Chapter 1: Ashes of the Fall
The Cathedral was wondrous. Gold was used more often than wood and it shone bright in the evening sun. A glyph hung above the creamy marble altar, a great burst if sunlight forged from gold. This was the centre of the world for the people on this planet, these people who escaped from the Imperial Creed for ten thousand years.
Reclusiarch Ulysses of the Ashen Knights stepped through the shattered mahogany doors, his black and gunmetal armour taking on a warm tone in the yellow sunlight glinting off the gold. He had been in other Cathedrals, temples, chapels and places of worship on this planet, but none this size. The aisle was wide enough to drive a baneblade down without touching a pew, and the sanctuary could house a battle titan comfortably. Great columns of creamy marble rose periodically along the length of the nave, each as thick as a man was tall, and at the back of the sanctuary, behind the altar, rose a black marble font.
He stepped forward, and behind him his Primaris Marines filtered into the magnificent building. They cleared it quickly and professionally, dragging men in plain white robes and women in embroidered black gowns from the ancillary chambers and alcoves by their hair at first, and then they herded normal men and women out at the point of their bolt rifles when they started descending into the catacombs. They moved with cold, practiced efficiency, their guns trained on the kneeling civilians. Many of the citizens cried, or screamed, and one even roared accusations questioning the Astartes' parentage. That woman was met with the butt of a bolt rifle for her trouble.
The Reclusiarch strode up to the sanctuary, admiring the craftsmanship of the cathedral. It was much less oppressive than the Ecclesiarchy's halls of worship. There were no skulls, weeping angels, nor images of death. There were no oppressive chants. The gold was not tarnished and dulled with age. The atmosphere was not one of fear, and gloom, and hate. There were golden sunbeams and flowers, blossoms lining the balconies, and frescoes of angels and faces raised in adoration. Filtering out the noise of his men, Ulysses could hear soft singing to a gentle melody. The whole church looked lovingly maintained, the golds polished, the marble clean, the wood gleaming. This was a place of hope and charity. He cast his eye back at the people kneeling in the aisle. Aside from the obvious clergy, no man or woman wore better than peasant's clothes, and many wore ragged burlap. These were the planet's poorest, seeking sanctuary in their deity's arms. Unfortunately for them no god could stay the Imperium's wrath.
A flicker of movement caught Ulysses' eye, and his Absolver Pattern Bolt Pistol was in his hand in a heartbeat. From the northernmost apse came a small, hunched old man. He wore a great red gown, and his face was covered in a simple bronze mask. It was carved, Ulysses assumed, to be akin to the face beneath it.
"Is there anyone else here?" Ulysses asked, his voice a synthetic growl. An Ork Warboss had torn his bottom jaw off, and now the bottom half of his face was covered by a respirator and vocaliser worked into the likeness of a skull.
"No, my lord," the old man said, desperation in his eyes, "please, this is a place of peace! The war ended three days ago! We are unarmed!"
"Good."
Ulysses' pistol barked, and the priest's head exploded onto the wall behind him. In the nave, the Intercessors' bolt rifles roared, and the shrieks of the mortals' horror and pain echoed throughout the grand cathedral. "Reclusiarch," the vox crackled, "the catacombs are clear. Your orders?"
Ah, orders. Ulysses never expected that he would be the one to command the field of battle. He was the spiritual head of the chapter, the heart of their beliefs. But alas, the Lord-Marshal had fallen in battle thirteen months ago, and Ulysses was named interim Lord-Marshal until a new one could be appointed. "How old are the catacombs?" Ulysses asked, staring over the bloodshed pooling on the marble floor.
"Rough estimate is M32, my lord."
M32. Remarkable. Only a millennia after the Horus Heresy, and years after the Primaris Space Marines were first devised. The same time that Lord Guilliman was laid low by the traitor Fulgrim. It had endured for nine thousand years, while Ulysses and his Chapter had only been active for a hundred. His Chapter were little more than a teardrop in the rain next to this monument to peace and faith.
"Plant your demolition charges and then return to the surface," he ordered, taking one last look at the beautiful fresco. He turned to the exit and strode down the nave, overseeing his warriors burning books and scrolls, and planting melta-bombs on the marble columns.
"Why are you doing this?" A woman gasped, a pool of blood between her and her arm. Ulysses fixed her with his cold grey eyes for but a moment, silently assessing her. He then turned towards the sergeant.
