Chapter 7G
While a tenuous peace reigned on Alpha Plus Sanctuary, the same could not be said for the rest of the Maelstrom. The violence was only increasing as the people of chaos became steadily more desperate.
On the Slaaneshi Daemon Agri World of "Wetlectable", peace was but a distant memory for the poor inhabitants.
Chaos peasant Miss Yummy Tongue hid fearfully behind the trunk of a penis tree as gunfire filled the daemonic cock forest, with the rest of her fellow farmers cowering behind trees of their own.
The Khorne mutant hordes were shooting Slaanesh worshippers on sight, even peasants like poor Yummy!
The more masculine of the indeterminate gender peasants returned fire at the Khorne forces with las pistols, while the more feminine cowered in terror. Gender was a quaint concept on Wetlectable, the local inhabitants were born with both penis and vagina, both organs fully reproductively functional. The locals decided their own gender pronouns, and could change preferred pronoun on a whim, it really was little more than a philosophical concept.
The peasants were sperm farmers, stimulating the giant daemonic penis trees and collecting the protein rich results of said stimulation. Each tree easily filled a bucket with each discharge, giving the peasants a true surplus of food.
Wetlectable didn't just have penis trees, it also had pussy wells which produced copious wet fluid when stimulated, which was potable as a water source. As well as the pussy wells, there were breast hills that produced milk, and their were other land features too. The planet was a major agricultural hub, exporting huge amounts of milk to other planets. They had tried exporting semen too, but for some reason the other planets were rather reluctant to eat it...
The entire planet was made out of flesh, in a wide spectrum of different skin tones that varied from place to place. In places were vast tangles of pubic hair. In other places were gentle meadows of sensuous head hair. But mostly it was just hairless bare skin.
With the current fuel shortages, normal agriculture could not be properly mechanised, and this was causing food shortages across the Maelstrom. Places like Wetlectable that didn't need mechanisation to produce food were now the only thing keeping most people fed, and this made various factions fight viciously to possess them.
The penis trees were spraying out blood in huge gouts as enemy weapons fire bit into them. With the pressure of the blood inside dropping, the penis trees could not maintain their usual erections, and were becoming floppy and drooping down.
Yummy screamed as her tree became fully flaccid, still pinned down by weapons fire!
This was so horrible!
***...
On the Tzeentch Daemon World of Finigans Fangdangling Factor (a mathematics joke), the evolution farmers were hard at work solving riddles to get the daemons of Tzeentch to evolve their crops into highly nutritious food. Each riddle had nine possible answers, 8 wrong answers that resulted in the crops being poisonous, 1 right answer that made the crops edible.
Finigans Fangdangling Factor was a gas giant, with islands of crystal floating supernaturally in the air. The air was technically not breathable, but in the supernatural warp saturated Maelstrom the air became breathable if you simply HOPED hard enough that it was.
Countless trillions of people lived on Finigans Fangdangling Factor, with multiple layers of islands floating above and below each other, providing a surface area hundreds of times the surface area of Terra.
The place had no need of mortal fuel, the warp powered everything here. Trillions of people feverishly hoping, solving mad logic puzzles to meet their daily needs, forever hoping and scheming to outwit their environment.
Disks of Tzeentch provided the primary means of transport here. To use a disk, you simply had to hope that one showed up, and it would appear in a blue flash. The disk would then ask you a logical riddle. If you got the riddle wrong then the disk would eat you, if you got it right the disk would transport you and your cargo and/or passengers to where you wished. (If you refused to answer the riddle the disk would get pissed off, but leave without harming you).
The crystal islands were covered in constantly mutating plant life, forever evolving in a never ending cycle. Daemonic Horrors of Tzeentch tended these plants, directing the mutations, and with a correctly answered riddle they would make these plants bear edible fruits, vegetables and grains.
It helped to be hopeful on Finigans Fangdangling Factor, the more hope you had, the easier the logic questions would be. If you were supremely hopeful enough, then the daemons might even give you the things you wanted for free without a riddle at all.
Finigans Fangdangling Factor might have no problems from the fuel shortages, but the rest of the Maelstrom was unhappily making it their problem by invading their planet and stealing their food.
