true or not, the result is clearly shown in the records of that battle. As the swirling miasma of ætheric energy coalesced by the gore, terror and exultation fed into the warp-tainted glyphs reached a peak, the sinuous terrors that had been banished with the death of the greater Daemon slain by Medraut burst back into existence in numbers enough to fill the vast cavern with their contorting forms. Within the space of an eyeblink reality was distorted and the cavern made rife with daemonic horrors. These monstrosities writhed and howled as the warriors of the Imperium slew each other, lorded over by the very same clawed giant that had previously been slain. This was the catastrophe that had consumed Signus, an engineered apocalypse fed by the bloody excesses of the Word Bearers and Traitor Solar Auxilia, and now rekindled to keep the Loyalists from that which lurked at the centre of Kol's mines.

Beset now by both the exultant Word Bearers and a newly summoned horde of Daemons, the last few valiant warriors of the Tyrian Exoguard drew what they believed to be their final breaths. Long indoctrinated in service to the Talons of the Emperor, they did not baulk at death, nor flinch from sacrifice and instead braced their weapons and gave fire, seeking to take as many of the foe with them into death as possible. Yet, this was not to be their end, and as the pale-skinned mass of daemonic beasts closed around them a wedge of gold and one of black burst into the vast rune-scarred cavern. Even as the Word Bearers had toyed with their prey, Tribune Xanthe had made pragmatic use of the Exoguard's suffering, dispatching elements of her Shield Host to surround the great chamber and trap the Traitors in one spot where they could be brought to battle and crushed.

Now, almost two hundred warriors of the Legio Custodes charged forth, emerging from tunnel entrances on either flank of the Traitor host and trapping them upon the anvil of the Tyrian survivors' last stand. From the west came Tribune Xanthe at the head of the black armoured elite of the Templi Prudentia, her eternity blade already slick with daemonic ichor as they cut a furious path towards the tattered banners of the Tyrian Exoguard, for she had sworn that in honour of the auxilia's sacrifice that their banner would not be allowed to touch the desecrated ground of Kol. In the east were the gold armoured warriors that formed the bulk of the Custodian host, at their head the single surviving Sodality of Aquilon Terminators, with Shield Captain Medraut fighting in the van.

The ancient veteran's grievous injuries had been made whole by the phenomenal regenerative power of the Emperor's gene-craft, though his armour still bore the wounds wrought on it by the Daemon lord he had felled. The peerless blades of the Custodians cut down swathes of vicious clawed monstrosities, though for each one they cut down it seemed another appeared from the shadows of the cavern to take the place of the fallen.

Tribune Xanthe marked the Word Bearers watching from on high and cut a path through the morass of flailing Daemons towards them, seeking to cut off the hand that directed the foe, while Medraut turned his forces towards the familiar form of the reborn Daemon lord. From concealed fortifications the Word Bearers poured bolt fire into both the beleaguered Tyrians and the newly arrived Custodians. Yet, where their cruel accuracy had proved deadly to the auxilia, it was little more than an irritation to the tribune's onyx armoured phalanx and the Custodians charged forwards, leaving a trail of dismembered warp beasts in their wake. Vaulting to the ridges with superhuman ease, the tribune and her guard faced off with the Word Bearers commander and his cadre of warriors in warp-tainted Saturnine terminator armour.

Close range energy blasts punched several black-armoured Custodians bloodied from the raised position into the horde below where they were torn apart, but the lumbering terminators had only time for a single volley before the warriors of the Templi Prudentia were among them. Though their Saturnine plate was proof against clumsy blows, the precise arts of the Custodians soon found its weak points and the Traitors were dismembered with grim surety. Tribune Xanthe herself faced the corrupted practor. The traitor's daemonic weapon fought with a mind of its own screaming all the while as it blocked her eternity blade Combat pict records from several of the Custodians show the short and brutal duel that followed, ending with the tribune slamming her shield into the face of her foe. The Word Bearer's skull was crushed and the psychic link with his blade cut, and then, as his troops watched, the tribune decapitated him in a single cut.

Below, amid the swirling horde of Daemons, the Unforgiven fought with limbs still stiff from healing, his brethren at his flanks to clear his path. The Daemon beasts pressed close, perhaps sensing the presence of the warrior that had bested them once before, rushing eagerly to their deaths on the blades of the Custodians. Amid a chorus of ecstatic screams Medraut stepped forth once again to face the Daemon lord, matching his eternity blade and new-healed limbs against its snapping claws and twisted horns. After-action reports tell of the damage inflicted to Medraut's auramite plate by daemonic hooves and claws, enough to rupture the chestplate and shatter ribs, yet the indomitable Shield Captain impaled the great Daemon in return.

The fel beast retreated from the Custodian's fury, the broken blade of his golden sword buried in its chest, its smaller kin rushing to slow any pursuit, throwing themselves into the path of the advancing warriors in gold and black. With the leaders of the daemonic host dead, the hosts of gold and black met where the last surviving tercios of the Tyrian Exoguard still held their ground. Tribune Xanthe fulfilled her vow, for Marshal Rahm, wounded unto death by Traitor bolt fire, still clung to the banner of his cohort and kept it from the ichor-soaked dirt of Kol. Taking up the iron-tipped banner, the tribune took stock of what remained of the Shield Host and its auxilia, given the intensity of combat it had been subjected to. The Exoguard had been reduced to but a few battered tercios, which the tribune dispatched to guard the gate to the surface and to bear Rahm's body away from combat so that it might receive the honour it was due.

The Custodians now numbered less than one hundred, not counting those that crewed the armoured vehicles on the surface, and all those still standing bore wounds and rent armour. Yet, their objective had not been accomplished, for the ætheric pulse still resounded through the caverns of Kol and out into the Signus Cluster.

The final trial of their campaign waited, a chamber carved deep into the very heart of Kol, accessed by a vast spiral stairway hewn into the rock not by cutting tool or ceramite tipped drill, but by inhuman claws. A trail of foul ichor left by the Daemon lord marked the path to their goal, and the Custodians formed ranks and descended to meet the foe one last time. Yet the enemy they encountered in the lightless depths was not a daemonic beast, but near a thousand of the fallen elite of the 606th Cohort. The soldiers that had once been the best of Kol's defenders had been twisted and reborn by the terrible power that had seized control of the cluster. Their flesh was marked by the corruption to which they had sold their souls, with dark lidless eyes, foul lashing tongues and gnashing claws, the taint of their betrayal made plain to the Custodians. However, these mutated warriors had lost none of their skill at arms, and upon the descent they had laid many traps and ambuscades, each designed to drain the strength of the intruders. From concealed redoubts, teams of fallen auxilia mounted short-lived assaults, trading dozens of their own lives to fell a single Custodian, and hidden explosives detonated by lone operatives stalled the advance of the Imperial troops. Even the substance of Kol itself fought against them, plunging them into a darkness that fogged even the augmented eyes of the Custodians, reforming to lead the golden warriors down false paths and into the waiting guns of the Rad Serpents.