"Sergeant Iskavan. Why is it speaking?"
"My apologies, my lord," the sergeant saluted sharply, fist over his primary heart, and then shot the woman through the eye, "it will not happen again."
"Take your squad to the pain deck for ten hours," Ulysses nodded, "and see that it does not."
The sergeant, suitably punished, nodded and returned to his duties. Before long the squad in the catacombs returned, and both squads exited the Cathedral. Ulysses nodded to his sergeants, and they thumbed their detonators.
The demolition charges detonated first, ripping apart the kilometres of tunnels underneath the cathedral and collapsing the nine millennia old burial site, and several sections of the building above even before the melta-bombs immolated the columns. With a sound akin to the wrath of a god, the roof collapsed, followed by the walls. The planet's records claimed it took two hundred years to build the Cathedral. It was destroyed in less than half an hour. The dust had not settled when Ulysses was aboard one of the Repulsors, on the move to the great library.
Such was the duty of the Ashen Knights: iconoclasm. Warriors went from building to building, door to door, dragging people out by the hair if need be, and destroying all religious and cultural symbols within. Resistance was met with brutality, and questions with red eye lenses and silence. Bodies lined the streets, and the gutters were full of swirling crimson blood. Conservative estimates placed the death toll in the hundred thousands, according to the vox. Cold, methodical reports from sergeants filtered in listening areas cleared, and a steady stream of updates filtered from the servitors listing deaths.
"Ulysses!" The vox crackled with distance. But even through the static corruption the whining, nasally voice was recognisable. The ministorum preacher.
"Reclusiarch to you, mortal," Ulysses said, his synthetic monotone carrying his threat well enough, "what do you want?"
"Why are you destroying the churches?"
"It is our duty."
"Can't you just destroy the symbols and the texts? The buildings are magnificent and with a little modification they may be suitable for the Adeptus Ministorum's usage!"
"Our duty is to destroy cultures that do not align with the Imperium's own. It is not our duty to bow and scrape before you."
"I will declare you Excommunicant Traitoris if you do not abide by our custom!" The preacher wailed. Ulysses could almost imagine the wobbling of that man's chins. "I will have you hunted down by the Adepta Sororitas! The Officio Assassinorum!"
"You can send whoever you wish, preacher, I will send them back to you in pieces. Be gone. And if you disrupt me or my warriors I will give them free reign to fire on you." The link severed. The library drew near. A great glass pyramid. Inside was the accumulated knowledge, lore and mythology of the world. It had to be destroyed.
"Hostiles front. Encountering resistance," the vox reported, the telltale thudding of bolter fire in the background, "locals employing psykers again."
Ah, resistance. It was true that this was a planet devoted to wisdom and peace, an abnormal number of of the population were mutants (around 30%). While the majority of those were monsters, approximately fifteen percent of the mutants were psykers that formed the ruling caste and armed forces of the world. The ruling caste had been forcibly removed from power already, and now the reaper's blade was to fall on the remnants of the military. The Repulsors sped toward the pyramid, cannons roaring. Great shards of glass fell onto the lines of psykers. Strange energies swirled around them, bolts of multi-hued fire burst off the hulls, blackening their steel.
"Lord Ulysses! Repulsor III reports it has boarders," the pilot called from his cockpit. Ulysses heard that too. He nodded to himself and climbed into the turret.
Flinging the hatch open, Ulysses was hit with the cool evening breeze. The pyramids were shining orange, and it looked like the city was burning down in the reflection. Fitting. He racked the slide on the Ironhail Heavy Stubber, the throaty clunk of the gun loading one of its massive rounds satisfyingly familiar. He swung to the right, and sure enough Repulsor III was crawling with mutant degenerates. Ulysses wanted to curl his lip. He would if he had lips. The Ironhail opened up, roaring The Emperor's fury at the boarders. They dropped onto the ground with wet thumps and chunks missing.
"Thank you Reclusiarch," the pilot voxed, his voice calm and measured. The Repulsors opened up at the psyker line, obliterating chunks of it at a time. The library fell within an hour, and within a week the Adeptus Administratum had arrived to claim their bounty. Within a month the world had become homogeneous with the rest of the Imperium, and within a year there was no one alive who remembered the native culture of their homeworld.
The Ashen Knights left after only a day, once they had built a statue of the Emperor Triumphant to give thanks for their victory.