Angron 1
In the darkness beneath the arenas of Desh’ea, Angron Thalk’r still fought.
Cross-legged on the bare ground, covered by the filth of his slave-cell, wounds painfully reknitting themselves after the ordeals of the day, Angron fought the Nails with all that remained of his will. The pain-engines bit heavily in the meat of his brain, chastising him for not giving in to the red mist, to the rage, punishing him for not killing everything around him. In an hour or two at the most, the overseers would order the damned machines to invert their programming and push him and his companions to an uneasy sleep. Angron hated the implants with all his heart. Sometimes he mused he hated them more than the paper-skin that enslaved him and cheered while he butchered fine men and women on the red sands.
These bastards could mark him by whip, acid and blade, chain him in filth, fed with the barest rations but it was the Nails that exerted the greatest control over him. When they were active he was forced to heed their unspoken commands, to maim and kill and burn his opponents, to butcher them like a beast, making a mockery of his skill. The high riders loved that as much, no they loved it more than they gazed on breathtaking displays of skill. Martial prowess was for the kin-guard and their princelings not for slaves. With the Butcher’s Nails, even a weakling or a child could fight for far longer than possible.
They did that sometimes: A child or a teenager, still bleeding from the implantation, against some beast or Not-Nailed slaves. The fight could span hours while the engines granted their victim unnatural speed and strength. Before Angron, these children could live for a few more fights but since he had become the informal chief of the gladiators slaves, these wretches were put out of their misery as soon as they entered their holding cells. He didn’t know if he had to be surprised that the overseers still thought that these acts were the result of the Nails, and not the product of simple compassion.
His limbs were shaking, his head was bleeding and still he stayed as immobile as possible. His breathing was painfully calm as he forced it to follow a normal pace rather than the grumbling of some great monster. Around him eight of his companions, old gladiators tried the same thing with unequal skill. It had taken years to convince them that the Nails offered no mercy and no respite even in the thickest of fighting. No reason to escape if that was to become slaves to the Nails, unrepentant butchers killing not because they hated their enemies but because their flesh bowed to the machines in their brains.
So in the darkness beneath the arenas of Desh’ea, Angron Thalk’r enslaved but not broken waited in silence, slowly but surely controlling the pain in his brain and the artificial fury in his veins. Soon he would be in control. Soon he would use the Nails and not be used by them.
Then the city would burn. All this world would burn.
***
On Nuceria the Games were there to satisfy all tastes.
There were gladiators’ games of every kind: men against beasts, men against men, slaves against slaves in battle groups while the arena represented an ancient battlefield. They were shooting competition where two gladiators with ranged weapons were loosed in a labyrinth to find and kill each others, fights were the slaves were blinded for the duration and had to stumble blindly, urged by the Nails to find their opponents, and so many others beside. The Nucerian were a jaded people embroiled in an endless war and they took their pleasure in more and more elaborate displays of violence.
That explained in part the reason they disliked the current fights
Angron laughed as he parried a blow meant to his head and playfully answered with a swipe of his chainblade. The young woman having tried to behead him easily escaped the blade while, the twins warriors at her side tried to flank the giant. More parries, more dodging and Angron was still laughing at the thoughts of spoiling the high riders’ twisted little joke.
Oh this would have been very amusing for them if things are gone according to plan. To pit the leader of the gladiators, the best fighter in the history of Nuceria against the very companions he had led to victory so many times. What a laugh. The Butcher’s Nails should have stolen any comradeship, any loyalty, any gratitude from the slaves’ minds, replacing them by sheer aggression. And what a laugh when the dust would fall down and the victor (for there was no doubt Angron would win) would wake up with the blood of his kin on his hand.
Three hours had passed since Angron had been pitted against his entire brotherhood. A single man, albeit a giant, against sixteen of the best fighters in the arenas. Three hours and the first blood had not been not spilled. That’s wasn’t meaning they fought lazily. On the contrary the kin-guard and the high-born duellists could plainly see the skill in each of their movement, the tension in their muscles. This was a breathtaking display worthy of the duels of legends. However, the crowd was not there for that. They were there to see blood, butchery, courage in face of death. « Morituri te salutant » had sworn the gladiators when they had entered the sand swept arena « Those who are to die salute you »
So why were they not dying, limbs spread on the grounds, blood tainting the sands? The Nails were in place, the officers in their stations swore they were biting the slaves’ brain at maximum level and still they refused to give the crowd the spectacle they wanted. The Praxury in his high seat was ready to order the protective net of the arena disabled to enable his guards to shoot the gladiators dead for their affront.
It was not a wise decision. Then again, one could argue that wisdom doesn’t suit a ruling cast that outfitted their slaves with engines destined to enhance their aggression then trained them in fighting.
The instant the net came down, Angron and his companions dived for the stands with unnatural speed. The Primarch took his heavier companions and with the strength of a demi-god launched them in the crowds before the guards could coordinate their fire. Himself charged the high lodge, succumbing at last to the Nail’s call, rejoicing in the adrenaline but still controlling his rage before unleashing it on the crowds that had cheered to the slaughter of his kin. His chainblade roared and bit with the wet sounds of flesh cutting, opening a way to the princeling’s lodge.
How his fellows laughed and roared now they unleashed their pent-up rage. Most of the city assisted to the Games in the great arena. They could have watched from their homes on the network but it was way better to see the spectacle in the flesh, to smell the blood on the sand, to gaze upon the sweating gladiators in disgusted lust. How many regretted their choice of entertainment now while Angron’s gladiators tore them like lambs in a slaughterhouse? Angron did not care as he took care to only hack apart kin-guards and those foolish enough to bar his way. The others could not resist the Nails as he did, they needed a release of ultra-violence sooner or later. Angron had long decided all of the cheering crowd was guilty and so had no problems with their extermination.
The princeling was in view now. Spoiled disgusting little imp. Angron lost no time toying with his guards even if it was tempting. He sheathed his blade and lifted the high rider from his seat, the adult man seeming like a child compared to him.
« Greetings Lord Thalk’r. I hope the Games are up to your expectations. »
The mortal tried to slip from the giant’s grasp but Angron had none of it, raising him to the level of his eyes.
« You will lead me to the implantations chambers and those among you who know of the Nails. I want to learn everything about your little machines.»
Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
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Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
by ganonso » Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:43 pm
- ganonso
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:24 am
Re: Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
by ganonso » Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:44 pm
Angron 2
Brothers! Sisters! Nailed slaves who have walked the sand with me! Slaves free in their own mind lending your strength to our cause. Even you former citizens who campaigned for the end of the Games or at least the Nails or have risked your life and your position to help slaves! Why are we fighting?
Are we fighting to see our enemies driven before us, to eat their cities and hear the lamentations of their families?
Are we fighting to take revenge on the high-rider’s arrogance, to see their kingdoms in ashes and their cheers in mourning?
Are we fighting to prove ourselves in the crucible of war? To reign alone in a wasteland of corpses slaves to wrath and hatred?
I say no! We are fighting for a higher cause! We are fighting not for avenge past wrongs even if vengeance is sweet on our tongue. We are fighting for the future of this world, to see no mind mutilated beyond recognition. We are fighting to unite this wretched planet under a banner. Those who were slaves will in the end be freed.
How? I hear you ask. What weapons do we have against the armies of the high-riders save for gladiator’s brand and stolen equipment? How can we defeat them?
We have courage my brothers and sisters in arms, courage to fight even if the odds are against us, even if our enemy outnumbers us a thousand to one. We will charge their lines as if they were bread and only fit to sate our hunger regardless our losses. And thus we shall attain victory when there was only defeat.
We have honor, my brothers and sisters and arms, honor to make even you who were free take arms against the tyrants, to weep when your people urge you to cheer, to be disgusted by what your society calls entertainment. Honor is our first victory against the beasts we could have become and the monsters who tried to mutilate our humanity.
And we have brotherhood when they are divided. Brotherhood so strong it unites what should have been ennemies to make them into an army. Look on the face of the man and woman besides you my companions. Remember that in the battle he or she will save your life and you yours. You can trust them while these backstabbing whoresons can’t trust no one to not profit from their defeat.
And thus my companions is the reason we will win this war.
the Fall of Desh’ea, from Equerry Kharn’s private collection
For eight days and nights the high city burned.
To tell the truth, it was rather restrained for a full-scale slave revolt. After the slaughter at the arena, Angron had directed his forces to the nobles’ manors and estates. His companions had initially disagreed with his decision, the Nails even for those few who approached mastery of them wanted blood and wet flesh with the fewest possible delays. The Deliverer, as Angron was already being called, had been adamant. The palaces and spires of Desh’ea would offer plunder which he was eager to taste after a life spent between darkness and pain. He was also not keen on the idea to any riders with the knowledge of the Nails, the time to escape.