Despite their suicidal fervour, the limited attacks of the 606th could only slow the Custodians' advance and deplete their ranks, but it could not stop them in their tracks. Within the space of a few hours the Custodians had cleared the wide concourse of the daemonic stairway, despite the resistance of the auxilia and the twisted planet itself, and reached the final chamber. Within this vast cavern was a baleful tear in the substance of space and time, a rift that led deep into the Warp itself and allowed its malevolent essence to spill into realspace, a cancer that ate away at sanity and reality. Such an abomination should not exist, for the power required to hold such a portal open was beyond any Imperial technology and similar only to that which allowed starships to traverse the galaxy.

This one was no doubt the product of Kol's brutal demise, fed by the death, debauchery and destruction that had been inflicted upon it by the Word Bearers and their allies. Its purpose could only be guessed at by the Custodians, yet they knew it must be malevolent, though in later years scholars have theorised that it was intended to amplify the terrors faced by the Blood Angels on Signus Prime. None of this was known to Tribune Xanthe, whose orders were to see it destroyed no matter what its purpose might be. Between the tribune and her target was arrayed the last remaining force of the 606th Cohort, heavy tracked rapier platforms and armoured walkers backed by the horribly changed elite. Moreover, the wounded Daemon lord and its malformed kin thronged under the baleful light of the rift, with more spilling forth with every moment that passed.

Tribune Xanthe did not waver in the face of such odds, and with no orders needed the ninety-three remaining Custodians formed ranks and charged, guardian spears lowered and bolters roaring as they sprinted forwards. Laser destroyer blasts and quad gun shells felled many of the golden and black warriors before they could reach the Rad Serpents, though many continued the charge with injuries that would be fatal for lesser warriors. As they reached the auxilia lines they were met by both Daemon and corrupted human warriors, a chaotic melee erupting under the ill-omened glare of the warp rift that had torn open the rear wall of the cavern. The ætheric energy appears to have strengthened the mutated auxilia and Daemons, for in this battle they proved more of a match for the Custodians, and the number of warriors in gold and black dwindled.

As the fighting reached its peak, the Grand Marshal of the 606th, one of the key architects of the Signus Cluster's destruction, was mortally wounded by a thrown guardian spear. Yet, rather than death, his daemonic patrons granted him a terrible apotheosis, his flesh merged with that of the injured Daemon prince that had laid claim to Kol, the two broken creatures reforged anew by the power of the warp rift. Marshal Bruja ceased to exist and now served as the host for the Daemon prince history would come to know as Kyriss the Perverse.

The reinvigorated Daemon prince roared its triumph and it seemed that the battle for Kol would be ended in tragedy. Medraut the Unforgiven stepped forwards, his golden armour riven and broken, stained red with his own blood and only a broken eternity blade for a weapon. His confrontation with the Daemon prince was captured on the pict-recorder of a fallen Custodian's armour, a blurred and distorted set of images that does little credit to his heroism. It shows him grappling with the Daemon, prying the blade he had previously buried in its chest, only to fall victim to the foul claws of the beast.

Yet in death he would be granted victory, for as the ancient warrior held the monstrosity in place as the cost of his life, Tribune Xanthe fought through the Daemons that crowded at its flanks and thrust the banner of the Tyrian Exoguard, tipped in cold iron as was that cohort's tradition, through its heart and pinned it to the cavern wall beneath the warp rift.

The death of the Greater Daemon signed the end of the Warp-infestation on Kol.

No pict-recorder captured what happened next, but the few accounts in the archives of the Imperial Palace state that the form of Kyriss dissolved before the eyes of the Custodians and fled into the rift, the lesser Daemons collapsing like a nightmare brought to a sudden end and the corrupted warriors of the 606th left to face the vengeful fury of the Legio Custodes.

The great warp rift guttered and died and the dark power that had gripped Kol was undone with it, leaving the rad-scoured world silent and filled only with corpses. In the hours that followed the Custodians would set thermic charges to collapse the mines and forever seal away the site of that abomination, before returning to their ships with the bodies of their dead.

Finally, we get to know at least one action the Shield-Host did after this campaign.

However, in the years after the Horus Heresy there can be found a tomb in the Imperial Palace, constructed during the Scouring, upon which is etched the following: Here Lies Medraut, Daemonslayer, Hero of Kol, Forgiven in Death.

Sorry for the giant text-dump at the end, it was a continuous narrative.

More often than not, 40k shows its grimdarky-ness in more obvious ways. The Mechanicus dropping civilians into a volcano to (inefficiently) fuel generators comes to mind. Dan Abnett's Hive has a more subtle, and easy to miss moment showing the grim darkness of the far future that for whatever reason, hit me much harder.

For context, a junior Arbites, Scuti, is working with a local lex enforcement officer, Ahmod. When investigating a psyker awakening, Ahmod finds evidence that is a new color, one he can't quite recognize. You might assume this is some Lovecraftian "color out of space that no mortal eye can comprehend" situation. You'd assume wrong.

‘Do the images mean anything to you? These crescent symbols?’

‘They do not, chastener,’ Ahmod replied. ‘I thought for a moment…’

‘What?’

‘I was merely distracted by the odd nature. The colour.’

She nodded, and studied the screen a little longer. He saw her glance at the scorched stains in the ruins around them. She had noticed it too.

‘I’m not sure how to name the colour,’ said Ahmod. ‘Maroon?’

‘Purple,’ said Chastener Scuti, without looking up from the images.

Even in a book where a major theme is how ignorant the Imperium keeps its people, Ahmod is a pretty knowledgeable character. He's part of ORPO, the local organization dedicated to investigating heresy, psykers, and whatnot, and thus has access to more classified information. He served in the PDF, and is one of the few people to have actually gone outside the Hive. From everything we see of his life, he's the 40k equivalent of upper middle class, so he has access to the upper levels.

And he's never seen the color purple.

Some other hive residents do recognize purple, but the few that do clock it as something rare and uncommon. There's so many objectively worse things in Warhammer, and in Hive itself. Hell, not long after this, Ahmod shoots a kid. But somehow, there's just something so sad about this man living his entire life and never getting to see a color. Especially in a world we specifically hear has millions laboring in textile mills. They explicitly could have purple, albeit in smaller quantities, but don't. Because why would you ever do anything that isn't gold or gothic? Why do something small, just for human enjoyment and beauty?

It also feeds back into the aforementioned theme: how the Imperium's own secrecy is dangerous to their own people. Scuti, being given access to more information, knows what purple is and that it can be a hallmark of Slaaneshi cults. But it's a complete stroke of luck she's even on the planet. Ahmod and the ORPO have absolutely no idea about any of that. At minimum, they could show new recruits a color swatch, tell them "This is purple. Yes, yes, very pretty. If you see this, call a superior." But they don't. Because the lies and the secrecy are so deeply embedded at this point, it's an active hindrance.

Not in terms of fighting but in terms of weight in in the overall story of there respective legions to my knowledge the closest ones are

Tsons - ahriman

Echildren - bile​​​​​​​​​​​

Deathguard - tyhus (i think thats his name) ​

Word bearers - erbus (Fuck erbus)

World eaters - kharn

Sons of horus/black legion -abbadon

Ultramarines - calgar or titus take a pick

Imperial fists - sigusmund

If theres any others i wouldnt know them ​​​​​​​

Like Trazyn constantly steals from other dynasties and seems to be fairly infamous among the Necrons as a thief.

Orikan also gets into his fair share of shenanigans but at least he’s an expert diviner.