Right at this very moment, an army of Red Corsairs Chaos Space Marines were sitting in a fleet up in orbit, demanding 99 percent of all Finigans Fangdangling Factor food production this entire month as a tribute to Huron Blackheart.
This was extremely irritating to the Tzeentch psykers who ruled the planet, who had thought that that food might be better served feeding the people of the planet. Finigans Fangdangling Factor did not produce more food than they needed, and 99 percent of the population would starve if they obeyed the Red Corsairs demands.
When the psykers carefully and logically pointed out why it would be difficult to carry out the demands, the Red Corsairs made it a lot simpler, by killing the psykers one by one until the surviving psykers decided that maybe they could hand over the food after all...
***...
On the body choked Khorne Daemon world of Kaplamo, the levels of violence were even more than usual as warbands battled each other over the few remaining fuel supplies on the planet, namely the brains and fat of the dead.
Wretched slaves dug frantically through the corpses that formed endless dunes across the planet, looking for any fatty material that could be rendered down into a viscous oily substance that a suitably rugged engine could run on.
The pickings were slim. Most of the old flesh had rotted away, and the population was too decimated to provide enough new cadavers to sustain using human fat as a fuel source.
The planet had been a mighty chaos hive world, of constant but manageable civil war. Once it had been home to billions, had had mighty diesel generators powering synthetic food synthesisers. Oil had formerly been so cheap from Tazakeo Prime, so abundant...
Those billions were now dead, maybe a few million remained at most.
The hives had all invaded each other, thinking the other hives had fuel. Without fuel for vehicles the war had been all infantry on foot, with nothing to eat but the battlefield dead, without functioning logistics.
Infection and hunger had killed more men than the enemy had, billions dropping down dead as they marched across the body littered battle plains that had witnessed daily battles for thousands of years.
The hives had wasted their strength invading each other, only to find that the others were as fuel starved as they were.
The survivors had then turned to living off the dead to survive, enslaving the living to dig up the dead from thousands of years of battle, desperate for anything that could be used to power the food synthesisers.
Even the dead were running out now, the planet was stripped bare, totally gutted of anything oily or fatty. Everything else of value was already being traded to the ships of "Wong Petrochemicals", who were rapidly emptying the planet of all gold and other valuables in exchange for a pitiful amount of gaseous hydrocarbons.
The planet Kaplamo was dying. Soon it would be dead.
***...
On the Ork planet of Smashabashastompa in the Maelstrom, the chaos human gits were invading the planet in endless waves, trying to steal all the oil squigs!
The Evil Sunz clan of Orks fought valiantly against endless numbers of frothing mutant hoards with las guns.
The mutants were almost all on foot, eating the squigs and mushrooms from the Ork farms, making the Ork boys get hungry.
The human mutants were laying anti vehicle mines around them as they went, stopping the Ork vehicles from doing what they did best. The mines were blowing up vehicles faster than the Mechs could build new ones, and the Orks were reduced to fighting on foot.
The mutant hordes were capturing squig farms, making off with the priceless oil squigs that fuelled the Ork vehicles. The few vehicles the Orks had were now running out of fuel from all the squigs being stolen, and the Ork boys were getting desperate now.
The Orks put up a good fight, but on foot against endless fusillades of las guns, the Orks were getting mown down like grass.
The Orks knew when they were beat, and were now evacuating the planet in their warships, heading off to fight the Imperium instead.
***...
The Imperium planets around the Maelstrom were in a bad way. Orks were migrating en masse out of the Maelstrom, as were the Hrud and other dangerous xenos. On top of this, chaos raids on Imperial fuel supplies had increased a hundred fold recently, with every single fuel tanker that flew anywhere near the Maelstrom being attacked.
The pirates were far more aggressive than usual, refusing to back off even when engaged by Imperial Navy escorts.
The entire situation was escalating by the day, with the lack of fuel tankers reaching destination causing fuel riots, and decreased Agri World harvests without fuel for farm vehicles. This reduced harvest was causing food shortages, which in turn caused even more riots and civil unrest, destabilising the entire region.
The great chaos petrochemical war was escalating, and rapidly causing violence to ripple outwards in ever greater circles. It had grown beyond the Maelstrom now, it was now becoming one of the deadliest wars the surrounding region had ever seen since the Badab War itself!