So he led his rabble of slaves and gladiators along pristine gardens and decorated hallways, slaughtering every unit of kin-guard they came across. He had already slew one of the duumviri in charge of the city and was eager to taste the blood of the next but he hungered for knowledge even more. While he had mastered the pain-engines in his brain, he knew too well that his companions could not be free of them so easily. It had taken every inch of his enhanced physiology to do so and the process had nearly driven him insane. Even his best students had to slake their thirst for carnage in the arena’s stands and the majority of his army was not even close to this level of calm.
The duumvir's terrified gargles had been enlightening. Contrary to what Angron thought at first, the implantations chambers were not located in the caves beneath the arenas, not even in the facilities destined to train the Nailed slaves. The Nails were the purview of a secretie caste of tech priests responsible to managing most of the decaying technology of the First Kingdom.
Since he had led and fought for four full days, cleansing the nobles’ district by blade and flame. Cromach and his brazier-glaive laughed as he set the towers ablaze while Klester led her band of knight on shrieking spears through the blooded streets. They were beautiful. They were all beautiful, their faces lit by burned houses shining with true and pure anger. Not the Nails’ bite and its poison but true wrath and fair hatred for the ones that had enslaved them.
At the dawn of the fifth day, the other slaves rioted in the lowest parts of town. They had seen the high houses smoldering and smoking and decided to take their chances. They came to Angron bloody and few, but smiling and sighing with pleasure. Most had only the tools of their trade, brooms, forging implements and the like but some had obtained weapons from criminal gangs and slain city guards. The Deliverer took the weapons: las arms and grenades and grimly gazed while the gladiators of Desh’ea saw firepower directed not against them but in support.
The sixth day, Angron breached the sanctum of the Lannista Maxima and took the fight to the Nails implanters themselves.
***
The place stank to high heavens.
Somewhere in the corners of his mind, there was a voice telling Angron that the facility should not reek like that. When the paper-skins had spoken of a “laboratory”, Angron’s mind had flashed with half-remembered sensations of a sterile place, of amniotic fluid around his fragile flesh, the smell of chemical purifiers filling the preserved air… This place smelled of cold blood piss and shit, in addition to less wholesome things. There was also something wrong with the sigils on the drapes and the walls. They didn’t move or twist when the eye deserted them but their angular sharpness was unsettling. Angron would have wagered these cutting runes were not human, at least not in origin.
The building was too quiet. The Liberatores had broken the gates without encountering any resistance. Where were the guards? Did they flee long before, leaving the priests to seal themselves behind closed doors? No that couldn’t be right. At this period, the Butchers would have had some slaves to Nail and unleash against their besiegers. For that matter why were the Nails silent? The overseers in the arena had not used their control matrixes for even the pain-engine diabolical genius could not lull Nail-lost to sleep. The Deliverer was able to resist the commands of apathy like he resisted those of rage but he doubted the Butchers knew that.
Angron tightened his grip on the chainblade in his right hand and the las weapon in his left. He had ordered his companions to wait for him in the first rooms and let him explore this debased place by himself. He knew nothing in here could kill him.
He passed holding quarters and dining halls without paying attention, entirely concentrated on the impressions received by his ears and nose. A new smell added to the cocktail of chemicals in the air, a clanking in the direction he faced… He was openly sniffing now, convinced an enemy could appear from anywhere pushing in direction of the inner sanctum and the Butchers’ personal quarters then there was a change.
A slow moan of agony in the next room. The fresh coppery scent of fresh blood. The acid bouquet of spread entrails. The near-silent buzzing of a motor. Perhaps an anti-grav. Angron crouched on the ground, slowly making his way to the door, slow step by slow step until he could surge into the darkened chamber.
What he saw next urged him to vomit.
The creature he had heard, the monster responsible for the lack of opposition until then, was busily skinning a man, most likely a Butcher alive. There was something sickening in the slowness of the thing’s movements as he carefully spread the man’s skin in an intricate canvas around his bloody carcass. But worse was to come yet. Angron could only gaze in petrified amazement as the monsters kept inserting tubes and injectors into the lump of meat, keeping him alive and conscious for all the span of the procedure.
Strangely enough, the monster own’s skin had been flayed, its outward layer of flesh red naked muscles and nerves twitching in the stagnant air. From behind Angron could see it wore a carapace of gold, or most likely one had been fused to his frame and of gold were also the impressive array of blade it seemed to use with some dexterity. Long barbed tentacles spread from its armored core, none of them touching the ground. It was not natural, Angron knew that by instinct. Something had altered this thing, took a living being and turned it into that monstrosity. It finished its grim task and turned on the gladiator, sensing him without sight. Its head was armored in golden plates that covered its eyes.
The shape of it reminded Angron of the crest of Nails on his own head.
He attacked without thinking, moved by sheer revulsion. The room was lit at once with las fire directed on the creature’s flayed corpse. It struck home, cauterizing the flesh with a sickening smell but it didn’t slow the monster down. On the contrary it lunged at Angron, trying to embrace him with bladed tentacles and venomous barbs.
Angron jumped, chainblade roaring, parried a blade meant for his shoulder, cut the offending limb with his riposte, smashing vials of chemicals with a return strike at the price of a little of his skin. He struck the carapace, piercing it in the hopes of finding a vital organ but to no avail.
The creature’s tried not to kill him but to cripple him and the gladiator knew it worked in his favor. He chose the most direct solution to the fight, hacking deeply in the monster’s inexistent head. Its torso opened with a flash, releasing a sphere of hurting barbed wire to catch Angron into a net. As if the Deliverer had not fought such weapons on the sands. He had abandoned defense now, simply tearing the blind head apart with great sweeps, the teeth of the blade biting deeply in the living flesh. Soon he achieved his goal and saw the monstrous machine stop and fall to the ground motionless.
Despite the pain racing in every pinprick of his flesh, Angron made sure to hack the corpse in so many pieces, no resurrection was possible.
What was that thing? He doubted even the Butchers had the craft to create such a monster. If they did, there was no way they would not had unleashed them on the sands and the Nailed. Also, why kill the Butchers with so agonizing a slowness. Now that he was calm Angron could see that the room, and the others around it were full of skinned corpses in canvas of their own flesh. The same sigils that adorned the drapes and the walls had been cut into their flesh and their mouths were fixed in mute screams of torment.
What was going on here?
Brothers! Sisters! Nailed slaves who have walked the sand with me! Slaves free in their own mind lending your strength to our cause. Even you former citizens who campaigned for the end of the Games or at least the Nails or have risked your life and your position to help slaves! Why are we fighting?
Are we fighting to see our enemies driven before us, to eat their cities and hear the lamentations of their families?
Are we fighting to take revenge on the high-rider’s arrogance, to see their kingdoms in ashes and their cheers in mourning?
Are we fighting to prove ourselves in the crucible of war? To reign alone in a wasteland of corpses slaves to wrath and hatred?
I say no! We are fighting for a higher cause! We are fighting not for avenge past wrongs even if vengeance is sweet on our tongue. We are fighting for the future of this world, to see no mind mutilated beyond recognition. We are fighting to unite this wretched planet under a banner. Those who were slaves will in the end be freed.
How? I hear you ask. What weapons do we have against the armies of the high-riders save for gladiator’s brand and stolen equipment? How can we defeat them?
We have courage my brothers and sisters in arms, courage to fight even if the odds are against us, even if our enemy outnumbers us a thousand to one. We will charge their lines as if they were bread and only fit to sate our hunger regardless our losses. And thus we shall attain victory when there was only defeat.
We have honor, my brothers and sisters and arms, honor to make even you who were free take arms against the tyrants, to weep when your people urge you to cheer, to be disgusted by what your society calls entertainment. Honor is our first victory against the beasts we could have become and the monsters who tried to mutilate our humanity.
And we have brotherhood when they are divided. Brotherhood so strong it unites what should have been ennemies to make them into an army. Look on the face of the man and woman besides you my companions. Remember that in the battle he or she will save your life and you yours. You can trust them while these backstabbing whoresons can’t trust no one to not profit from their defeat.
And thus my companions is the reason we will win this war.
the Fall of Desh’ea, from Equerry Kharn’s private collection
For eight days and nights the high city burned.
To tell the truth, it was rather restrained for a full-scale slave revolt. After the slaughter at the arena, Angron had directed his forces to the nobles’ manors and estates. His companions had initially disagreed with his decision, the Nails even for those few who approached mastery of them wanted blood and wet flesh with the fewest possible delays. The Deliverer, as Angron was already being called, had been adamant. The palaces and spires of Desh’ea would offer plunder which he was eager to taste after a life spent between darkness and pain. He was also not keen on the idea to any riders with the knowledge of the Nails, the time to escape.
So he led his rabble of slaves and gladiators along pristine gardens and decorated hallways, slaughtering every unit of kin-guard they came across. He had already slew one of the duumviri in charge of the city and was eager to taste the blood of the next but he hungered for knowledge even more. While he had mastered the pain-engines in his brain, he knew too well that his companions could not be free of them so easily. It had taken every inch of his enhanced physiology to do so and the process had nearly driven him insane. Even his best students had to slake their thirst for carnage in the arena’s stands and the majority of his army was not even close to this level of calm.
