Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 10

Torvopolis – At the feet of Lord Ixos

"My lord, there have been no launches from our orbital batteries. Ork dropships are making planetfall at will all across the eastern territories. Our atmosphere fleets are battling the foe. I am sorry to report that the star fleet is routed. Lord Hades has taken The Styx from the system," reported Veydra from her seat at the foot of Ixos' brass throne. She looked up at her master, shrouded in the gloom of the near empty chamber. The ancient hangings lay like forgotten memories amid the heavy shadows on the wall. Ixos was an extension of his throne, some grand unmoving embellishment done up in bold red and embellished with the open-maw device the World Eaters wore. Ixos and Ixos alone kept that symbol in the wake of the Bloodlords' takeover.

"Pilgrim figures?" the great man's tone was steady yet somehow thin. In her short service to the lord of the berzerkers, Veydra had come to think of Ixos as a man always on the verge of screaming yet who never raised his voice, like the only way to keep himself sane was to purge all emotion from his mind and his thoughts, thoughts unknown to all but Ixos himself. Not even Torvogorix dared to break the false calm cast across Ixos' visage to bring forth the gale within.

"Five million prepared full my lord."

"Let this order be known. The Pilgrims are to rally and to not engage. They are my reserves." Ixos clutched his augmetic fist in a power-armoured hand. With the screeching protest of gears and ripping tendons, he ground the augmetic painfully against the stump of his wrist. Old metal met scar tissue and opened it anew. With blood dripping down from his abused augmetics, Ixos opened his eyes.

"The orbital batteries do not fire," he whispered to himself. Veydra had read the fearful report of the mysterious attack on the orbital defenses. Ixos remained silent.

"Not the work of orks, no," Ixos calmly said to no one. "No, not orks. Something else." He ground the augmetic harder.

"My lord?"

"I wish for a summit with my brothers on this matter. I must discuss strategy. Announce the summons. Command also that my two Bloodlord phalanxes slaughter the orks as they will. They deserve a chance." With that, he ended his self-abuse and released his augmetic.

Ixos would not lead them. Ixos could not lead them. No Bloodlord had ever seen Ixos take up a blade alongside his own berzerkers and Bloodlord retinue. No one ever would again. Ixos was the voice and mind of war but he could no longer be the hand that offered blood to Khorne.

Standing up, Ixos reached down from his throne to feel the floor with his rod, forged of iron and topped with the symbol of Khorne.

Ixos the Worldeater, lord of the berzerkers, was blind.

Nova Vandalia Feeding Day 10

Shatterstone: headquarters of the Pilgrims on the Vandalian continent of Eastway

Follow these coordinates to the city of Shatterstone. You will find your enemies here.

Who were these people? Why did they call their masters the "Bloodlords" and wield armies of men who wore bones on their faces?

AW! Who the zog cares about crap like that? Axebrain was enjoying the sight! Hiding the blue sky were the rusty jagged hulks of his fleet. Ship after monstrous ship polluted the cloudy sky. Grinning, fang-toothed maws or nailed-together rams adorned every prow and fat guns bristled from every surface. From their round bellies dropped a black rain of whizzing, darting landing boats, each hammered together to look like a squig-shark. Big freaking huge masses of these metal sharks would deliver the boys right up to the humies.

Axebrain's own landing boat was beginning its lurching descent from the open hangar of his kroozer. It fell straight down and from his little porthole Axebrain spotted soft dark puffs of humie flak bursting up the air outside. To his delight, one of his landers went up in a blossom of fire. The crowded cabin cheered at the spectacle.

"Good lads!" Axebrain hollered, gesturing at the window with his famous choppa Butcher Teef,named for the diamond-hard chainblade edge the vicious axe had. "The humie boyz ought to be a hard contest! Least they got good dakka down there." The message his command kroozer had been sent was proving true. This part of the planet was infested with humie warriors. He'd followed the coordinates and sure enough…

Those grey fish space marines must've known what Axebrain really liked.