***...
The planets of the entire Badab Sector were fighting for their lives in the face of a full scale Ork Waaagh. The Orks were migrating out of the Maelstrom by the billions, displaced from their original planets by invading chaos forces.
The orbit around the hive world of Eshunna was a deadly blaze of exploding ships and flying shrapnel as the Imperial Navy ships of Battlefleet Badab fought against rabid Ork kill cruisers and attack ships.
Down on the planet below, the population was rioting from lack of food and fuel, and the Imperial Guard was hard pressed to both suppress the riots and fight off the invading Ork ground forces.
To make matters worse, orbital debris from the space battle was raining down on the surface like meteorites, huge cathedral sized chunks of metal gothic architecture from imperial ships and the rusty mangled wreckage of Ork ships.
It was all around a bad situation. No quick victory could be achieved here, just months of unbelievably bitter fighting for either side to defeat the other. The planet would take years to fully recover, even if the Imperium won, and billions of innocent people would be hurt by this fighting.
Women, kids, the elderly, all of them would be caught in the middle of this fighting. It was war, and war absolutely sucks.
***...
With all of this region spiralling out of control, Alpha Plus Sanctuary was becoming a little eye of safety in a sea of violence. This was due to a variety of reasons. Partly it was because Wong Petrochemicals was giving gas to the Red Corsairs in tribute. Partly it was because of the massive mercenary armies that protected the planet.
Mostly however it was because of Egg Sevenson, one of the most dangerous psykers in this age of the world.
Some say that Egg was an Alpha Plus Psyker, but this pissed off countless frothing rabid pedantic fanboys who endlessly whine about "only the Emperor is Alpha Plus". To avoid all these pedants complaining about it, let's just say that Egg Sevenson is an extremely powerful psyker (happy now?).
Egg was powerful, REALLY fucking powerful. The most powerful surviving psyker of her entire generation. THAT is why she could be Queen of an entire planet at such a young age.
The planet was her sanctuary, a place of safety for other extremely powerful psykers fleeing the inquisition. Powerful secrets protected the planet from outside invasion, powerful rubrics of befuddlement prevented hostile forces from finding the place in the warp.
Down in the deepest dungeons under the Royal palace on Sevenson Island, one of the most fell creatures on the planet languished in a daemonic binding circle.
Her name was TigerLily Muhammad Smith Sevenson, the dreaded Daemon Princess of Tzeentch, wife of Chaos Lord Luke Sevenson, and Mother of Egg Sevenson and Violet Smith.
It had taken the deaths of billions and the full power of both Egg and Nurgle to bind TigerLily like this. It had taken so much terrible power to subdue her terrible might.
TigerLily was now completely bound to the will of Egg Sevenson, compelled to obey her foolish daughter for all time by the most powerful of blackest magics.
TigerLily had formerly been permitted limited freedom to wander the planet, but TigerLily had betrayed Egg, and set in motion a terrible plan that led to Egg suffering terrible degradation at the hands of a greater daemon of Slaanesh, as an act of psychotic vengeance on the daughter who so humbled TigerLily.
The terrible violation Egg had suffered had filled TigerLily with vengeful satisfaction, but it had cost TigerLily what little freedom she had once had.
Nowadays TigerLily was bound into the rubrics that protected the planet, compelled to use her knowledge of fate to predict who was hostile and to fuddle their navigators. It was boring and lonely, and she was in constant torment from powerful spells of punishment, but TigerLily was compelled to obey.
The Maelstrom was at war. Such wonderful war. TigerLily was working harder than ever to befuddle invading armadas of ships. The entire Maelstrom coveted the fuel resources of this planet, and TigerLily was hard pressed to hold so many invaders at bay.
A few like the Brotherhood of Toth had not been hostile, merely desperate to beg peacefully for fuel. These had been let through. TigerLily was loyal to Egg not the Wong family, the pair fighting each other without hostility to Egg did not concern TigerLily.
Egg thought that she was so clever, locking TigerLily away like this. Egg thought that she was safe now, but Egg was a fool.
TigerLily still had her precognitive powers of seeing the strands of fate. TigerLily still had her fiendishly psychotic mind. And TigerLily was able to move her hands inside this binding circle.
It had taken months for this exact moment to arrive, for this exact moment that would let TigerLily escape this trap.