The duumvir's terrified gargles had been enlightening. Contrary to what Angron thought at first, the implantations chambers were not located in the caves beneath the arenas, not even in the facilities destined to train the Nailed slaves. The Nails were the purview of a secretie caste of tech priests responsible to managing most of the decaying technology of the First Kingdom.
Since he had led and fought for four full days, cleansing the nobles’ district by blade and flame. Cromach and his brazier-glaive laughed as he set the towers ablaze while Klester led her band of knight on shrieking spears through the blooded streets. They were beautiful. They were all beautiful, their faces lit by burned houses shining with true and pure anger. Not the Nails’ bite and its poison but true wrath and fair hatred for the ones that had enslaved them.
At the dawn of the fifth day, the other slaves rioted in the lowest parts of town. They had seen the high houses smoldering and smoking and decided to take their chances. They came to Angron bloody and few, but smiling and sighing with pleasure. Most had only the tools of their trade, brooms, forging implements and the like but some had obtained weapons from criminal gangs and slain city guards. The Deliverer took the weapons: las arms and grenades and grimly gazed while the gladiators of Desh’ea saw firepower directed not against them but in support.
The sixth day, Angron breached the sanctum of the Lannista Maxima and took the fight to the Nails implanters themselves.
***
The place stank to high heavens.
Somewhere in the corners of his mind, there was a voice telling Angron that the facility should not reek like that. When the paper-skins had spoken of a “laboratory”, Angron’s mind had flashed with half-remembered sensations of a sterile place, of amniotic fluid around his fragile flesh, the smell of chemical purifiers filling the preserved air… This place smelled of cold blood piss and shit, in addition to less wholesome things. There was also something wrong with the sigils on the drapes and the walls. They didn’t move or twist when the eye deserted them but their angular sharpness was unsettling. Angron would have wagered these cutting runes were not human, at least not in origin.
The building was too quiet. The Liberatores had broken the gates without encountering any resistance. Where were the guards? Did they flee long before, leaving the priests to seal themselves behind closed doors? No that couldn’t be right. At this period, the Butchers would have had some slaves to Nail and unleash against their besiegers. For that matter why were the Nails silent? The overseers in the arena had not used their control matrixes for even the pain-engine diabolical genius could not lull Nail-lost to sleep. The Deliverer was able to resist the commands of apathy like he resisted those of rage but he doubted the Butchers knew that.
Angron tightened his grip on the chainblade in his right hand and the las weapon in his left. He had ordered his companions to wait for him in the first rooms and let him explore this debased place by himself. He knew nothing in here could kill him.
He passed holding quarters and dining halls without paying attention, entirely concentrated on the impressions received by his ears and nose. A new smell added to the cocktail of chemicals in the air, a clanking in the direction he faced… He was openly sniffing now, convinced an enemy could appear from anywhere pushing in direction of the inner sanctum and the Butchers’ personal quarters then there was a change.
A slow moan of agony in the next room. The fresh coppery scent of fresh blood. The acid bouquet of spread entrails. The near-silent buzzing of a motor. Perhaps an anti-grav. Angron crouched on the ground, slowly making his way to the door, slow step by slow step until he could surge into the darkened chamber.
What he saw next urged him to vomit.
The creature he had heard, the monster responsible for the lack of opposition until then, was busily skinning a man, most likely a Butcher alive. There was something sickening in the slowness of the thing’s movements as he carefully spread the man’s skin in an intricate canvas around his bloody carcass. But worse was to come yet. Angron could only gaze in petrified amazement as the monsters kept inserting tubes and injectors into the lump of meat, keeping him alive and conscious for all the span of the procedure.
Strangely enough, the monster own’s skin had been flayed, its outward layer of flesh red naked muscles and nerves twitching in the stagnant air. From behind Angron could see it wore a carapace of gold, or most likely one had been fused to his frame and of gold were also the impressive array of blade it seemed to use with some dexterity. Long barbed tentacles spread from its armored core, none of them touching the ground. It was not natural, Angron knew that by instinct. Something had altered this thing, took a living being and turned it into that monstrosity. It finished its grim task and turned on the gladiator, sensing him without sight. Its head was armored in golden plates that covered its eyes.
The shape of it reminded Angron of the crest of Nails on his own head.
He attacked without thinking, moved by sheer revulsion. The room was lit at once with las fire directed on the creature’s flayed corpse. It struck home, cauterizing the flesh with a sickening smell but it didn’t slow the monster down. On the contrary it lunged at Angron, trying to embrace him with bladed tentacles and venomous barbs.
Angron jumped, chainblade roaring, parried a blade meant for his shoulder, cut the offending limb with his riposte, smashing vials of chemicals with a return strike at the price of a little of his skin. He struck the carapace, piercing it in the hopes of finding a vital organ but to no avail.
The creature’s tried not to kill him but to cripple him and the gladiator knew it worked in his favor. He chose the most direct solution to the fight, hacking deeply in the monster’s inexistent head. Its torso opened with a flash, releasing a sphere of hurting barbed wire to catch Angron into a net. As if the Deliverer had not fought such weapons on the sands. He had abandoned defense now, simply tearing the blind head apart with great sweeps, the teeth of the blade biting deeply in the living flesh. Soon he achieved his goal and saw the monstrous machine stop and fall to the ground motionless.
Despite the pain racing in every pinprick of his flesh, Angron made sure to hack the corpse in so many pieces, no resurrection was possible.
What was that thing? He doubted even the Butchers had the craft to create such a monster. If they did, there was no way they would not had unleashed them on the sands and the Nailed. Also, why kill the Butchers with so agonizing a slowness. Now that he was calm Angron could see that the room, and the others around it were full of skinned corpses in canvas of their own flesh. The same sigils that adorned the drapes and the walls had been cut into their flesh and their mouths were fixed in mute screams of torment.
What was going on here?
Last edited by ganonso on Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- ganonso
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:24 am
Re: Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
by ganonso » Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:45 pm
Angron 3
The Butchers gathered in the heart of their empire. They gathered around the alien gate they had built their palace around. They clad themselves in stolen panoply, with weapons of torment and armor of pain. They knelt, they who knelt before none, quacking in fear for they heard the Deliverer was coming. All their power, all their sorcery, they cast upon the inert gate. Offerings of gold, of stone and flesh and jade. Souls forever cut from the twilight realm, souls in agony, souls for the taking. And at last the gate opened like a wound upon the universe. The Dark Wanderers passed the gate and entered the realm of men and they laughed seeing those who had dared take their arts and debase them for human hands.
The city of Ermor fell into darkness, the sun shone red on its streets and its inhabitants were defiled by the Dark Ones. Many died but more and more lived through agony and degradation and mutation. They called themselves nobles and outfitted their slaves with dread weaponry. Rifles of poisoned splinters, swords of pure poison, weapons shooting acid and flames that shone green. Their banner bore a black serpent swallowing his tail and many and horrible were the sacrifices they did in his name. They rode the sky like the high-riders in junks of metal and shrieking spears. They called themselves hunters and men were their prey. In the end even the high riders and the Praxury raised their arms and prayed for Angron to come.
In came Angron the Deliverer, casting down the walls of Ermor and scattering her armies. In came Angron the Deliverer, slaughtering the Thirsty Ones and burning their temples. To the downtrodden he brought hope, to the powerful he brought fear. To the tormented he brought mercy, to the tormentors he brought death. He breached the center of the Lanista Prima where the Nails were molded and there battled the four commanders of the Dark Ones.
For this purpose, did the Master of Mankind raised him from the nothingness. To deliver the galaxy from the taint of the xenos, to burn their works and expunge their corruption. And for this we revere him forever and ever.
The Testament of the Primarchs: The Book of Angron
You consider the Eldar, their great fleets and their lost empire. You weep for their loss and their work of art and say: “Alas they fell these paradises. Ruins are now their cities. They despair of the future and fight extinction. Proud people by destiny humbled.” You are right my children for the Eldar reigned on Paradise, all the delights of the galaxy were theirs and they fell into decadence. They were defeated. Not by any outside force but by daemons conjured from their own madness. Still they were defeated and thus I say to you: “Vae Victis” Suffering to the conquered. The Eldar failed for they forgot to master themselves as they mastered the stars. Mankind will not fail as long as me, my brothers and my father live to point the Golden Path that will preserve us from oblivion.
Attributed to Angron Primarch of the XII Legion
The day promised to be good.
It was dumb luck, the pitiful Mon-keighs had stumbled across an abandoned world of the old empire. Dumb luck who should have resulted in their extermination when the Eldar came back. Indeed, Tahril wanted to exterminate every sentient on this pitiful mudball for the crime of trespassing on sacred ground. They had even dared take the technology of the master race and debase it with their greedy paws, robbing it from its natural beauty. The Nails were destined to be musical instruments, broadcasting the vast array of sensation in a chosen body, pain and pleasure, wrath and despair. Thousands would be rounded up in vast theatres to give a performance of emotional extremes and feed the crowd with the dark energy of their pain.