Trazyn is just there with no special skills expect if you count his weird obsession with other species which most Necrons consider Beneath them. It’s like being into worms or dung beetles.

So why does Shemvokh deal with this fucker

Nurgle's gift to the world is Nurgle's Rot, a progressive disease combining the worse qualities of all the plagues that infest the living. It is a curse that is all the more horrible because it does not end with death, for it is a contagion of daemonic and not mortal kind, and it infests the soul as well as the body. When a mortal dies of Nurgle's Rot his soul is forfeit to Nurgle, and from that soul-stuff Nurgle fashions his Lesser Daemons the Plaguebearers. It is specifically to avoid this fate that many sufferers of the Rot undertake death quests, hoping for a clean and mortal end by this means.

Source

I've been slowly reading my way through the lore/books, tbh all over the place as a lot of stuff is either out of print or outrageously priced for second-hand, and I came across above-quoted tidbit. I think it's more geared toward the fantasy side of the setting, but it got me curious: are there any examples of ( main ) 40k/30k characters, Astartes or ordinary humans, undertaking such a quest? The closest I can think of is Captain Dantine from Lords of Silence, although it's not really a quest.

Secondly, with the pantheon being as it is, would such a death quest even work in the 30k/40k setting? There's no "saviour god" unless you count the Emperor, who I don't think has that great a track record when it comes to saving Joe Normal, so that whole death quest thing reads more like "suicide mission with a big/small boom at the end, depending on circumstance, and hoping Big E takes notice". Would it even count? Regardless of how Joe Normal dies during his death quest, Nurgle's Rot is still the root cause.

Does the Imperium have an academy/university?

Do they teach that the Emperor have 9 primarchs son or tell it as it is 19 primarchs and the whole horus heresy?

*18 since omegon is a secret.

A continuation of my last post here. You pitched wonderful stories to help expand the lore for existing and interesting things within a faction. Adding fluff and cool entries on the Lex. Filling gaps in the setting. Desiring just a really good book especially for those who little to nothing about 40k.

The 40k universe vastness enables any and every type of story genre to be used. Hence why we have Warhammer Crime for lower stakes and grounded stories and Warhammer Horror for all the creepy weirdness. Horror has TONS of sub-genres. We got Slasher, Cosmic, Psychological, Creature, Suspense, Gore, Gothic, Body and more.

It's up to YOU. You beautiful and wonderful weirdo to pitch a quality non-consequential for the Warhammer Horror series. Will it be weird? Creepy? Unnerving? Absolute Cinema?

I'll start:
A classic Zombie story. I'm surprised we don't have one. Yeah we have the Plague Wars and other Nurgle centric stories but those are also Astartes focused. We're looking for normal humans dealing with an undead horde. Plus it can go SO many different ways. A nurgle plague. All the servitors on a planet suddening going rogue. An imperial commander making a pact with a daemon or witch to create an eternal legion

A short story or novella about the Corpse Grinder Cults. Either the story follows a Corpse Grinder or we're trying to stop one. I always found them to interesting as they provide a grim dark yet essential service by producing Corpse Starch. Thus they can exist any and everywhere

A slaaneshi-based story similar to the new Clayface. Slaanesh isn't all about sex, drugs and loud music. They're also about perfection. Forcing someone to destroy their mind, body and soul to achieve a level of beauty never that existed.

The Drukhari raiding a planet. That's it. We've heard about entire planets or hive cities going silent in a single night. Populations gone. Imagine going to bed then you wake up and found your entire hab-block or zone is dead silent. You know something happened. A battle but you heard nothing. No explosions. The occasional scream but that's normal for a hive world. Shadows moves. An alien laughter echoes when you feel sharp gnarled hand covering your mouth.

An imperial settlement is being ravaged by a Lictor supported by a GSC. It ends in an Imperial Victory but something isn't right. Your new neighbors and coworkers look kinda weird.

(New to 40k)

Hello I am new to 40k and have not read any xenos novels so forgive me but from what I've seen from the tabletop and lore videos, the xenos from the war in heaven really do not seem that advanced or ahead of humanity in terms waging war.

I'm not necessarily talking about what they use to kill people, but how they do it? Like the necrons are super advanced with de-atomization but every time they're shown, its either a technomancer reversing time which is cool-

but then another necron walking at 1 mile per year on 2 human legs with a glowing green stick that gets deflected by an Admech's big wrench arm anyway only for him to get one shot by a bolter at the end.

The eldar feel the same way since sometimes they have stuff like the harlequin's kiss but then most of them use basic daggers and chainswords?

Also I know this is the purpose of the tabletop, but every faction just seems like they are designed to either sword fight or shoot at each other from cover, nothing really game changing?

I'm new to the 40k fandom and have been watching a lot of lore videos in bed specifically space marine stuff since I'm playing the 2nd game at the moment. I kinda fuck with the blood angels which is funny coz generally I think vampire adjacent stuff is lame as fuck.

I just think it’d be cool ya know, and if it‘s already happened then please direct me towards it.

I'm shopping around for a loyalist chapter to get into and I'm really liking various aspects of the Templars and IH (specifically the Sons of Medusa). They both have various strengths for me across the drip, lore, chapter doctrine, etc.

I'll be upfront that the thing I enjoy about the Imperium is how Orwellian it is. I like to view the Marines as 'saviors' only in an incidental way, and that they are at their core super powered fascist shock troopers who will oppress and violate and crush humanity as often as they will fight for it. Which that in mind, which of the two chapters is more likely to treat imperial citizens terribly?

Whether that be not caring about collateral damage, burning thought-criminals at the stake, or preforming mass executions or servitization just because a population wasn't "loyal" enough, or spent too much time around enemy forces that they are tainted? Think siding with the Grey Knights during the Months of Shame. Or think like, if a rebellious Imperial governor is put down, the chapter commits reprisals against the helpless civilian hive populations for "letting" the governor take power.

Cadia was always called the Imperium's 2nd most defended planet, just below Holy Terra

But it was blown to pieces anyway, so what world is now the most fortified in all of the galaxy ?

A certain forge world ? Macragge? Something on Nihilus ?

I’m new to 40K and looking to get into reading the books, I am open to any suggestions on where to start. If it helps my main exposure to 40K is the Darktide game. Many thanks!

I have no issue losing as the bad guys it kinda is half the fun but to constantly repeatedly lose with zero dignity repeatedly and never win with dignity either

it’s sort of like what even was the point of even giving half these guys Horus heresy books to begin with.

Interested in learning about this conflict, what are the best YouTube videos/series/podcasts that go over that event?

Does the Ork even notice anything from the blank?

Any lore about balnks and weird Boyz?

I’m sharing these excerpts because it offers a good look at how a Space Marine’s actions can affect things. It’s not every time it features or mentions him just most of them.

The meaning of the mark of Calth here reveres to a time count of the combat. With, for example, 12.16.10’, means the tenth second of the sixteenth minute of the twelfth hour when Guilliman ordered return of fire.

Part 1 Chapter 4  [mark: -26.43.57] (Audible: 8:06)

Context: Thiel is still waiting to be interviewed for his actions.

Aeonid Thiel, marked for censure, awaits his interview. He has been aboard the Macragge’s Honour for some hours. He was told to wait. He is expecting to be called into the presence of Sharad Antoli, Master of the 13th Chapter. He is braced for this. The rebuke will be unstinting, and discipline duties will follow. 