Down with the iron rain came Axebrain's lander. The thump of bursting shells sounded soft inside the cabin. The smoke-tailed meteors that some of his craft were being blown to only made the great warboss happier. He revved Butcher Teef and gave his chest a thump with a meaty green fist, causing armour plates to rustle against his huge form. With the craft pointing downward, some idiot's seat broke off the deck, sending the ork and his seat tumbling down past everyone on a vertical plunge to the front of the craft, 60 meters below. A few orks laughed, but Axebrain just spat. Laughing was for grots. Real orks didn't laugh, or tried not to.

A few more orks tumbled around when the craft did a swooping correction, flying abruptly level. Axebrain peeked out the port.

Broken pathways of glowing shells hurtled from the towers of some great ugly humie edifice that stretched from horizon to horizon way in the distance to the east. The land was totally flat, like it had been beaten flat by its masters. Thick clouds of ork craft plunged down from the thick grey clouds to join an already overwhelming swarm of thousands. Below them, columns of smoke rose from pyres that marked the crash of any craft that got blown up on the trip down. Six here, four there and ten way over there. Ha! The humie shells hadn't even gotten started on thinning out the orkish waves. When there was a quick bright flash to the west, Axebrain nodded in acknowledgement. Far away, his lesser bosses were making their own landing. Axebrain could imagine his fleet's roks flattening humie cities while attack craft swept overhead to slaughter the sky humies. Curse it! If only Axebrain had two bodies he could be here and there and fight in both battles. But stupid Gork and Mork only gave him one.

Sweeping over miserable humie shanties standing in rough rows, the ork craft swarmed on. Shellfire ripped more of them down. A few times, Axebrain glimpsed supersonic flyboyz in their red machines doing corkscrewing moves among the massed horde, or hosing the shanties below with bomms and dakka to get the dozens of hidden gun batteries which were the source of a lot of the flak. But with a second glance and those crazy boyz had flown out of sight.

"Almost at da wall, boyz!" Axebrain could see their target. Tall smokestacks stood in forests behind a big tall wall. Blocky stone buildings that bristled with odd looking spikes and shooty looking dakka crowded behind the wall like a WAAAAGH horde assembled in the field. Parts of the ramparts on the city wall burned. Some of the artillery towers that stuck out of the wall were already smoking like a giant's cigar. Plenty of ork craft made it through the humie dakka that was slicing up the air and had slammed down onto the ramparts. More still flew over to hurl themselves into the city streets. Axebrain had ordered his flyboy to hit the walls. So much to smash and humies by the thousand to guard it all. The grey fish humies were nice to point him here. Maybe Axebrain might not kill them all if he was feeling generous after this was done.

There was no warning to the cabin. The craft came to a bumping, grinding halt. The flyboy behind the wheel of this stupid boat slowed down a touch, found a spot of rampart that looked flat and touched gently down, or as gentle as he could manage. This craft would need a look at by a real good mek before it could fly again.

Aw, whatever. That wasn't worth thinking on. Killing time.

"All together lads!" Axebrain yelled as the pneumatic doors hissed open, letting in the clamor of yelling orks, explosions and gunfire that already engulfed the huge city ramparts. As one, the orks rushed out to join the fray, yelling aloud after their warboss' lead.

"WAAAAAGH!"

Human troops and howling boyz scrummed on the ramparts. The wild drone of ork craft shooting overhead to get to the city drowned out everything but the loudest yells and the gunshots. Whatever coherency these humies (who wore no skulls the way the fish boyz spoke of) was gone and gesturing commanders tried to bring them back together. Axebrain was a little disappointed when he swung his shoota like a club and cracked open the bowl helmet and skull of a humie who tried to charge him. These guys weren't too tough, even if dead orks did litter the ramparts alongside humie dead. They weren't a huge challenge to him and that was all that mattered.

Oh well.

With a yell, Axebrain dove with his boyz in amongst a neat wall of humies who had managed to get into a single rank to hose his boyz with dakka. A single swing of Butcher Teef hurled three of the weak gits screaming into the air and off the wall to the ground way down below. He had to duck to keep his head from being krumped when a low-flying craft shot over the ramparts.

"Watch where you're flying, ya git!" Axebrain yelled in spite before getting stuck in again. He got pissed off, but didn't slow down when a trail of bullets stitched across his armor. He felt warm guts spray across his face when a grenade blew up the ork in front of him. Axebrain coughed back a bit of dust when a cannon shot from one of the rampart's towers detonated next to him. Those cannon were more dead killy than the concealed guns, which slunk among the shanties outside, those grot-holes that weren't even worth protecting with this zog-off wall.