Using them on gladiators purely to enhance their aggression and lull them to sleep after the fight was a travesty. It was astounding the lesser beings had survived long enough to reactivate the link to the Webway and summon him and his forces.
The humans had been clad in red and gold, imitating the Coven whose predecessors had ruled this world. Children aping their father’s works. Apes pretending to be sentient by wearing rages and holding items of powers. Tahril would not have lingered here a moment longer than the time to round up the population of the city he had arrived and bring them to Commoragh.
Instead he and the Haemonculus Grumenael had stayed to hear the Butchers whine and beg for one of their slaves, a specimen they suspected was not completely human. As they knelt before the Commorites and called them gods and master in approximation of the old tongue, Tahril had accepted their obeisance, a fact helped by considering how Grumenael’s curiosity had been excited. That and the fact the Webway road they had uncovered led to many world Tahril was eager to regard as his personal preserve.
The Commorite noble fell further in the command throne of his Raider, considering his forces. It was a dangerous gamble to take all his assets on this campaign, but no true Eldar could resist the allure of a game. If the “Deliverer” was as unique as he was described to, capturing him for study and excruciation would be very profitable indeed. Besides the small flotilla of antigravs should be able to destroy everything the pitiful humans could muster. Laser weapons could not outgun his troops and in close combat his forces would simply outmatch their pitiful foes.
Victory was already in their hands and Tahril was sorely tempted to only survey the battle, feeding on the emotion on his next victims. He had three hundred of the fiercest killers the galaxy had ever known. Which force could resist his grasp?
The helmsman of his embarkation signaled they had arrived on the chosen battlefield and the noble grinned thinking to the slaughter to come.
***
They said he was beautiful; he didn’t know if he should believe them.
Three meters tall, Angron towered over the tallest human. Unlike what some could thought in thinking of the gladiator-king, he was lithe, all in steely wiry dense muscles like an unsheathed blade. His skin was copper and dark bronze like these old idols in the picts, these « Molochs » whose breast held fire and whose mouth was hungry for the blood of the sacrificed. His face was calm, lost in a mane of red hairs covering the Butcher Nails protrusion on his cortex. But it was his protection that attracted the gazes of the onlookers first of all.
Most of his new followers were astounded he kept a variant of the armor crafted for him in the days of his slavery for it was an impractical thing. Indeed, it consisted only of a plate protecting the heart a pauldron on his right shoulder and a shirt of scale mail.
Nearly naked did Angron Thalk’r the Deliverer go into battle, tempting the enemy to strike him down, to pierce his naked flesh, to make him bleed, to make him feel. For the moment neither blade, nor laser, nor explosive had made a durable mark in the Primarch’s skin.
In the same manner, he refused to strike his enemies from afar with firearms and wielded two axes, each too large to be wielded by one strong man. These were no slave-weapons but arms created by his own hands and for his own use, crafted from the diabolic science that had created the Nails. The first was named Go’el and it was a chain weapon whose serrated teeth had been drenched in the fluids of the pain-engines the Butchers loved to awaken. The second was called Asuryath in the foreign sacred tongue of the Butchers and while it seemed an ordinary weapon, energy coursed along his blade and when Angron wielded it in battle, it was ablaze with his own righteous anger.
Thus did the Deliverer go to war, to free his people and chastise the high-riders’ arrogance.
For eight days and nights Desh’ea had burned and for another eight days and nights had Angron rested in the walls of the Lanista Maxima, learning all he could of the Butchers’ arts, their customs and their rites before he burned the building to the ground and led his army to the others cities.
Nine years has passed while Angron conquered every city-state and every polity save for venerable Ermor. Nine years where he freed the slaves of every city and struggled to make his change stick in the people’s thick skull. The war that raged between the Praxuries ended as they tried to ally to fight this new threat but were defeated in turn. For Angron had not only a gift for controlling the Nailed and convince them to restrain themselves, his impassioned speeches and allure won him the heart of the poor who had rejoiced to the shedding of blood in the arenas. Thus the high-riders’ armies were met not with hordes of haggard starving slaves but with disciplined regiments whose vanguard used the Nails’ fury as their servant, not their master.
Angron had seen to all this and saw it was good. He had fought Nailed unfortunates, faithful Kin-guards, monstruosities and abominations crafted by the Butchers and the dark engines they had exhumed. Still he did not know how to remove the Nails from the flesh of his companions or even how to silence them definitively. He had plundered every alien vault he had found on the planet but still could not master the intricate technology like he mastered others.
Now this quest reached its end for his army stood on the path to venerable Ermor with its seven hills. Ermor where fleeing slaves and desperate citizens had warned him than demons ruled the streets and the Butchers served as assistants in rites of pain. Perhaps some of the race that had created the Nails, could be found, put to the question and interrogated. He had little illusion on their morality after butchering their torture engine and painfully deciphering their blasphemies etched on stone and data crystals.
He didn’t know what would happen next. Ermor would fall and all of Nuceria would recognize him as their emperor. As if he wanted the title anyway. And after? Even without the Nails call he hungered for battle and conquest, to test himself against worthy foes and to lead men into the crucible of war. Would he live long enough to see the Nucerians able to send a fleet across the stars rather than unmanned satellites?
He shrugged, these questions would be answered later. He had a city to take.
The Butchers gathered in the heart of their empire. They gathered around the alien gate they had built their palace around. They clad themselves in stolen panoply, with weapons of torment and armor of pain. They knelt, they who knelt before none, quacking in fear for they heard the Deliverer was coming. All their power, all their sorcery, they cast upon the inert gate. Offerings of gold, of stone and flesh and jade. Souls forever cut from the twilight realm, souls in agony, souls for the taking. And at last the gate opened like a wound upon the universe. The Dark Wanderers passed the gate and entered the realm of men and they laughed seeing those who had dared take their arts and debase them for human hands.
The city of Ermor fell into darkness, the sun shone red on its streets and its inhabitants were defiled by the Dark Ones. Many died but more and more lived through agony and degradation and mutation. They called themselves nobles and outfitted their slaves with dread weaponry. Rifles of poisoned splinters, swords of pure poison, weapons shooting acid and flames that shone green. Their banner bore a black serpent swallowing his tail and many and horrible were the sacrifices they did in his name. They rode the sky like the high-riders in junks of metal and shrieking spears. They called themselves hunters and men were their prey. In the end even the high riders and the Praxury raised their arms and prayed for Angron to come.
In came Angron the Deliverer, casting down the walls of Ermor and scattering her armies. In came Angron the Deliverer, slaughtering the Thirsty Ones and burning their temples. To the downtrodden he brought hope, to the powerful he brought fear. To the tormented he brought mercy, to the tormentors he brought death. He breached the center of the Lanista Prima where the Nails were molded and there battled the four commanders of the Dark Ones.
For this purpose, did the Master of Mankind raised him from the nothingness. To deliver the galaxy from the taint of the xenos, to burn their works and expunge their corruption. And for this we revere him forever and ever.
The Testament of the Primarchs: The Book of Angron
You consider the Eldar, their great fleets and their lost empire. You weep for their loss and their work of art and say: “Alas they fell these paradises. Ruins are now their cities. They despair of the future and fight extinction. Proud people by destiny humbled.” You are right my children for the Eldar reigned on Paradise, all the delights of the galaxy were theirs and they fell into decadence. They were defeated. Not by any outside force but by daemons conjured from their own madness. Still they were defeated and thus I say to you: “Vae Victis” Suffering to the conquered. The Eldar failed for they forgot to master themselves as they mastered the stars. Mankind will not fail as long as me, my brothers and my father live to point the Golden Path that will preserve us from oblivion.
Attributed to Angron Primarch of the XII Legion
The day promised to be good.
It was dumb luck, the pitiful Mon-keighs had stumbled across an abandoned world of the old empire. Dumb luck who should have resulted in their extermination when the Eldar came back. Indeed, Tahril wanted to exterminate every sentient on this pitiful mudball for the crime of trespassing on sacred ground. They had even dared take the technology of the master race and debase it with their greedy paws, robbing it from its natural beauty. The Nails were destined to be musical instruments, broadcasting the vast array of sensation in a chosen body, pain and pleasure, wrath and despair. Thousands would be rounded up in vast theatres to give a performance of emotional extremes and feed the crowd with the dark energy of their pain.
Using them on gladiators purely to enhance their aggression and lull them to sleep after the fight was a travesty. It was astounding the lesser beings had survived long enough to reactivate the link to the Webway and summon him and his forces.
The humans had been clad in red and gold, imitating the Coven whose predecessors had ruled this world. Children aping their father’s works. Apes pretending to be sentient by wearing rages and holding items of powers. Tahril would not have lingered here a moment longer than the time to round up the population of the city he had arrived and bring them to Commoragh.
