The tall, gaunt graying man hissed in pain as he navigated the tipoff his index finger along the long, crater like scar that stretched across his chest. It was a gift from the Rebels on Rynnsworld. It had been three hundred years since the a Ork Waaagh had ravaged the planet only to be stopped by the Adaptues Astrates, but the sacrifice of the Emperors Children rang hollow when the world burst out in rebellion. They called themselves the "Dasat Crows" after a Pilgrim that was killed by the Orks during their assault of Rynncity.
One of the Crows, had forced a bayonet through his ribs, just below his heart. A gust of wind against the blade or a second of delay from either of them and the bayonet would have struck him in the heart and he wouldn't be looking at himself right now.
Wiping the mask of vapor from the mirror exposed a series of jagged cuts under his right arm where blood sucking thorns had punctured his overcoat and drank deep as a Ork patrol passed them in looted tanks. He did not wince then, back when he was young and eager to serve the Emperor among his comrades.
He hadn't lost his body though, in his thirty five years of service he still kept his body toned through marching and drills to assure that when he marched up to deaths door he would not be tired, he refused to let himself soften. The Atomic death world of Krieg took men of stone and beat them, hammer and anvil into the masked men of Iron.
Turning the shower off stopped the warm fountain of water and left him facing himself in the mirror, isolated and cold. Krieg was a wasteland, all the planets he had survived on had been wastelands that required him to wear a rough, pointed gasmask that connected to a respirator that would be strapped to his stomach over a grey coat. The only mask less men he had seen in his service had been dead men, masks salvaged and bodies left in the mud, slowly being trodden into the earth by the Death Korps boots, marching ever onwards.
He was, unremarkable to say the least. A few shaving scars dotted his cheeks around tattered skin that resembled the surface of the moon, a tell tale sign of radiation damage. His two small, bronze ringed eyes were crowned by his hard, wrinkled brow with dusty brown, silver speckled eyebrows. Those eyes had tracked Ripper Swarms across sun worn, ash coated plains, followed a Artillery shells to the walls of Verdagon through its amber sky beside the Emperors Own... the eyes of a Guardsmen before a Las-bolt struck him in the gut... his Las-bolt.
He turned and dressed quickly, eager to brush away the darker parts of his service He knew his heresy as soon as his heel touched the ground he repeated to himself as he pulled up his black combat pants with crimson seams on the sides. They all did he said unconvincingly to the mirror. Ten minutes later his slim frame was made robust by a black undercoat, laced with golden finery and fitted with carapace plates, heavy and restrictive overcoat colored in the disincentive black that gave him the aura of authority that he and his, dotted with gold and red epaulets and framed with a crisp scarlet collar and cuffs. He pulled on his buffed and shiny black combat boots, leather belt with Las-Pistol and Sabre scabbard He shouldn't have stepped out, he knew what I had to do. He donned his tan colored mask and connected it to the Respirator he had strapped to his chest, feeling calm as it began to tick over with each breath. Adjusting the dented silver gorget -awarded to him for his long service- which had saved his throat from a ricocheting Ork slug the day he was given it, it still cut into his neck like a noose, which he always thought was fitting considering the golden skull on his cap and the general motif of death on his uniform.
He glanced back into the mirror and straightened himself up like a clockwork toy solider as the dull ticking of his respirator faded into the back of his mind. The man that looked back wasn't scarred or pale, he was black and pristine, a model for every Guardsmen to aspire too.
"Presentable" said Colonel-Commissar Hoat of the 89th Death Korp of Krieg as he turned towards the door "this should be enough to keep the Aristocrats away"