"After me boyz!" Axebrain shouted. He could see by now the ramparts belonged to the orks. The weak humies were quick to abandon them and scurry inside the archways leading into the towers. In the city itself, waves of ork landers were still slamming down. Flyboyz who'd been tailing in the rear were only just coming over the wall to crash-land into Shatterstone. The many-armed silhouettes of his deff dread war machines and masses of boyz threw up dust and smoke, swarming in between the towers and installations that this great tall wall had been built for. Crushing stampedes of boyz were breaking against little pockets of humie defenders, looking to Axebrain like moats of troopers ringed around some symmetrical fighting wagon from this distance and details were as fuzzy as the whole world looked after a few galleons of fungus beer. The boyz down below looked to be having a better time than him, way up here.

Axebrain didn't bother looking to see who joined him. It looked like the boyz were bored with the ramparts now and going at the towers, so it was hard to tell who was going where with everyone in the densely-packed river of boyz was running here and there. Crashing through the thronging boyz, those who didn't get out of the way were pushed down. He heard another gun in the tower ahead of him go off and a handful of boyz to his right were blown high into the air. The base of the tower poked up right from the wall and a rusty iron door tried to bar his way. A few grenades fell from small slits high up on the tower and popped around him when Axebrain carved open the door with a single sparking swing from his axe.

Automatic dakka fire came at him from the opening he'd made. Orks who'd not been killed grunted and died from the human dakka that sprayed out. Axebrain hosed the inside with his shoota then bodyslammed the door, turning the long tear he'd cut into a full on breach. The big door clanged open, making as much noise as a wrestling meganob. Axebrain and a wave of bloodied warriors rampaged into the nice neat line of young troopers who were trying to hold them back. The massacre in the cramped entry chamber was typically orky and when it was done, the mess the humies had been reduced to could've killed them several times. Axebrain knocked Butcher Teef against the wall and watched chunks of dark stuff dislodge and fall from the spiked saw teeth. He grunted and led the way through the tower until he came to the brown iron ladder going up to the gunz way up in the tower.

Axebrain wouldn've climbed right away, but in the grey stone room the ladder was in, there was a wide ramp going down, wide enough to drive Boarhead's biggest battlewagon safely down without knocking off any of the banners atop it. Axebrain peeked at the ladder and imagined the unarmed gun crews that awaited, then peeked at the ramp. He glanced back and saw a wall of stinky ork warriors with more squeezing their way in from behind.

"Up the ladder or down the ramp boyz!" Axebrain called. He turned about and stomped down the ramp, leading a flashflood of hulking green brutes into wherever the zog this dusty, dimly lit stone place led to. Down here, the chaos outside couldn't be heard. He felt like he was running down a corridor of his kroozer…GAH! He'd been on his ship way to freaking long. No more cramped, crowded hallways and grot-piss light fixtures!

The ork leader stomped into a wide torchlit hall that had been fitted with bigger-than-life iron statues of goofy looking animals that kinda looked like those daemon things that sometimes found their way aboard his ship when deep in the warp.

"Khorne. Khorne. Khorne," whispered an assembly of red-hooded humies sitting inside, almost filling the whole place. In a doorway at the opposite end stood a trio of the lord of Nova Vandalia.

These chaos space marines wore armour the colour of a dirty, unoiled gun that had rusted a bit. Their too-big shoulders were a fresh scab colour and bore a symbol that looked like a spiky wheel with eight points in the middle of two crossed spears done in black and grey. Their helmets had lights in their eyelenses that made their wearers look as mad as a warboss that had been insulted. Little horns poked out of their armour in random places but each man woe metal bull's horns on his helmet. Two had boltguns like the fishy boyz, but the middle had an even bigger boltgun. Axebrain let himself grin. This would be worth it.

The Bloodlords let fly before the first ork could roar in aggression. Bolts chewed through the packed ork ranks, killing a dozen at a time. Axebrain felt impacts against his armour and felt a sharp burn in his lip when a bolt exploded against his face. The return from the orks bounced off the three giants. Stray dakka brained chanters here and there but they didn't come here to shoot up guys in hoods!