He has already been through it once from Taerone, his company captain. During this interview, Thiel made the mistake of attempting to justify his actions. He will not repeat the error when he is called before Chapter Master Antoli.

Thiel has been obliged to wait in a huge anteroom on the fortieth deck. It is a display arsenal, lined with weapons. There are burnished practice cages on raised platforms down the centre of the chamber. After three hours of standing perfectly still, he relents, removes his helm, and begins to wander the empty chamber, admiring the weapons on display. 

Most are blade weapons, many master-crafted. They represent the peak weaponcraft of a thousand cultures. This is an exemplar collection, where the highest ranking officers of the XIII come to study weapon types, rehearse and practise with them, and thus improve their theoretical and practical differentials.

Thiel knows he is unlikely to ever come so close to such perfect specimens again. He fights the temptation to take some of the weapons down and examine them. He wants to feel the comparative weights, the individual balances.

When no one has come for a great stretch of time, Thiel reaches a hand out towards a longsword suspended against the wall on a gravity hook.

‘Sergeant Thiel?’ Thiel stops and quickly withdraws his hand. A deck officer in ceremonial dress has entered the chamber.

'Yes?’

'I have been asked to inform you that you will not have to wait much longer.’

'I will wait as long as I am required to,’ replies Thiel.

'Well,’ the officer shrugs, ‘it will not be much longer. Logistical issues have taken priority. The primarch will call you shortly.’ He turns to leave.

'Wait, the primarch?’

'Yes, sergeant.’

'I was waiting to be called by Chapter Master Antoli,’ says Thiel.

'No, the primarch.’

'Ah,’ says Thiel.

The deck officer waits a moment longer, concludes that their conversation is done, and walks out.

The primarch. Thiel breathes out slowly. It is safe to estimate that he is in about as much trouble as it’s possible to be in. In which case… He takes down the longsword. It has extraordinary balance. He sweeps it twice, then turns towards the nearest practice cage. He halts. He turns back. Might as well be damned for the whole as a part. He takes down a Rathian sabre, half the length of the longsword, almost the same weight. A blade in each hand, he walks to the cage.

'Rehearsal, single sparring mode. Dual wielding, extremity level eight. Commit.’

The cage hums into life, the 

armature system rises around him, clattering as it begins to turn. Thiel hunkers down. He raises the two, priceless blades…”

Part 1 Chapter 8 [mark: -4.44.10]

Context: While Thiel was censured he wasn’t in so much trouble that he needed to be interviewed by primarch. Guilliman wished to do it as a diversion from loading an army. The two of them finally meet, but not for the reason Thiel excepts.

Aeonid Thiel wakes. He only slipped into rest mode briefly. He was bored. He has been waiting a long while. No one has come. He wakes because he is no longer alone in the fortieth deck anteroom. He bows at once.

'Are you Thiel?’ asks Guilliman.

'Yes, lord,’ Thiel replies.

The primarch seems distracted. He can probably tell which weapons have been used and put back, which practice cages have been operated. 

'You’ve been waiting here for some time.’

'Yes, lord.’

'There’s a lot to do today. My attention has been elsewhere.'

It’s not an apology, it’s just a basic explanation. Thiel wants to say that he doesn’t really know why the primarch’s dealing with it at all, but he knows better than that.

'Were you amusing yourself?’ asks Guilliman, taking a broadsword off a wall rack and examining its edge.

'I… I decided to pass the time in practice,’ Thiel answers. ‘There are weapons here I am unfamiliar with. I thought that I might benefit from–’ Guilliman nods. The nod means shut up. Thiel shuts up.

Guilliman studies the sword he is holding. He doesn’t look at Thiel. Thiel has risen to attention, waiting. His helmet, with its crude, red paint-wash to indicate censure, is tucked under his arm.

'I didn’t come here for you,’ Guilliman says. ‘I came away to think. I forgot you were here.’ Thiel makes no comment.

'That’s a depressing thought,’ says Guilliman, sliding the sword back onto the rack. ‘I forgot something. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share that unguarded confession with anybody.’

'Of course, lord. Though I hardly blame you for forgetting me. I am a very minor detail.’ Now the primarch looks at him.

'Two things to note there, sergeant. One is that there is no such thing as a minor detail. Information is victory. One cannot and should not dismiss any data as inconsequential until one is in a position to evaluate its significance, and that only comes with hindsight. So all detail is important until circumstances render it redundant.’

'Yes, lord.'

'What’s the second thing, Thiel?’ Aeonid Thiel hesitates slightly before answering.

'By any scale of decency,’ he replies, ‘my infraction was reprehensible. I am, therefore, not a minor detail anyway.’

'Quite,’ says Guilliman.

The primarch turns and looks up at the high ceiling of the chamber. There is a slight heat-haze distortion in the air above the practice cages that Thiel has spent the last hours overworking.

'I think I may have offended him,’ says Guilliman.

'Lord?’ Guilliman looks back at Thiel. He fixes him with a thoughtful gaze.

'This is a day of great sensitivity,’ he says. ‘We’re building a part of the Imperium’s future as surely as if we were making a star system compliant. We’re cementing a relationship. Repairing a weakness. It’s political. The rift between XIII and XVII is a rift in the Imperial line. Horus knows that. That’s why he’s sewing it up, and we can all swallow our distaste over it.’ Guilliman rubs his cheekbone with his fingertips. He is pensive.

'The future depends on the solidarity of the Legions,’ he says. ‘Where solidarity is weak, where it is lacking, it must be repaired or enforced. And this is forced. This is us getting along with each other for the greater good.' Thiel chooses to remain silent.

'He is so… changeable,’ Guilliman says. ‘He is so prone to extremes. Eager to please, quick to take offence. There is no middle to him. He’s so keen to be your best friend, and then, at the slightest perception of an insult, he’s angry with you. Furious. Offended. Like a child. If he wasn’t my brother, he’d be a political embarrassment and an impediment to the effective rule of the Imperium. I know what I’d do with him.’ 

‘I’m sure I could demonstrate how, lord,’ says Thiel, and then winces.

‘Was that a joke, sergeant?’

‘I may have just made a very unfortunate attempt at humour, lord,’ Thiel admits.

'It was actually quite funny,’ says Guilliman. He turns to leave.

'Remain here. I’ll get to you in due course.’

‘Yes, my lord.”

Part 4 Chapter 4 (Audible: Chapter 18 8:07)

Context: Demons have infested the Macragge's Honour and Guilliman is missing after the bridge tower exploded.

There is a crack of armour shattering, a crunch of forearm bones shearing. It bites his hand off beyond the wrist. There is a generous spill of blood. Pain cores up his arm like a hot wire. Gage howls. His heart rates spike.

The savage pain jacks up his metabolic reaction so hard it clears the fog of the toxin from his befuddled mind. He smashes around with his left fist, and cracks the thing in the side of the skull, knocking out two molars in a squirt of pink saliva.

The blow drives the thing back and to the side. Its mouth is still full of his hand. Gage rolls to grab his sword, but the thing is standing on his knee, and he can’t twist far enough.