Instead he and the Haemonculus Grumenael had stayed to hear the Butchers whine and beg for one of their slaves, a specimen they suspected was not completely human. As they knelt before the Commorites and called them gods and master in approximation of the old tongue, Tahril had accepted their obeisance, a fact helped by considering how Grumenael’s curiosity had been excited. That and the fact the Webway road they had uncovered led to many world Tahril was eager to regard as his personal preserve.
The Commorite noble fell further in the command throne of his Raider, considering his forces. It was a dangerous gamble to take all his assets on this campaign, but no true Eldar could resist the allure of a game. If the “Deliverer” was as unique as he was described to, capturing him for study and excruciation would be very profitable indeed. Besides the small flotilla of antigravs should be able to destroy everything the pitiful humans could muster. Laser weapons could not outgun his troops and in close combat his forces would simply outmatch their pitiful foes.
Victory was already in their hands and Tahril was sorely tempted to only survey the battle, feeding on the emotion on his next victims. He had three hundred of the fiercest killers the galaxy had ever known. Which force could resist his grasp?
The helmsman of his embarkation signaled they had arrived on the chosen battlefield and the noble grinned thinking to the slaughter to come.
***
They said he was beautiful; he didn’t know if he should believe them.
Three meters tall, Angron towered over the tallest human. Unlike what some could thought in thinking of the gladiator-king, he was lithe, all in steely wiry dense muscles like an unsheathed blade. His skin was copper and dark bronze like these old idols in the picts, these « Molochs » whose breast held fire and whose mouth was hungry for the blood of the sacrificed. His face was calm, lost in a mane of red hairs covering the Butcher Nails protrusion on his cortex. But it was his protection that attracted the gazes of the onlookers first of all.
Most of his new followers were astounded he kept a variant of the armor crafted for him in the days of his slavery for it was an impractical thing. Indeed, it consisted only of a plate protecting the heart a pauldron on his right shoulder and a shirt of scale mail.
Nearly naked did Angron Thalk’r the Deliverer go into battle, tempting the enemy to strike him down, to pierce his naked flesh, to make him bleed, to make him feel. For the moment neither blade, nor laser, nor explosive had made a durable mark in the Primarch’s skin.
In the same manner, he refused to strike his enemies from afar with firearms and wielded two axes, each too large to be wielded by one strong man. These were no slave-weapons but arms created by his own hands and for his own use, crafted from the diabolic science that had created the Nails. The first was named Go’el and it was a chain weapon whose serrated teeth had been drenched in the fluids of the pain-engines the Butchers loved to awaken. The second was called Asuryath in the foreign sacred tongue of the Butchers and while it seemed an ordinary weapon, energy coursed along his blade and when Angron wielded it in battle, it was ablaze with his own righteous anger.
Thus did the Deliverer go to war, to free his people and chastise the high-riders’ arrogance.
For eight days and nights Desh’ea had burned and for another eight days and nights had Angron rested in the walls of the Lanista Maxima, learning all he could of the Butchers’ arts, their customs and their rites before he burned the building to the ground and led his army to the others cities.
Nine years has passed while Angron conquered every city-state and every polity save for venerable Ermor. Nine years where he freed the slaves of every city and struggled to make his change stick in the people’s thick skull. The war that raged between the Praxuries ended as they tried to ally to fight this new threat but were defeated in turn. For Angron had not only a gift for controlling the Nailed and convince them to restrain themselves, his impassioned speeches and allure won him the heart of the poor who had rejoiced to the shedding of blood in the arenas. Thus the high-riders’ armies were met not with hordes of haggard starving slaves but with disciplined regiments whose vanguard used the Nails’ fury as their servant, not their master.
Angron had seen to all this and saw it was good. He had fought Nailed unfortunates, faithful Kin-guards, monstruosities and abominations crafted by the Butchers and the dark engines they had exhumed. Still he did not know how to remove the Nails from the flesh of his companions or even how to silence them definitively. He had plundered every alien vault he had found on the planet but still could not master the intricate technology like he mastered others.
Now this quest reached its end for his army stood on the path to venerable Ermor with its seven hills. Ermor where fleeing slaves and desperate citizens had warned him than demons ruled the streets and the Butchers served as assistants in rites of pain. Perhaps some of the race that had created the Nails, could be found, put to the question and interrogated. He had little illusion on their morality after butchering their torture engine and painfully deciphering their blasphemies etched on stone and data crystals.
He didn’t know what would happen next. Ermor would fall and all of Nuceria would recognize him as their emperor. As if he wanted the title anyway. And after? Even without the Nails call he hungered for battle and conquest, to test himself against worthy foes and to lead men into the crucible of war. Would he live long enough to see the Nucerians able to send a fleet across the stars rather than unmanned satellites?
He shrugged, these questions would be answered later. He had a city to take.
Last edited by ganonso on Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- ganonso
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:24 am
Re: Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
by ganonso » Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:45 pm
Angron 4
Before Man came to this world.
Before this world had a name. Before the name of heaven, before the name of earth
The Firstborn walked here, fairest of the Children of Creation.
Wonders they built, great cities and towers as high as mountains.
Arenas of red sand, markets with every good and every delight
Chambers of iron, darkened doors, a world of pain and pleasure.
They fell but left to us these' teachings.
To us their heirs who dared come here when the world was young.
To break the ancient seals and learn the old tongue.
Words we found and Purpose too.
Riddles of technology to make our every desire true.
Weapons, and collars, and chains and the Nails.
But still more precious than knowledge, wisdom
Heed these words and prosper.
Heed these words and advance.
Let them be remembered, sacred be
To those who forget them things terrrible will come.
Nothing come from nothing.
At the beginnin the Universe felt pain
and that pain was the pleasure of creation.
Let no limit at your desire, no barrier to your thirst.
The world exist to serve you.
Everything serves to your delight.
Remember these words and heed them too;
Pain is the fundation of everything.
Let them be remembered sacred be
To those who will forget will come worse things than Thirst
Fragments of Butchers' initiation text. Language: broken form of Eldar. From the Collection of Captain Kharn.
The Succubus wore no armor. This was both a practical and aesthetic choice. Practical for any sort of protection would have slower her down when her greatest strength had always been her speed. Aesthetic because to thrive in the arenas, one should always ally the greatest beauty and the most consummate warrior skill. To wear an armor, would have forced her to hide her charms to the crowd, who would have lost interest in her in a season if she did it. To show one’s skin to the enemy blade, to dare the knife to cut you, to mar your beauty and take your life, that was the way of the Wych. Yllandrae knew that and reveled in it.
So when she saw the enemy commander charge a unit of warriors wearing a protection revealing even more flesh than even she dared to, she was intrigued. When he tore them limb from limb, seemingly immune to their splinter rifles and their poisoned darts, she knew she had to fight him. Such a battle would sate her Thirst for more than a decade at least, to bring down such a beast would make her the most renowned of her sisters back to Commoragh. She had ordered her Raider steered in the direction of the Gladiator-King and promptly jump with her unit to meet him in combat.
The battle had been exhilarating until now. Tahril had chosen the tried strategy to strike the enemy army from all sides, using the sleek antigravs of his forces to prevent any kind of enemy riposte. Even if the high riders had tried this tactic before, they could not have rivaled the speed and the killing potential of the Eldar war machines. Wyches, reavers on agile motojets, hellions on bladed surfs, warriors and all their ilk had reaped a bountiful harvest since the first minutes of the engagement.
Yllandrae danced on the battlefield and her disciples danced with her. The sweet energies of pain surrounded her like a black mist, filling her with renewed vigor and might Between her target and herself, she saw Nailed gladiators arrayed in similar manner than their lord. However, those were simple humans and no challenges, the Succubus had no pleasure opening their throats and gouging their eyes, parting their guts and breaking their bones as she advanced.
Mandrakes had cheated her of her prize. She could see the sinewy shadowy creatures dart behind the general’s bodyguard, gleaming with ethereal fire. The Gladiator shouted a warning and turned around, axes blazing. Yllandrae did not know how he could have perceived the mutants and she did not care. All that imported was he was defeating them handily. The Succubus watched with interest as one of the guards, a bulky woman with chainsword and combat shield promptly beheaded a Mandrake while one her companions broke one’s skull with a primitive-looking hammer. The shadow-eaten gave as much as they took, and soon five of the slave companions lay bleeding on the ground.
But the Mandrakes were still dying, all ten of them, by brand, axe and sword. They died and Yllandrae was grateful for the pain of their passing prepared her for her own confrontation. She supposed the dead infiltrators would have been equally grateful their demises had served to her glory. She readied the long glaive who had served her for more than a human existence and jumped on her target without even a battlecry.
Sparks erupted when her weapon met Go’el’s blade, the activated chainaxe nearly breaking the ancient glaive. She leapt, keeping a minimal distance between her foe and her. He was armed with axes so she had the advantage of reach and she surely was quick enough to.