Axebrain hurtled towards them, taking sweeping blows to cut down waves of Khorne worshippers. He didn't even notice some of the bodies rise back up. Some orks broke ahead of him and were shot down. The boltgun guys paused to reload but that guy with the bigger shoota didn't pause at all. A short but painful string of bolts hit Axebrain. This was getting annoying.

"Killing march!" one of the Bloodlords snarled. The three stepped forward, firing steadily. Four more of the big metal humies fell in behind them, shouting profanities as they killed. Axebrain spat out a tooth after another bolt hit him in the face.

That was it.

"WAAAAGH!" Axebrain sprinted into the hail of bolts. Bits of his armour disintegrated under punishing hits. Putting the momentum of his charge behind it all, Axebrain came at the Bloodlords with a single mad swing from above. His target, the lug with the big shoota took a sprinting leap back, which might've saved him from someone slower. Axebrain overtook his retreat and caught him at the top of the head, right between those pretty little horns.

Butcher Teef groaned and gurgled and sparks made a lovely inferno between the blade and the helmet. The hard blow came to a near stop, but Butcher Teef sunk slowly, oh slowly into that big humie noggin of his. When it reached the mouth grill of the helmet, the slowly sinking axe finally stopped. Axebrain took the motionless Bloodlord by the neck and yanked him off Butcher Teef. Letting go of his kill, the Bloodlord crumpled to the floor.

About him, the others had caught up the humies, who had fallen back to the doorway. With the walls protecting their sides, they slaughtered orks that came up to them with wicked little blades they had sheathed. They were walking back now, with bleeding orks lying in a carpet marking where they had been. By Gork, they could fight! Their hands moved so fast to all the right places. Axebrain had seen much bigger choppas kill less easily than this. The warboss himself rushed forward to have a go, pushing a dying ork out of the way. Butcher Teef parried a whining chainaxe. The ork to Axebrain's left tried to take advantage of the opening, but fell, fixed by a chainsword. Axebrain stepped back, let Butcher Teef roll back to take a cunning underhanded swing at a Bloodlord's chin. This too was deflected.

CRACK!

Axebrain punched the Bloodlord in the face. The shocked chaos warrior staggered back. Axebrain bowled through the hole in the line, with others close behind.

"You have awoken us, ork," the big crazy humie cursed in a sharp tone when orks surrounded his brothers. Axebrain took the Bloodlord by the neck and in a flick of his hand, sent the Bloodlord's chainaxe to the floor, his hand still holding it. Throngs of orks were surrounding each Bloodlord. Hammer blows from crude ork weapons crashed again and again onto them. The warriors of chaos continued their slaughter. Their armour became dented, their joints bled and their eyepieces shattered. The red glow faded. But they kept it up. The first of them fell dead at last when nine brutal chops from a two-handed choppa brought a river of bright gore squirting from his throat, before the tenth one made the man's head roll back and fall to the floor. Each other Bloodlord died in a similarly unsubtle way, leaving a mound of ork bodies around him to mark his death place.

"You lose humie," grunted Axebrain. "Now, top to down or left to right?" He held the blade of Butcher Teef to the chaos marine.

"Kill me. There will be more of us. There will always be more of us. You cannot end the eternal march," hissed the doomed man. "The phalanxes of Torvopolis are on the warpath. Your blood will honour the warp. Every drop of blood…will honour the gods."

"Boss!" an ork behind Axebrain cried in alarm.

"Honour the gods," cackled the warrior. He moved suddenly to break the warboss' grip. Axebrain slammed him into the floor and cut him in two. The fight wasn't over.

Axebrain saw horned daemons leaping about the room, roaring more fearsomely than any squig and cleaving heads off with their big flashy blades. The hooded chanters all lay dead, with telltale ork brutality messing up their flesh. Before his eyes, Axebrain saw a daemon wriggle its way out of an open wound like an orkling from a pod, growing bigger and grasping the sword that burst into existence right by its waiting hand. This was just messed up.

"WAAAAGH!" Axebrain chopped at one of the daemons. He'd fought them before (thanks to some careless shipboard meks) and wasn't surprised when the daemon burst into red flame and was gone as it fell in two. They were skinny but damn they were good with their swords. This nasty gathering was making more of his boyz dead than the Bloodlords!