At precisely the right moment, TigerLily clapped her hands once. That's all, just a clap. That's all it took.
***...
With the slight shift of air caused by the clap, a very slight change in air movement took place. It rippled out in a chain reaction, the sound wave echoing through the rock of the dungeon walls, vibrating the atoms very slightly.
These vibrations perfectly coincided with a number of other sound waves traveling through the rock at this exact moment, very slightly changing the motion of the sound waves. The new change in motion slightly vibrated just the right atoms in the wall to cause a very slight quantum scale event.
These wobbled atoms slightly wobbled other atoms, causing a very slight change in the Brownian motion of water molecules in the damp bedrock.
For a long time one small change triggered another small change, cumulatively altering the course of millions of tiny fates. A chain of events caused a small bubble of methane in the turd mud of Sevenson Island shoreline to bubble up to the surface half a second earlier than it otherwise would have.
This bubble caused a daemonic fly to take off from the mud half a second earlier than it otherwise would have. The flight of this fly caused other flies in the air to slightly alter their trajectories to avoid hitting the fly. This one fly then subtly altered the patterns of movement of the fly swarms that day.
***...
Rat Abernathy's luck finally ran out when a fly swarm was in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, blinding her visibility for about a second.
In the space of that one second Rat managed to have a mid air collision with another aircraft in her squadron, wrecking both aircraft! The two wrecked aircrafts than by freakish coincidence managed to crash into two additional aircraft, which then managed to hit TWO MORE aircraft!
In the space of a few seconds the entire squadron was taken out, and spinning out of control to crash into a container ship owned by the Word Bearers Chaos Space Marine Legion.
The aircraft exploded on impact, sinking the ship, and Rat was sent flying by the explosion to plop into the sewerage, only still alive because she was undead and almost impossible to kill.
Before the ship sank, it transmitted a distress call, saying that it had been kamikazed by an entire squadron of Wong Petrochemicals Air Force Hell Talons.
Rat swam to the shore of a nearby Island as the Word Bearers started conducting retaliatory strikes against Wong Petrochemicals gas rigs. Within the space of two hours the two sides were openly at war with each other.
***...
Egg might be powerful, but she could not be in two places at once.
The Word Bearers were summoning Daemons of Tzeentch in multiple theatres, all at the same time, including a pair of greater daemons of Tzeentch, one on each side of the planet. Egg managed to apprehend one of the two in time, but the second one had time to do something truly awful.
The greater daemon of Tzeentch tapped it's staff into the diarrhoea ocean, and vast amounts of bubbles of fart gas rose to the surface from hidden pockets deep below, the bubbles rippled across to the horizon in a vast liberation of trapped gas.
The daemon then conjured a tiny little flame...
***...
Demetrio Acosta cursed in dismay as it suddenly got terribly hot in the submarine.
The entire ocean above them was a blazing inferno!
The Dynamo quickly dropped down deep below the surface to the cooler depths. What the fuck was going on up there!
***...
The entire planet spanning ocean of diarrhoea was now a constant inferno from pole to pole. The heat from the flames was making the gas bubble to the surface more quickly, creating a feedback loop that was self sustaining!
Even Egg Sevenson could not put out a blaze of this magnitude completely, and was using her powers to protect the main population centres as the people evacuated the planet.
Joseph Wong screamed as his personal fortune was destroyed, screamed his absolute head off.
***...
TigerLily laughed maniacally as the Nurgle worshipping population was evacuated from the planet, weakening Nurgles grasp on the place with each worshipper that evacuated. Without a faithful population, Nurgle would lose control of this planet, undoing the wards that bound TigerLily in the process.
The fire was cleansing the planet of Nurgles filth, burning it away to be replaced by something new. Already the place smelled more wholesome, and soon those oceans of filth would be oceans of clean clear water.
Egg was far too busy holding the flames off the civilians to wrestle with TigerLily as the spells of binding began to unravel. Egg knew that TigerLily was about to escape, but she was too sentimental to let billions burn to death to stop TigerLily from escaping.
The wards and rubrics buckled as the fires cleansed the planet, and with a scream of triumph TigerLily slipped completely free of Nurgle's grip and escaped to the warp to be reunited with her god Tzeentch.
Tremble in fear mankind, for TigerLily is once more set loose upon the galaxy!
***...