She leapt again, just in time to avoid a blow meant for her neck. Damn he was fast! Too fast for his three meters. She tried to counter-attack, first a decapitating strike, then when the blow was parried, a frenzied series of flurries. All the art of the arena, she deployed against the Gladiator-King and she knew never before he had been faced with an adversary of her caliber.
She managed to wound him, a thin line of scarlet running from his belly to the middle of his chest, all the consequences of a strike meant to gut him like a fish. He riposted with Go’el, the chainaxe cleanly beheading the Succubus with the wet sound of cut flesh.
Yllandrae Succubus of the Wyches Cults, died without knowing her blow would be the strongest one dealt to the Primarch in the battle. She died without knowing she had lasted ten minutes against a being whose adversaries lifespans would later be measured in heartbeats.
Before Man came to this world.
Before this world had a name. Before the name of heaven, before the name of earth
The Firstborn walked here, fairest of the Children of Creation.
Wonders they built, great cities and towers as high as mountains.
Arenas of red sand, markets with every good and every delight
Chambers of iron, darkened doors, a world of pain and pleasure.
They fell but left to us these' teachings.
To us their heirs who dared come here when the world was young.
To break the ancient seals and learn the old tongue.
Words we found and Purpose too.
Riddles of technology to make our every desire true.
Weapons, and collars, and chains and the Nails.
But still more precious than knowledge, wisdom
Heed these words and prosper.
Heed these words and advance.
Let them be remembered, sacred be
To those who forget them things terrrible will come.
Nothing come from nothing.
At the beginnin the Universe felt pain
and that pain was the pleasure of creation.
Let no limit at your desire, no barrier to your thirst.
The world exist to serve you.
Everything serves to your delight.
Remember these words and heed them too;
Pain is the fundation of everything.
Let them be remembered sacred be
To those who will forget will come worse things than Thirst
Fragments of Butchers' initiation text. Language: broken form of Eldar. From the Collection of Captain Kharn.
The Succubus wore no armor. This was both a practical and aesthetic choice. Practical for any sort of protection would have slower her down when her greatest strength had always been her speed. Aesthetic because to thrive in the arenas, one should always ally the greatest beauty and the most consummate warrior skill. To wear an armor, would have forced her to hide her charms to the crowd, who would have lost interest in her in a season if she did it. To show one’s skin to the enemy blade, to dare the knife to cut you, to mar your beauty and take your life, that was the way of the Wych. Yllandrae knew that and reveled in it.
So when she saw the enemy commander charge a unit of warriors wearing a protection revealing even more flesh than even she dared to, she was intrigued. When he tore them limb from limb, seemingly immune to their splinter rifles and their poisoned darts, she knew she had to fight him. Such a battle would sate her Thirst for more than a decade at least, to bring down such a beast would make her the most renowned of her sisters back to Commoragh. She had ordered her Raider steered in the direction of the Gladiator-King and promptly jump with her unit to meet him in combat.
The battle had been exhilarating until now. Tahril had chosen the tried strategy to strike the enemy army from all sides, using the sleek antigravs of his forces to prevent any kind of enemy riposte. Even if the high riders had tried this tactic before, they could not have rivaled the speed and the killing potential of the Eldar war machines. Wyches, reavers on agile motojets, hellions on bladed surfs, warriors and all their ilk had reaped a bountiful harvest since the first minutes of the engagement.
Yllandrae danced on the battlefield and her disciples danced with her. The sweet energies of pain surrounded her like a black mist, filling her with renewed vigor and might Between her target and herself, she saw Nailed gladiators arrayed in similar manner than their lord. However, those were simple humans and no challenges, the Succubus had no pleasure opening their throats and gouging their eyes, parting their guts and breaking their bones as she advanced.
Mandrakes had cheated her of her prize. She could see the sinewy shadowy creatures dart behind the general’s bodyguard, gleaming with ethereal fire. The Gladiator shouted a warning and turned around, axes blazing. Yllandrae did not know how he could have perceived the mutants and she did not care. All that imported was he was defeating them handily. The Succubus watched with interest as one of the guards, a bulky woman with chainsword and combat shield promptly beheaded a Mandrake while one her companions broke one’s skull with a primitive-looking hammer. The shadow-eaten gave as much as they took, and soon five of the slave companions lay bleeding on the ground.
But the Mandrakes were still dying, all ten of them, by brand, axe and sword. They died and Yllandrae was grateful for the pain of their passing prepared her for her own confrontation. She supposed the dead infiltrators would have been equally grateful their demises had served to her glory. She readied the long glaive who had served her for more than a human existence and jumped on her target without even a battlecry.
Sparks erupted when her weapon met Go’el’s blade, the activated chainaxe nearly breaking the ancient glaive. She leapt, keeping a minimal distance between her foe and her. He was armed with axes so she had the advantage of reach and she surely was quick enough to.
She leapt again, just in time to avoid a blow meant for her neck. Damn he was fast! Too fast for his three meters. She tried to counter-attack, first a decapitating strike, then when the blow was parried, a frenzied series of flurries. All the art of the arena, she deployed against the Gladiator-King and she knew never before he had been faced with an adversary of her caliber.
She managed to wound him, a thin line of scarlet running from his belly to the middle of his chest, all the consequences of a strike meant to gut him like a fish. He riposted with Go’el, the chainaxe cleanly beheading the Succubus with the wet sound of cut flesh.
Yllandrae Succubus of the Wyches Cults, died without knowing her blow would be the strongest one dealt to the Primarch in the battle. She died without knowing she had lasted ten minutes against a being whose adversaries lifespans would later be measured in heartbeats.
Last edited by ganonso on Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
- ganonso
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:24 am
Re: Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
by ganonso » Tue Mar 15, 2016 6:46 pm
Angron 5
He was anew washed in darkness.
This time that was not the dank recess of the arena’s jails. No this blackness had been alive, pierced by mad screams and frothing oaths gasped through clenched teeth. It had been full of the sound of cut flesh and the roar of machines. Full of bites, of pain, the air heavy with the threat of the lash and the brain groaning under the pressure of the Nails. Angron had loathed and loved this darkness with equal measure. It was home and hated confinement, place to rest and place to destroy.
His rage. His true rage not the mechanical abomination the pain-engines had tried to imprint in his living flesh, was born there. With the taking of Ermor, it had receded leaving him with nothing.
He had succeeded. Beyond the shimmering gate, the city was burning. He would never have thought to sally forth to put the high-riders out of their misery but there it was. The alien invaders they had invited in their very midst excelled them in cruelty and raw horror. Even Angron, hateful as he was could find justice or pleasure in their living mutilated forms and impaled screaming faces. To cut them down, to behead them, to burn them to ashes, that was mercy he was forced to give if he wanted to retain his humanity.
For a moment, images of a future that never would be danced before the Deliverer’s closed eyes. He could have left them to their justly deserved fate, he could have become like them, a being able to twist flesh and brain to his demented liking. He knew in his heart he could have learned the lessons the Butchers had tried for centuries to learn. His enhanced physiology could withstand the agony and give it back with interest. Better to have been a raging beast, lost to the Nails, slave thinking himself free as he sought serenity in the midst of slaughter to have become such a lord of torment. When he would be finished, there would be no traces of the alien or their demented imitators on this world.
Still the Butchers’ skills had been critical to provide the broadcaster in his hand. It had not been easy, even if he doubted one of his mortal companions would have seen it that way. Nearly a decade of careful work to create something undreamt of by the guild of technicians that ruled in the shadows of the world was maddeningly slow considering his unnatural brain, but to a mortal it seemed so incredibly easy.
He was not sure, it would work. For all he knew it could seal his fate and send him in a rage he would awaken from. That was the reason he had dismissed everyone and passed the shimmering gate at the heart of the Butchers’ complex. He didn’t know what lay beyond. He didn’t care.
Now, once again he sat cross-legged in darkness.
This night was not broken by sound, not filled with anything than the old stench of the aliens he had fought. None but them had trod these paths since millennia and none but Angron and his armies would tread it again. His soul could sense the braying and the baiting of the Neverborn just beyond the dark walls, not a sound in the normal sense of the term. It irked him even if he instinctively felt they could not pass the borders.
They felt rather than sounded. They felt like the Nails ever biting, ever hurting even so long after he mastered them. Still he hesitated to turn the broadcast on, to test his invention, to deactivate them.
Was it weakness? Was it surrender to want to be free from pain after enduring it for so long? He had never known anything but the twin sensations of forced wrath and forced apathy implanted in his mutilated brain. He had struggled against them, as anyone would do. He had defined himself by this struggle, by this war more important even than the fight to escape bondage.
What would he become if he freed himself from pain at last? What would his unnatural mind conjure when not taken by the struggle. Would he become like those he fought? Something beyond the realm of common humanity, a monster of dread intelligence and terrifying prowess, a tyrant unable to be unseated by mortal men.
To press the button was to embrace the unknown. Not that he had a choice. He understood that his fellow gladiators could not win the war he had won against the Nails. To do so had required every fiber of his inhumanity.