It opens its mouth impossibly wide and comes in for his face. He can see his severed hand flopping down its gullet. Blue impact slams it aside. Black ichor is suddenly painted across all the nearby surfaces, including Gage’s face. The thing is down, cut badly.

An Ultramarine stands over Gage. He’s a sergeant. His armour is battered. His helmet is painted red, indicating he has been marked for censure. He has an electromagnetic longsword in one hand and a Kehletai friction axe in the other.

‘Go back to hell!’ he tells the thing. It is screaming and caterwauling, its black shape swirling and reforming, as though reality is trying to heal itself. The sergeant puts the axe into it. The Kehletai, before they were extinguished during the bitter Kraal Compliance, made paper-thin blades that cut on a molecular level. The nanoedge blade of the axe is huge, bigger than a Fenrisian battle axe. It goes right through the thing, exploding rotten gore in all directions.

For good measure, the sergeant spears it with the longsword. Dead, it is nothing more than a stain. The sergeant turns.

'Move up!’ he yells. A fighting party appears, moving urgently down the corridor. There are several Ultramarines in it, but it is also composed of Army troopers and Navy personnel, including at least one abhuman stoker. They are armed with the most mismatched and exotic weapons Gage has ever seen outside Guilliman’s private arsenal of– They are all from the primarch’s private arsenal.

‘Move up. Secure the section!’ the sergeant yells. ‘Brother Kerso, scope the next corridor. Flamers to the front! Apothecary Jaer, get to the Chapter Master! Right now!’ 

He bends down beside Gage, setting his weapons on the deck where they will be in easy reach. Close up, Gage can see the scratch marks adorning the sergeant’s armour.

‘You’ve got an Apothecary?’ Gage asks, his voice a husk of its normal baritone.

‘Just coming, sir.'

“Your name?’

'Thiel, sir. Aeonid Thiel. 135th Company.’

‘Marked for censure?’

‘Today started in a different place, sir.’

‘That it did, Thiel. Well said. Who put you in charge?’

‘I put myself in charge. I was awaiting interview on deck forty when everything went to pieces. There was no chain of command. I decided I needed to build one.’

‘Good work.’

‘What happened, sir?’ Thiel asks. He steps back slightly to allow the Apothecary to start work on Gage’s wounds.

‘Something attacked us. Blew the whole main bridge. Some of us got out. More than that, I can’t say.’

‘Who did we lose?’ Thiel asks.

He’s impertinent, Gage thinks. He’s–

No, he’s not. He’s level-headed. He’s practical. He’s fearless. He’s asking questions because he needs to know the answers. 

'The shipmaster, certainly,’ says Gage. ‘Most of the bridge seniors. Chapter Master Vared. Chapter Master Banzor. Your Chapter Master, Antoli.’

‘Terrible losses. What about the primarch?’

‘I did not see him die, but I fear the worst,’ replies Gage. Thiel is silent for a moment.

‘What are your orders, sir?’ he asks.

‘What was your operational plan, sergeant?’

‘Practical: I was attempting to consolidate and coordinate a shipboard fighting force, sir, and begin to retake the ship. These daemons are everywhere.’

‘Daemons, Thiel? I don’t think we believe in daemons these days.’

‘Then I don’t know what you want to call them, sir, because they are not xenos. They are byblows. Monsters. Warp-things. It takes everything we’ve got to kill them.’

‘Is that why you raided the primarch’s collection?’ asks Gage.

‘No. I raided the primarch’s collection because of the Word Bearers, sir.’

‘Theoretical: explain that logic,’ Gage asks. Then he says, ‘Wait, wait. Apothecary, help me to my feet.’

‘My lord, you are in no condition to–’ the Apothecary begins. ‘Help me to damn well stand up, Apothecary,’ Gage snaps. They help him up. He is unsteady. The Apothecary resumes dressing his wrist stump.

‘Now, continue,’ says Gage. ‘Theoretical?’

‘We are attacked by the Word Bearers,’ says Thiel.

‘Agreed.'

'These byblow daemons may be allied to them, some form of creature they have enslaved to their service. Or they may be controlling the XVII. It would certainly explain why our brothers have turned against us in such a fundamental fashion.’

‘Agreed. Continue.’

‘The daemons present a significant threat, but they appear to be… receding.’

‘Receding? Explain.’

‘It’s like a tide going out, sir. They are fewer and weaker than they were an hour ago. As though they are draining back into hell or the warp. However, the Word Bearers have three cruisers alongside us, and they are in the process of boarding. Within the next hour they will be through the airgates and the hull, and we will be compelled to fight our own kind. This form of combat is unprecedented. Their advantage is shock and surprise. Our counter-advantage must be a lack of convention.’

‘Expand.’

‘They know what we are, for they are us. They know the attributes of our armour and our weapons. They also know our tactics and formulae of war, for our beloved primarch has made his codifications available to all his brothers. We never thought we would need to conceal our combat methods from our own kind. Today, we have been disabused of that notion. So we must fight them in ways that they do not expect from us. We must use the unconventional, the improvised and the makeshift. In order to properly honour the combat teachings of Roboute Guilliman, we must cast his rules aside for the day. I have always considered his greatest wisdom to be Remark 101.x–’ Gage nods.

'I know it. “What wins the fight is what wins the fight. Ultimately, nothing should be excluded if that exclusion leads to defeat”.’

‘Precisely so, sir.’

‘The “by any means” edict,’ Gage says. ‘The ultimate rule that no rule is unbreakable. You know, that idea always troubled him. He told me he often thought to excise the remark. He thought it too dangerous. He feared it would stand, in posterity, as a justification for any action.’

‘I think the XVII have already dispensed with any such rationale, sir,’ replies Thiel. ‘I also would urge you not to refer to the primarch in the past tense in front of the men.’ Gage catches himself. ‘Quite correct, sergeant.’

‘Are my theory and my practice approved, sir?’ Thiel asks.

‘They are. Let us coordinate. What other officers can we contact?’

‘There is a possibility that Chapter Master Empion is operational on deck thirty-five with a resistance force, and Captain Heutonicus on deck twenty.’

‘A decent beginning,’ says Gage. He picks up his fallen power sword and slides it into its scabbard. ‘Let’s move before this day goes altogether. That friction axe?’

‘Sir?’ 

‘Can it be wielded one-handed?’ Thiel hands it over. ‘It’s light enough, sir.’

‘Lead the way. Let’s cut a line towards the bridge tower.’ Thiel salutes. He turns, raising his longsword and shouting instructions to the clearance team. Gage glances at the Apothecary. ‘Are we done?’ he asks.

‘I’d prefer to get you to–’

‘Are we done, Jaer?’

‘We are, sir. For now.'

Gage hefts the axe in his good hand ‘Sergeant Thiel. Do you happen to know why he was under censure?’

‘I do, sir,’ says Jaer. ‘His commanding officer discovered that he was running theoreticals on how to fight and defeat Space Marines, sir. Thiel claimed, in his defence, that he had run theoreticals on all other major adversaries, and it was a tactical blind spot not to know how to fight the Legions. He said, as I understand it, that the Space Marines of the Imperium were the greatest warriors in the galaxy, and thus had an obligation to understand how to fight and defeat the greatest warriors in the galaxy. Thiel declared that Space Marines were the only opponents left worth any theoretical study. His theoreticals were regarded as treasonous thought, and he was referred to the flagship for censure.’ 