"You will burn in the warp, ork, as all reality will."

The unearthly voice spoke as though two mouths were on either side of his head. Every ork looked about in puzzlement. A pillar of red flame erupted from the middle of the room and the speaker stepped forth from the inferno, crushing dead humies as he strode forward. This Bloodlord wore a black robe and his nicely horned helmet, curiously, had three eyes. What a nice trophy it could make.

"You are running out of bodies, fool," the newcomer taunted. He lifted a glowing handgun and shot Axebrain in the leg. Axebrain's armour melted and his leg gave way. With a room of dead orks about him and the last remaining daemons engaged with the last remaining orks, Axebrain realized he was spent. Damn these humies and their tricks! No fair, bringing warp daemons out here! Them and their stupid giant overlords trashing up his mobs. Hundreds of boyz, just to pound seven or so big humie Bloodlords to death and mess up a few handfuls of daemons.

"How did you know we were here?" the newcomer demanded.

"Shut it," Axebrain barked. The Bloodlord's hand glowed with darkness. Oh, so a weirdboy.

"I am about to set you alight. If you fear pain, you will speak," the Bloodlord weirdboy whispered. Six daemons remained. The remaining orks were taking off. "I have known about your childish fleet ever since you entered this part of space. You changed courses so suddenly. Why?"

"Sent here by a buncha other humies who dress like you. But less stupid looking horns. More tasty looking fish. That'n skulls."

"Fish, ork?"

"Aye, fish. Wot, yer gods plugging your ears or you can't hear me with dat helmet on?"

"Jest all you want ork. Tell me who."

The weirdboy was bowled over. A great green critter with spikes on its back had pounced on him, leaping further than the fittest bouncing squig. Axebrain growled, lunged back to his feet and let the daemons have it! Butcher Teef made two of the daemons go poof. In the chaos, he heard the Bloodlord weirdboy's energy gun go off. The critter that jumped on him went limp. Though it had been shot in the gut, there was a smoking hole in its spine. A second shot obliterated its face.

"Damn you Imperial bastards," cursed the weirdboy.

"Die traitor."

The weirdboy was fixed through the neck by a jagged lance. His pistol fell and the warrior felt quiet. All the better. Axebrain wouldn't have to listen to his annoying voice anymore. His killer was one of the grey space marine boyz. Where the frick had he come from? He carried a lance and a slugga hung from his side. Two little black fins poked up from his backpack. Behind him, a few more grey marines waited in the shadow, their black eyes fixed on the warboss and their pistols drawn. Each warrior but the marine in the room with Axebrain rode one of the green critters with spines. Whatever they were, they had scales and tails and white markings like the ones the fish marines wore.

"Come at me then," Axebrain dared, spitting. He took a step forward but his leg failed again and he fell to his knees. With a curse, he tried to shoot the marines, but his gun was dry.

"We are here to keep you safe. I represent my lord Incurio, who sent you the location of Shatterstone. We hope you find this place to your liking," the marine spoke.

"Darn right humie!" Axebrain heard a few heavy footfalls behind him. A fresh mob of his boyz had just come in. A growl from Axebrain got them to stop. "Now buzz off! How many of you's is here anyways?"

"I cannot tell you."

"I don't need no help, if that's what you's giving!" Axebrain grunted. He tried to keep up his strength. His war wounds were real bad now. He'd need a dok right quick. "You've done right by me pointing dis place out, but I doesn't like da sight of you's. Bug away before I change me mind about our deal! And hands off me plunder!"

"Like our master promised, the planet is yours."

The marine wiped his lance off on the wall. The Imperial humie stood unguarded before a glut of orks, but no one moved. For a second, Axebrain thought they'd finish him off. He was the warboss of the whole WAAAAGH!

With some unheard signal, the space marines turned away and headed back into the darkness. Behind the doorway. There was a beep and some kind of mine they'd planted went off. The blast burst apart the doorway and a shower of rubble blocked the way after them.

"Hur, prob'ly think they's too good to smash this planet on their lonesome," mused Axebrain. With a start, he looked at his boyz. "Well, you gonna start a farting contest? Go get me a bleeding dok!"