'another day on this emperor forsaken planet' William commented as he gazes into the shadowy beyond.
The night sky of this world is filled with beautiful stars and cosmic clouds, something that he is unfamiliar too.
Not unlike the irradiated dust clouds the filled the skies of his home world Krieg, nor is it like the polluted skies of a hive world.
Such clear skies and the visibility of the celestial bodies in the sky made the Kriegsmen feel very out of place.
Behind him is the camp where the Servitors are busy working tirelessly on constructing the outpost he'll be stationed at.
A few of his fellow kriegsmen is stationed at the perimeter to keep a look out on the local wildlife.
Beyond the camp lays a feral world filled with exotic and mysterious creatures with strange abilities... according to the report that is.
It seems that a few centuries ago a rouge trader stumbled on this by accident, but it seems that nothing much came out if it.
As it seems that the rouge trader almost got killed when an expedition has gone wrong leaving him barely alive when his got rescued.
After that he developed a slight disdain for the planet and ordered the crew to never mention it again never came back again.
A dignity of a man weighs more then gold, nobody would want to remember pissing their pants.
Anyway the captain still filled a report about and while details of the planet is sketchy (due to the lack of exploration) there's however a few interesting details to note about.
Like giant flying lizards that breathes fire or monsters that could "swim" in the sand like fish do to water.
Beyond that there's little else.
This report naturally got buried under good old imperial bureaucracy until a random tech priest stumbles on the document while searching for something else.
After reading the report the tech priest naturally got interested sets up an expedition to set up a research outpost on the planet in question and study the creatures.
Now do note that the tech priest in question is not really all that high ranking so he could only afford a small ship to transport them onto the planet and set up a small research station.
As the place they're going to outside of imperial space witch mean it's quite bothersome to go back and fourth, and the tech priest isn't high rank enough to warrant a bigger ship with a bigger cargo hold or have the small to do multiple trips.
Naturally there's no skitarii as those are crazy ass expensive to be wasted on guard duty on some random rock at the middle of nowhere, instead he got cheap disposable guardsmen.
Of course due to cargo hold restraints with all the machinery, equipment and supplies needed to keep the base self sufficient, the amount of guardsmen he could bring couldn't be a lot.
This represented a problem to the tech priest as according to report the planet is very dangerous which would naturally need a large number guardsman to keep those dangerous creatures at bay.
The tech priest after looking at all the angles and crunching up all the numbers eventually settled on replacing all the nonessential workers with servitors and having the Death Korps serves as his retinue.
Now there's naturally Two important reasons for him choosing the Death Korps.
First, is that the Death Korps are born from Vitae Wombs meaning if any dies, he could just make another one instead of waiting for reinforcements half a galaxy away. Also as long as he has the Vitae wombs he could do more then just recover losses, he could also expand his security forces once he gets established on the planet.
Second, is that the Death Korps specialised in siege warfare which is quite suited for the situation at hand. They are serving as guard units for the base which is essentially pretty much like holding out a sieged by hordes of angry native wildlife.
Of course those Vitae Wombs would also require space which is why the tech priest decided to replace the normal crew for servitors.
With less mouths there would be less need for food modules, meaning more space to put other things.
Now then with that problem dealt with the Tech Priest is facing another problem.
That being the Death Korps has a number of issues but there really 2 main problems that plagues the tech priest.
The first is that the average Korpsman is very suicidal and wouldn't think much of throwing away their lives. Now under normal circumstances that wouldn't be a problem as he could just more of them but this isn't normal circumstance as they're pretty much cut from the rest of the imperium and the importance of the Planck isn't rank that high ether.
The second is that the Death Korps specialised in siege warfare. Now that's both an advantage and disadvantage as while they're great at holding positions and withstanding enemy attacks, but they're not that great at the offensive.
Trench warfare is a defensive warfare and the standard offensive tactic is pretty mass charging infantrymen and swarming the enemy defense with casualties are usually high.
Also they're not trained in jungle warfare,
While he could be replenished the casualties over time with the Vitae wombs but they couldn't be done instantly. They'll still have to bread, grown and train before they're ready for combat.
Not to mention that this is a research expedition meaning that the teach priest would require samples, meaning that at some point troops will be need to be sent to gather them.
One would imagine how horrible that will end up as suicidal troops that's trained with mass charging as a standard tactic from birth into a jungle filled with carnivores creatures... yeah the most brilliant plan ever.
And this is where William comes in, you see William not your average Death Korpsmen as he's the only survivor of a contingent of Korps that is accidentally deployed at the wrong battle zone in this case a jungle world.
You see it happened like this some some warpy nonsense forced the transport ship William was in to drop out of the warp.
At the same time nearby there's an imperial world dealing with a "minor" Xeno infestation (more like the original inhabitants).
So the local commander was like "about bloody time you guys get here, do you know how long we've been waiting for you bla bla bla..."
They were like "But sir we're not sent here..." tries to explain.
Commander "Awh Nonsense the Emperor obviously sent you here bla bla bla" ( some Imperium bureaucracies mumbo jumbo that basically translates to "I out rank you and your now the reinforcements)
And that's how he got to the jungle world.
Suffice to say that was a horrible idea and it ended up with him being the only survivor by the time the real reinforcements came.
It's not all bad though as he picked up a trick during his stay on the jungle world, which is why is chosen by the tech priest specifically for this mission.
His commanders is more then happy to give his away as they have no idea what to do with him.
And that's how he ended up in here.
William sighs one last time and glances at the beautiful night sky one last before retreating back to his quarters for the night.
—- story end——
That's the basic intro.
What do you guys think?