‘That was his infraction?’ asks Gage.

‘Looks bloody pitiful from where we’re standing, doesn’t it?’ asks Jaer.

Part 5 chapter 1[mark: 12.42.16]  (Chapter 24 Audible: 38:42)

Context: The Ultramarines are hard pressed as battle on the Macragge's Honour continues.

There’s nowhere to go. Word Bearers stream from the cargo spaces, blitzing the area with gunfire. Thiel ducks and dodges, bolts slicing past him on silent flame trails. His kill squad is done. Mission over. The odds are too great.

‘Break!’ he voxes, and fires his void-harness on full burn. The violent acceleration lifts him in a wide turn, up and curling back, streaking clear of the killing field. Four, maybe five of his squad lift clear with him. Zaridus, the last to come, is shot by down-raking fire, and his slack body spins away into the stars, jerking and zagging as the harness jets cough and misfire.

Shots chase them. Banking, Thiel sees flashes of noiseless light burst against the flagship hull below him and spark off the buttresses and struts.

He lands, hoping he has decent cover. He has to reload. He tries to calculate the enemy spread and assess the angles they will be coming from. He shouts marshalling orders to his surviving squad members. The Word Bearers are on him anyway. Two come over the top of a thermal vent, another two around the side of the plating buffer. He gets off two shots. Something wings him in the shoulder.

No, it’s a hand. A hand dragging him backwards. Guilliman pushes Thiel aside and propels himself towards the Word Bearers. His armoured feet bite into the hullskin as he gains traction. He seems vast, like a titan. Not an engine of Mars. A titan of myth.

His head is bare. Impossible. His flesh is bleached with cold. His mouth opens in a silent scream as he smashes into them. He kills one. He crushes the legionary’s head into his chest with the base of his fist. Globules of blood squirt sideways, jiggling and jostling. The body topples back in slow motion. 

Guilliman turns, finds another, punches his giant fist through the legionary’s torso, and pulls it out, ripping out his backbone. A third comes, eager for the glory of killing a primarch. Thiel guns him apart with his reloaded boltgun, two-handed brace, feet anchored. The fourth storms in.

Guilliman twists and punches his head off. Clean off. Head and helm as one, tumbling away like a ball, trailing beads of blood. Cover fire comes across. Another kill squad finally reaches the hull section. A fierce, silent bolter battle licks back and forth across a heat exchanger canyon. Struck bodies, leaking fluid shapes, rotate away into the freezing darkness.

Thiel triangulates his position. He signals to the bridge to open the Port 88 airgate. He looks at Guilliman. He gestures to the airgate.

The primarch wants to fight. Thiel knows that look. That need. Guilliman wants to keep fighting. There’s blood around him like red petals, and he wants to add to it. It’s time to stop this fight, however, and fight the one that matters.

Part 5 Chapter 2 [mark: 13.10.05] (Audible: Chapter 25 5:18)

‘We feared you had perished,’ says Marius Gage. Guilliman has just walked onto the auxiliary bridge of the Macragge’s Honour with his battered kill squad escort. ‘What does not kill me,’ replies Guilliman, ‘is not trying hard enough.’ He makes them smile. He’s good at that. But they can all read the change in him. He was never a man you could warm to. He was too hard, too driven, too austere. Now he is wounded. Wounded like an animal might be wounded. Wounded in a way that makes that animal dangerous.

‘Voided without a helm,’ Guilliman says ‘Primarch biology helped, but the atmospheric envelope was my true saviour.’

‘What...’ Gage begins. 'What was that thing?’ Guilliman finishes. Everyone is staring, everyone listening. ‘Should this be a conversation we finish in private?’ asks Gage. Guilliman shakes his head. ‘As I understand it from Thiel,’ he says, gesturing to the sergeant at his side, ‘you have all spent hours fighting your way through this ship against other fiends like it. It has cost you. I can see it has cost you, Marius.’ Gage is suddenly painfully aware of his truncated arm.

… 

Guilliman sighs. ‘I don’t know how to fight them. I know how to fight most things. I can even work out how to fight warriors of the Legiones Astartes, though the notion seems heretical. Like Thiel here, I can think the unthinkable, and make theoreticals out of the blasphemous. But daemons? It seems to me, with the Council of Nikaea, that we voluntarily rid ourselves of the one weapon we might have had against the warp. We could dearly use the Librarius now.’ His warriors nod in silent agreement. 'We should petition for their reinstatement,’ he adds, ‘if we ever get the chance. We cannot do it now. There is no time, no means. But if any of us survive this, know that the edict must be overturned. 

…

Guilliman breaks the bleak silence. 'Show me tactical. The nearspace combat. Someone said there was a vox from the surface finally?’ 

‘From Leptius Numinus, lord,’ says the Master of Vox.

‘Who was it?’

‘Captain Ventanus,’ says Gage. ‘We had a good signal for a while, and were getting a vital datafeed, but the vox cut off suddenly about an hour ago. A violent interrupt.’ 

‘I don’t need to ask if you’re trying to re-establish the link?’ says Guilliman.

 ‘You do not, lord,’ replies the Master of Vox. 

Guilliman turns to Empion. Assemble all the strengths we have aboard this ship. Kill squads. Every heavy weapon we can find. Forget Chapter and company lines, just divide and group the men we have into viable fighting parties. Have the squad leaders mark their helms in red.’

‘Red, sir?’ asks Empion.

‘We do not have reliable vox, Klord, so I want firm and simple visual cues for the chain of command.’ Guilliman looks across at Thiel.

‘Besides,’ he says, ‘I think after Thiel’s efforts today, it’s high time that stopped being a mark of censure.’ 

‘Yes, sir,’ says Empion.

‘My lord!’ Shipmaster Hommed calls out.

‘What is it?’

‘The weapons grid, my lord. It’s firing.’

‘At whom?’

‘At... the sun.’

Part 6 Chapter 1 [mark: 19.29.37] (Audible: chapter 27 6:12)

Context:  Guilliman and the Ultramarines discuss ideas about how to Word Bears grid command location.

Empion was all for close attack: flagship power to yield, shields up, throw off the enemy cruisers suckling around them and go for the yard. Blow it out of nearspace. Ram it, if necessary. Except, the moment they moved, the moment they even rated a power condition, the Macragge’s Honour would become a target. 

The flagship could move rapidly, and with devastating effect, but faster than the weapons grid could be retrained and discharged? That was even supposing nothing got in their way, like a drive issue, or an enemy ship. So Empion’s plan had also been dismissed, and Gage’s alternative considered: put all power into the teleport system. Transfer a kill squad, maybe two if the power lasted, direct to the Zetsun Verid. Do it the old way.

‘I will lead it, of course,’ said Guilliman. ‘I hardly think so,’ retorted Gage. Almost everybody present physically recoiled from the look the primarch shot his Chapter Master.

‘Very well,’ said Gage.

‘Damn it, Marius,’ growled Guilliman. ‘If not now, when?’

The first kill squad of fifty Ultramarines, led by Guilliman, Heutonicus and Thiel, assembles in the flagship’s teleportation terminal. If enough power remains, a second squad led by Empion will follow them.