He had thought a moment of Nailing noblemen and using them as tests subjects but had later judged the idea immoral. While there would be poetic justice in dispensing such fates, he had no desire to visit the same atrocities he had been a victim of, even on his old tormentors.
Long he hesitated on the paths of the Webway of the ancient Eldar. But finally he pushed the button and led the frequencies of his device deactivate the Nails. The absence of pain froze him for a moment before his wounded mind exploded in possibilities. While fighting the mutilation of his brain, he had managed to organize an army, invent a way to repair the damage done to his companions and himself. Now free of constraints his potential was ready to be unleashed in the galaxy at large.
In the darkness of the labyrinth between the stars, Angron smiled as he rose, ready to free his world of all chains.
He was anew washed in darkness.
This time that was not the dank recess of the arena’s jails. No this blackness had been alive, pierced by mad screams and frothing oaths gasped through clenched teeth. It had been full of the sound of cut flesh and the roar of machines. Full of bites, of pain, the air heavy with the threat of the lash and the brain groaning under the pressure of the Nails. Angron had loathed and loved this darkness with equal measure. It was home and hated confinement, place to rest and place to destroy.
His rage. His true rage not the mechanical abomination the pain-engines had tried to imprint in his living flesh, was born there. With the taking of Ermor, it had receded leaving him with nothing.
He had succeeded. Beyond the shimmering gate, the city was burning. He would never have thought to sally forth to put the high-riders out of their misery but there it was. The alien invaders they had invited in their very midst excelled them in cruelty and raw horror. Even Angron, hateful as he was could find justice or pleasure in their living mutilated forms and impaled screaming faces. To cut them down, to behead them, to burn them to ashes, that was mercy he was forced to give if he wanted to retain his humanity.
For a moment, images of a future that never would be danced before the Deliverer’s closed eyes. He could have left them to their justly deserved fate, he could have become like them, a being able to twist flesh and brain to his demented liking. He knew in his heart he could have learned the lessons the Butchers had tried for centuries to learn. His enhanced physiology could withstand the agony and give it back with interest. Better to have been a raging beast, lost to the Nails, slave thinking himself free as he sought serenity in the midst of slaughter to have become such a lord of torment. When he would be finished, there would be no traces of the alien or their demented imitators on this world.
Still the Butchers’ skills had been critical to provide the broadcaster in his hand. It had not been easy, even if he doubted one of his mortal companions would have seen it that way. Nearly a decade of careful work to create something undreamt of by the guild of technicians that ruled in the shadows of the world was maddeningly slow considering his unnatural brain, but to a mortal it seemed so incredibly easy.
He was not sure, it would work. For all he knew it could seal his fate and send him in a rage he would awaken from. That was the reason he had dismissed everyone and passed the shimmering gate at the heart of the Butchers’ complex. He didn’t know what lay beyond. He didn’t care.
Now, once again he sat cross-legged in darkness.
This night was not broken by sound, not filled with anything than the old stench of the aliens he had fought. None but them had trod these paths since millennia and none but Angron and his armies would tread it again. His soul could sense the braying and the baiting of the Neverborn just beyond the dark walls, not a sound in the normal sense of the term. It irked him even if he instinctively felt they could not pass the borders.
They felt rather than sounded. They felt like the Nails ever biting, ever hurting even so long after he mastered them. Still he hesitated to turn the broadcast on, to test his invention, to deactivate them.
Was it weakness? Was it surrender to want to be free from pain after enduring it for so long? He had never known anything but the twin sensations of forced wrath and forced apathy implanted in his mutilated brain. He had struggled against them, as anyone would do. He had defined himself by this struggle, by this war more important even than the fight to escape bondage.
What would he become if he freed himself from pain at last? What would his unnatural mind conjure when not taken by the struggle. Would he become like those he fought? Something beyond the realm of common humanity, a monster of dread intelligence and terrifying prowess, a tyrant unable to be unseated by mortal men.
To press the button was to embrace the unknown. Not that he had a choice. He understood that his fellow gladiators could not win the war he had won against the Nails. To do so had required every fiber of his inhumanity.
He had thought a moment of Nailing noblemen and using them as tests subjects but had later judged the idea immoral. While there would be poetic justice in dispensing such fates, he had no desire to visit the same atrocities he had been a victim of, even on his old tormentors.
Long he hesitated on the paths of the Webway of the ancient Eldar. But finally he pushed the button and led the frequencies of his device deactivate the Nails. The absence of pain froze him for a moment before his wounded mind exploded in possibilities. While fighting the mutilation of his brain, he had managed to organize an army, invent a way to repair the damage done to his companions and himself. Now free of constraints his potential was ready to be unleashed in the galaxy at large.
In the darkness of the labyrinth between the stars, Angron smiled as he rose, ready to free his world of all chains.
- ganonso
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:24 am
Re: Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
by ganonso » Wed Mar 16, 2016 1:02 am
Shaan 1
This story is true.
He’ll never know with certitude where his pod emerged from the Screaming Void. Was it just beyond the Oort Cloud where comets still set sail to the ends of the cosmos? Was it just outside the Eye that Never Closes, and weeps on the galaxy his tears of nightmares? Was it around a world claimed by one of his brethren, kin forgotten as he was, like them taken from his father side to be thrown in the sea of souls.
He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. Space is vast and life is short to explore it, even the life of a Primarch.
His pod floats in the darkness of space, cradled by loving night and pitiless cold, ready to break like an egg to let him try to breathe in vain, to let him slowly die in the void.
Why was he not deposed in a planet, even a hellish one? Why was he forsaken by the gods, left to die without ever living? Better fate would have been to crawl from putrid sewers and ransacked homes to bring terror to those who breathe. Better fate would have been to stay in the dark forests, under the cover of the trees, hunting without understanding, hiding without fear, killing without knowledge. Better fate perhaps would have been to be broken on the anvils of evil men, becoming a monster and a shame to his entire kin.
Better fate is his for something find him.
In full innocence he crawls from the ruins of his capsule to the cold surface a stone throne. It is called Iotaï, It Who Seeks and he, the eleventh of his brethren, the silent and the silencer was one of the many things it sought in the expanse of the void. Those who built it are not men, they never were men. For strange eons has this seat sailed the cosmos, traversing places a human mind can’t conceive and now its quest is over.
The child doesn’t die. Science or sorcery mightier than the Emperor’s own alchemies preserve his body from space. Its mission finished the throne take the long way back home.
He grows, without a name, without even conscious thought. How much time does this journey lasts? Years? Centuries? Eternities? He can’t say. His eyes burned red by the strange radiations of the throne are opened to the wonders of the universe and he doesn’t look away.
They follow comets in their icy cycles, bathing in the energies of their tails. He learns of the life of stars, witnessing their fiery birth and their fiery end. Planets are sometimes orbited for weeks and sometimes not even glanced. He sees the crucibles of worlds and their final destination. The throne promises him he will soon hear their voices, but the boy hears only the silence of the void. They travel in every direction, never once touching the eddies of the Warp. Of that realm, the boy will see only the impossible colors its storms cast on the universe.
The neverborn scream, he doesn’t hear them.
At last after an eternity and two It Who Seeks chooses a planet. Its passenger look like an adult now, blond and lithe, without ever knowing the taste of food, the touch of air on his skin or the company of sentient minds. He is naked, tanned by the radiations he was bathed in, as lithe and malnourished as a Primarch can be. Even with the strange powers of Iotaï no other passenger could have survived the trip to this world.
It is old, orbiting a dying star whose life was prolonged for millions of years past its prime. The nameless Primarch passes the ring of dead ships that surrounds it without understanding what he sees. It’s normal How a human, even an augmented one, even a golem sprung from the Emperor’s vats could recognize the sleek fighters of the K’nib, the barges of living metal of the Necront’yr and the ever-living ships of the First Race? The throne falls through the atmosphere below and for the first time in his life, He Who Was Found draw breath.
Its vehicle leads him to a great mountain from which an antediluvian city has been carved. The city is an idol, a temple to gods long dead, a humanoid shape still holding a censer above the clouds. He knows without knowing that this architecture is the goal of his journey.
The throne stops and the youths fall in their arms.
Who are they? The last and the first. The last degenerate descendants of the First Race. The face of the first is hidden by a yellow veil on a golden mask and his robes shine with so many colors they blind the Primarch. The second is veiled in black, his mask is of iron, or a metal much like it. The bright runes that cover their clothes die and darken as they transport their host.
What their masks hide? What slithers under their heavy robes? That is not to be described.
They’ve waited so long for this day, sustained only by ancient hatred. They want revenge, for their sunken empire that was a dream even when the Eldar ruled the stars, for their old domains now sullied and defiled, for the last of their kin died while trying to flee their last haven, their great gates sundered by She Who Thirsts’ birth scream. They wanted revenge for a very long time, even by their reckoning.
They take him to great machines hanging from the ceiling of their cyclopean rooms. They lay him on a stone shelf, with all the care due to the dead. Their magic or their science keeps him asleep. A mercy considering what is to come.