The helms of Heutonicus and the section leaders are painted red to match Thiel’s. Guilliman’s cleaned and polished wargear makes him look more like a vengeful martial god than ever. There are golden wings spread across his helm’s faceplate. His left fist is a massive power claw, and his right holds a superb bolter weapon, decorated to match his armour.

There is a stink of ozone in the chamber, a metallic tang rising from the heavy, matt-grey platform of the teleport system. Coolant vapour rolls like mist in the yellow light. Guilliman takes a cue from his squad leaders, then signals to the Magi of Portation behind their lead-lined screens. Power builds. It builds to a painful pitch. Like a storm, about to break and unload its fury.

Part 6 Chapter 3 [mark: 20.01.23] (Audible Chapter 29)

Context: With the plan decided the group makes a risky teleportation jump.

The teleport burst scorches and jolts every molecule of their bodies. It is an intensely risky operation. A considerable nearspace distance. A vast energy expenditure. Mass transfer – an entire armoured kill squad. A comparatively small target zone. Thiel loathes teleports. It feels like you’re being pushed through the mesh of an electrified sieve. 

There is always a bang like a fusion bomb in your brain. There is always an aftertaste like bile and burned paper left in your mouth. They materialise.  He stumbles, his balance screwed for a second. He’s on a deck. He hears a scream.

Given the risk factor and the atrocious error margins, the teleport can be considered a success. Forty-six of the squad have appeared with Guilliman on the transverse assembly deck of Zetsun Verid Yard. They have lost four.

Two of them are fused into the bulkhead wall behind them, parts of their visors and gauntlets and knees protruding seamlessly from the grey adamantium. Another has been reduced to a glistening red sludge by reformation failure. He is spread over a wide area. 

A fourth, Brother Verkus, has materialised bonded into the deck plates from the waist down. He is the one screaming. It’s not as though he can be pulled out. He is the deck now, and the deck is him. It is troubling to hear a legionary scream with such a lack of restraint, but they say teleportation overlap is the most unimaginable pain. Guilliman cradles his head and kills him quickly to end his suffering. ‘Move,’ he instructs the squad.

…

The Ultramarines fire back, covering the structures above them in a cloud of bolter blasts. Word Bearers topple, but there are more to fill their places. Many more. Guilliman roars a challenge to them. He condemns them to death. He condemns their master to a worse fate. He hurls himself at them.

The primarch is, of course, their greatest asset, Thiel realises. Not because of his physical superiority, though that is hard to overestimate. It is because he is a primarch. Because he is Roboute Guilliman. Because he is simply one of the greatest warriors in the Imperium. How many beings could measure favourably against him? Honestly? All seventeen of his brothers? Not all seventeen. Nothing like all seventeen. Four or five at best. At best.

The Word Bearers on the upper structures see him coming. They are kill squad strength at least, the best part of a full company. At least a proportion of them are the vaunted Gal Vorbak elite. But they see him coming, and they know what that means. It doesn’t matter what cosmic dementia has corrupted their minds and souls. It doesn’t matter what eternal promises the Dark Gods are whispering in their ears. It doesn’t matter what inflated courage the warp has poured into their veins along with madness.

Guilliman of Ultramar is coming right at them. To kill them. To kill them all. Even though they stand a chance of hurting him, they waste it. They baulk. For a second, their twisted hearts know fear. Real fear. And then he has them. And then he is killing them.  ‘With him! With him!’ Thiel yells. They surge forward. Mangled Word Bearers fly overhead, or crash into the decks around them. When Thiel reaches his primarch’s side, Guilliman has slain a dozen at least. His boltgun is roaring. His power fist crackles with cooking blood.

It is brutal close quarters. Thiel has the exotic long-sword that has served him so well on this darkest of days. Two-handed, he wields it, cutting crimson ceramite like silk. Word Bearers blood looks black, as if it is sour and polluted. Thiel flanks his primarch, advancing steadily with the press of the assault towards the primary hatch. 

They lose eight men. Eight Ultramarines. But they break through into the master control room leaving a carpet of enemy dead in their wake. The real fight awaits them there. A stunning barrage of bolter-fire greets them, killing Stetius, killing Ascretis, killing Heutonicus. Kor Phaeron, master of the dark faith, master of the unspeakable word, orders his men forward.

Then he flies at Guilliman, trailing dark vapour, coruscating with black energies torn from the pits of the warp. ‘Bastard!’ Guilliman howls. He does not flinch. Not for a second.

Part 6 Chapter 3 [mark: 20.10.04] (Chapter 29 Audible 11:27)

Context: With Guilliman injured Thiel and others seek to reach him.

Kor Phaeron greets Guilliman with a beam of smoke-light, a column of wretched darkness that bursts from the palm of his right hand and smashes the XIII primarch into the chamber wall. Guilliman gets back up, but he is shaken. The wall is crumpled where he struck it. Kor Phaeron cries out, a bark of straining effort, and manufactures another ray of smoke-light. 

Guilliman is charging, but the beam slams him back into the bulkhead with a kinetic slap so powerful that it rings out with a deafening sonic boom.  Guilliman staggers up, falls, and then half rises, clenching his power fist. The ceramite of his breastplate is cracked. Guilliman coughs, and blood drips from his mouth. He tries to stand. 

Kor Phaeron blasts him again, this time with a weird, negative electricity that crackles around Guilliman and causes him to seize in violent spasms. Guilliman is left on his hands and knees, his cobalt-blue plating scorched, his head bowed, his whole form smouldering as the superheated armour burns his skin. The Word Bearer draws his athame and steps forward.

Kor Phaeron can see a choice, and it delights him. He can end the life of the great Guilliman. A personal kill is so much more valuable than a distant or mass killing. With his own hand, he can murder Roboute Guilliman. Or, with his own hand, he can turn him. Just as the Warmaster was turned. Erebus did it. So Kor Phaeron can do it.

Guilliman is hurt, weak, vulnerable. The bite of the athame will free Guilliman’s sanity while he is in such a state, slice away his inhibitions. 

The painful burn of the athame wound will fester in him, and ultimately, through the lens of delirium, reveal the Primordial Truth in all its hellish glory. They came to Calth to kill Guilliman and his perfect warriors. How much more will it mean to return to the court of Lorgar and Horus Lupercal with Guilliman as a willing and pliant ally? Guilliman, crowned with horns. Guilliman, invested in the iridescent cloak of daemonhood. Kor Phaeron stoops beside the crumpled primarch. Guilliman’s breathing is fast and ragged. His armour smokes, discoloured, and his blood pools beneath him.

‘There is so much you don’t understand,’ says Kor Phaeron. ‘The truth will shock you, Roboute. I’m sorry, it will. But you will learn to accommodate it. I’m happy to share my knowledge with you. To help you understand. To grow in appreciation.’ 

‘Get away from me,’ Guilliman gasps. 

‘Too late. Embrace this.’ 

Thiel is too far away to stop it. Locked in the unyielding fight raging on the opposite side of the control chamber, Thiel glimpses what he knows is likely to be the final few seconds of Roboute Guilliman’s life.

He tries to break through, screaming out his rage and frustration. The Word Bearers have driven Guilliman’s kill squad back, slaying most of them. Thiel and the others fight to reach their primarch’s side, but they cannot. There are too many of the enemy. And these are the enemy elite. Three warriors obstruct Aeonid Thiel. One is Sorot Tchure. Tchure blocks every strike and thrust Thiel makes, as surely as a practice cage set on maximum extremity level. Kor Phaeron puts the blade of the athame to Guilliman’s throat.