They flay his soul, exposing the core of absence in his heart, the silence where all have a voice. They spread it before them before studying it. They understand what the Emperor has wrought and they smile as a parent who see their child trying to imitate their craft.
They work without haste, singing and humming long forgotten melodies in a language none save them speaks in the universe. The iron-masked priest temper the core of absence in the Pariah’s own anti-soul. He makes it deadlier still, more hateful to life and death that it should be. He forges it into a spear, a choir of silence in the symphony of the Empyrean, a killing note able to slay even gods. He doesn’t know if that will be sufficient or just an inconvenience but the desire to strike back at the monsters that stand beyond every mirror is too much to him to care.
The golden-masked priest covers his colleague’s work. Even his sorcery cannot undo the Pariah gene and he doesn’t wish to do that. He simply reduces it to a manageable level, still stronger than any apprentices of Silence will be but it is par the course with the Emperor’s Sons. No, he simply ensures the Eleventh will have a presence going into the Warp after the extinction of his mortal coil.
His death will not stop his Silence.
A drugged chalice for the Four Brothers.
A poisoned apple for the Ruinous Powers.
An envenomed spear aimed at the hearts of the Chaos Gods.
Long is their work and taxing, extinguishing the last of their ancient strength, undoing the procedures maintaining their immortality. Vengeance is worth it. Vengeance is sweet in their inhuman lips and to die pursuing it means having no regret. They clothe him before the end. Clothe him and mask him and paint him to their alien fashion before enthroning him again and sending him out. They give him a name, the name they extracted from his memories: Shaan, the name his father had decided for him. They place it into his mind with a trove of knowledge they don’t know would be useful or not.
Still smiling under their masks they sit on their own golden thrones and surrender to the peace of the grave as they see Iotaï departs through the horizons. Shaan, now conscious, now in control, spare no gazes on the dead sea and forgotten jungles of the world he’s departing, fully absorbed in directing his vehicle towards life, towards light, towards danger.
Towards all that is not this planet orbiting a sun that should be ashes, lair of the last of the Urfolk.
This story is true.
He’ll never know with certitude where his pod emerged from the Screaming Void. Was it just beyond the Oort Cloud where comets still set sail to the ends of the cosmos? Was it just outside the Eye that Never Closes, and weeps on the galaxy his tears of nightmares? Was it around a world claimed by one of his brethren, kin forgotten as he was, like them taken from his father side to be thrown in the sea of souls.
He doesn’t know. He’ll never know. Space is vast and life is short to explore it, even the life of a Primarch.
His pod floats in the darkness of space, cradled by loving night and pitiless cold, ready to break like an egg to let him try to breathe in vain, to let him slowly die in the void.
Why was he not deposed in a planet, even a hellish one? Why was he forsaken by the gods, left to die without ever living? Better fate would have been to crawl from putrid sewers and ransacked homes to bring terror to those who breathe. Better fate would have been to stay in the dark forests, under the cover of the trees, hunting without understanding, hiding without fear, killing without knowledge. Better fate perhaps would have been to be broken on the anvils of evil men, becoming a monster and a shame to his entire kin.
Better fate is his for something find him.
In full innocence he crawls from the ruins of his capsule to the cold surface a stone throne. It is called Iotaï, It Who Seeks and he, the eleventh of his brethren, the silent and the silencer was one of the many things it sought in the expanse of the void. Those who built it are not men, they never were men. For strange eons has this seat sailed the cosmos, traversing places a human mind can’t conceive and now its quest is over.
The child doesn’t die. Science or sorcery mightier than the Emperor’s own alchemies preserve his body from space. Its mission finished the throne take the long way back home.
He grows, without a name, without even conscious thought. How much time does this journey lasts? Years? Centuries? Eternities? He can’t say. His eyes burned red by the strange radiations of the throne are opened to the wonders of the universe and he doesn’t look away.
They follow comets in their icy cycles, bathing in the energies of their tails. He learns of the life of stars, witnessing their fiery birth and their fiery end. Planets are sometimes orbited for weeks and sometimes not even glanced. He sees the crucibles of worlds and their final destination. The throne promises him he will soon hear their voices, but the boy hears only the silence of the void. They travel in every direction, never once touching the eddies of the Warp. Of that realm, the boy will see only the impossible colors its storms cast on the universe.
The neverborn scream, he doesn’t hear them.
At last after an eternity and two It Who Seeks chooses a planet. Its passenger look like an adult now, blond and lithe, without ever knowing the taste of food, the touch of air on his skin or the company of sentient minds. He is naked, tanned by the radiations he was bathed in, as lithe and malnourished as a Primarch can be. Even with the strange powers of Iotaï no other passenger could have survived the trip to this world.
It is old, orbiting a dying star whose life was prolonged for millions of years past its prime. The nameless Primarch passes the ring of dead ships that surrounds it without understanding what he sees. It’s normal How a human, even an augmented one, even a golem sprung from the Emperor’s vats could recognize the sleek fighters of the K’nib, the barges of living metal of the Necront’yr and the ever-living ships of the First Race? The throne falls through the atmosphere below and for the first time in his life, He Who Was Found draw breath.
Its vehicle leads him to a great mountain from which an antediluvian city has been carved. The city is an idol, a temple to gods long dead, a humanoid shape still holding a censer above the clouds. He knows without knowing that this architecture is the goal of his journey.
The throne stops and the youths fall in their arms.
Who are they? The last and the first. The last degenerate descendants of the First Race. The face of the first is hidden by a yellow veil on a golden mask and his robes shine with so many colors they blind the Primarch. The second is veiled in black, his mask is of iron, or a metal much like it. The bright runes that cover their clothes die and darken as they transport their host.
What their masks hide? What slithers under their heavy robes? That is not to be described.
They’ve waited so long for this day, sustained only by ancient hatred. They want revenge, for their sunken empire that was a dream even when the Eldar ruled the stars, for their old domains now sullied and defiled, for the last of their kin died while trying to flee their last haven, their great gates sundered by She Who Thirsts’ birth scream. They wanted revenge for a very long time, even by their reckoning.
They take him to great machines hanging from the ceiling of their cyclopean rooms. They lay him on a stone shelf, with all the care due to the dead. Their magic or their science keeps him asleep. A mercy considering what is to come.
They flay his soul, exposing the core of absence in his heart, the silence where all have a voice. They spread it before them before studying it. They understand what the Emperor has wrought and they smile as a parent who see their child trying to imitate their craft.
They work without haste, singing and humming long forgotten melodies in a language none save them speaks in the universe. The iron-masked priest temper the core of absence in the Pariah’s own anti-soul. He makes it deadlier still, more hateful to life and death that it should be. He forges it into a spear, a choir of silence in the symphony of the Empyrean, a killing note able to slay even gods. He doesn’t know if that will be sufficient or just an inconvenience but the desire to strike back at the monsters that stand beyond every mirror is too much to him to care.
The golden-masked priest covers his colleague’s work. Even his sorcery cannot undo the Pariah gene and he doesn’t wish to do that. He simply reduces it to a manageable level, still stronger than any apprentices of Silence will be but it is par the course with the Emperor’s Sons. No, he simply ensures the Eleventh will have a presence going into the Warp after the extinction of his mortal coil.
His death will not stop his Silence.
A drugged chalice for the Four Brothers.
A poisoned apple for the Ruinous Powers.
An envenomed spear aimed at the hearts of the Chaos Gods.
Long is their work and taxing, extinguishing the last of their ancient strength, undoing the procedures maintaining their immortality. Vengeance is worth it. Vengeance is sweet in their inhuman lips and to die pursuing it means having no regret. They clothe him before the end. Clothe him and mask him and paint him to their alien fashion before enthroning him again and sending him out. They give him a name, the name they extracted from his memories: Shaan, the name his father had decided for him. They place it into his mind with a trove of knowledge they don’t know would be useful or not.
Still smiling under their masks they sit on their own golden thrones and surrender to the peace of the grave as they see Iotaï departs through the horizons. Shaan, now conscious, now in control, spare no gazes on the dead sea and forgotten jungles of the world he’s departing, fully absorbed in directing his vehicle towards life, towards light, towards danger.
Towards all that is not this planet orbiting a sun that should be ashes, lair of the last of the Urfolk.
- ganonso
- Posts: 14
- Joined: Tue Jun 05, 2012 12:24 am
Re: Legends of the Primarchs (AU)
by Midgard » Thu Mar 17, 2016 2:35 pm
I really like where you are heading with this. Consider me subscribed.
My Amazon writer page - check out my novel and short stories!
MIDGARD - my melodic death metal band's new album is now on BandCamp
Twisthammer - alternate WH40K fan-project
MIDGARD - my melodic death metal band's new album is now on BandCamp
Twisthammer - alternate WH40K fan-project
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Midgard - Posts: 319
- Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2011 8:37 pm
- Location: City of Grey Flowers
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