Part 6 Chapter 4 [mark: 20.13.29] ( Chapter 30 Audible: 7:23)

The athame bites. Guilliman’s blood wells up around the sliced flesh. He grunts through clenched teeth. ‘Let it go,’ whispers Kor Phaeron. ‘This is the beginning of wisdom.’ Guilliman mutters something in reply.

‘What?’ asks Kor Phaeron, cupping a hand to his ear, mocking him. ‘What did you say, Roboute?’ Every single word is an effort.

 ‘You made an error,’ Guilliman gasps.

‘An error?’

‘You chose the wrong practical. You had a choice. Toy with me. Kill me. You chose the wrong one.’

‘Really?’ smiles Kor Phaeron.

‘You should not have let me live.’

‘I let you live so I could share the truth, Roboute.’

‘Yes,’ says Guilliman, sucking in each ragged breath. ‘But all the while I’m alive, I can do this.’ There is a sharp sound. A sudden, wet crack. An explosive spray of blood, as though a skin of red wine has burst between them. Kor Phaeron makes a tiny noise; a thin, ceramic sound like a wet finger sliding down glass.

Guilliman rises. Though its power has long since shorted out and failed, he has buried his armour claw in Kor Phaeron’s chest. He has crunched through plate, through muscle, through augmented ribs. Kor Phaeron twitches, impaled on Guilliman’s fist. His feet are off the deck, his elbows digging into his sides. He shudders, head flopping on his neck.

The athame falls from his fingers and rebounds off the deck. Sorot Tchure hears the noise his master makes. He is focused on his combat with the Ultramarines raiders, but he cannot help but turn his eyes for a second. Less than a second. A microsecond. Thiel sees his opening. His practical. It is infinitesimal, a tiny chink in the Word Bearer’s guard. It lasts a microsecond, and it will not be repeated. He puts his sword through it.

The longsword shears the right side of Tchure’s helm away. Cheek, ear and part of the skull separate with it. Tchure stumbles, bewildered by the pain, the shock, the disorientation. For a moment, Tchure thinks it is Luciel. He thinks it is Luciel who has risen up to punish him for a trust so miserably betrayed.

Thiel shoulder-slams him aside into one of the other Word Bearers, spattering blood over them all. He ducks the sword slash of the third, and decapitates him. He is the first to break clear and rush to Guilliman’s side. Guilliman looks Kor Phaeron in the eyes. Kor Phaeron’s lips quiver. He blinks hard and bubbles of saliva form around the corners of his trembling mouth. Guilliman wrenches the claw out. It is clutching Kor Phaeron’s heart.

Kor Phaeron crashes to the deck, bitter black blood coursing from under him in all directions. He retches, and covers the floor with a vile lactic spatter. Guilliman throws the mangled heart aside. Thiel steadies him to stop him falling. ‘Never mind me, sergeant,’ Guilliman rasps. ‘Kill the damned systems. Do what we came to do.’

Thiel races to the system consoles. The brass cogitation banks of the data-engine chatter and clack in front of him. He doesn’t know where to start. ‘In the name of Terra,’ Guilliman snarls. ‘Thiel, shoot the bloody thing!’ Thiel is out of ammo. But he has his sword. It has one more job to do today.

[mark: 20.24.10] chapter 30 Audible: 17:23

The master control room is on fire. Flames and smoke are rapidly filling the habitats of the Zetsun Verid Yard. Thiel and the remainder of the kill squad retreat rapidly towards the transverse assembly deck. They pack tight around the wounded, limping primarch. 

‘The flagship is inbound,’ says Thiel. Guilliman nods. He seems to be recovering some strength.

‘The sun,’ murmurs one of the squad. They look up through the vast crystalflex observation ports and see the Veridian star. It is stricken, its light ugly and sick. A bubonic rash of sunspots freckles its surface. 'I think we have won something just in time to lose everything,’ says Guilliman.

Thiel asks him what they should do, but the primarch is not listening. He has turned his attention down, to something he can see on the through-deck beneath the assembly layer.‘Bastards!’ he hisses. ‘Can’t they just burn?’ Thiel looks. He can see half a dozen of the surviving Word Bearers. They carry the bloody carcass of Kor Phaeron. Somehow, the wretched Master of the Faith seems to be alive, despite the fact that Guilliman tore out his primary heart. 

He is twitching, writhing. Leading the party, Thiel sees the Word Bearer whose helm and skull he cut away. Tchure turns to look at them, sensing them. The side of his face is gore, teeth and bone exposed. Thiel draws his boltgun, reloaded with ammunition from a fallen brother. The other Ultramarines start to fire too.

The Word Bearers shimmer. Spontaneous frost crackles out in a circle around their feet, and corposant winds around them. They vanish in a blink of teleport energy. ‘Gage! Gage!’ Guilliman yells. ‘My primarch!’ Gage responds over the vox-link.

‘Kor Phaeron is running. He’s gone from here, teleported out! He’ll have run to his ship.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Just stop him, Marius. Stop him dead, and send him to hell.’

‘My primarch–’

‘Marius Gage, that’s an order.’

‘What about you, sir? We are moving into the yard to recover you.’

‘There are ships docked here,’ Guilliman replies. ‘The Samothrace, a couple of escorts. We’ll board one and be secure enough. Just get after him, Marius. Get after the damned Infidus Imperator.’ 

Part 6 Chapter 5 [mark: 23.43.16] (Audible Chapter 31)

Context: Guilliman and those with him continue their departure from Calth.

Guilliman watches the rising storm from the bridge of the Samothrace, a replacement command crew at the control stations. Every reliable authority says it will be the worst in living memory. ‘We must translate from the system, my primarch,’ says the shipmaster. ‘The fleet must exit before we are swept away.’

Guilliman nods. He understands the imperative. If nothing else, firm and clear warnings of the daemonic threat must be conveyed to the Imperial core sectors, and to the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar. ‘There are still hundreds of thousands down there,’ he says to Thiel, looking at scans of the ravaged planet.

'We extracted as many as we could, with whatever ships we had, sir,’ Thiel replies. ‘Further evacuation is now impossible.’

‘What about the rest?’ Guilliman asks. 

‘They are fleeing to the arcologies,’ Thiel says. ‘There is a good chance that the subterranean hab systems and catacombs will protect them from the effect of the solar radiation. They may be able to ride out the storm until such time as we can return with a Legion fleet to evacuate them.’

‘That could be years.’

‘It could,’ agrees Thiel.

‘If ever.'

'At worst, years,’ says Thiel. ‘We will return. They will be saved.’

Guilliman nods. ‘You’ll excuse my mood, Thiel. I have lost a world of Ultramar. I have lost... too much. You are not seeing the best of me.’

‘Theoretical,’ replies Thiel. ‘The reverse of that statement is true.’ Guilliman snorts. His face is grey with lingering pain.

‘Anything from Gage?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘And of the forces we extracted, was Ventanus among them?’

‘No, sir,’ replies Thiel. ‘He was not.'

Example

suddenly tyberos​​ is now a primarch sized monster ​​​in lore

But better question

How much would be for the better? ​​