~Towers of Bone~
~797. M30~
~Segmentum Tempestus~
~Barbarus~
~Roboute Guilliman, Lord Commander of the Imperium and Imperial Regent~
The planet Barbarus had three primary continents. Two of which sat upon the north and south poles, and one massive landmass that sat between them, closer to the northernmost continent than the southernmost. The continents at the poles were permanently frozen, and had no signs of life or psychic presence that could be detected.
It was this middle-northern supercontinent that their attention was focused upon. Split into three primary sections by a massive Y-shaped mountain range in its near-center, and the variety of smaller mountains along and near the coast lines that served to help trap precious heat in the valley regions. The majority of this continent was various pallid shades of white and light green, with the occasional spot of vibrant, poisonous green. These spots were semi-frequent, but the fact that he could see them from orbit, even if they were tiny, meant their true size was enormous. Patches of that arrowroot he witnessed earlier, no doubt.
Unsurprisingly, there were seven Nurgle sorcerers from what the ships had been able to detect, each one residing on one of the seven highest mountains on the continent, with the overall lord residing on the absolute highest peak. What was more surprising was how many villages and settlements there were.
On a continent this large, even accounting for the poor conditions, he would expect tens of thousands of settlements each with anywhere from one-hundred to one-hundred thousand inhabitants, depending on a wide range of variables. There were not that many, however.
There were a bit less than six hundred currently inhabited settlements from what the seers had been able to sense. Of those settlements, exactly one of which had a population approaching one-thousand, and only a small percentage had a population over one-hundred.
Guilliman couldn't see the planetary population as being higher than perhaps fifty-thousand, not with the figures he had been provided.
Morrigan and the village elder (a withered looking man of thirty-four named Tomas) had shocked looks on their faces when they heard the expected number of people on the planet, but for entirely separate reasons that Guilliman and Asarnil did. A quick exchange of glances between the two of them led to a silent agreement to not startle them further for now.
"You said that you were forced to leave your first planned base of operations, correct?" Guilliman asked, bringing the two feral-worlders back to focus on the task at hand. "It was another village that was overrun by dead?"
"Not dead milord." The village elder shook his head, pox-scarred brows furrowed. "Strangeweed. It grew too fast for us to keep pushing back, and killed one of the dogs in the night. We packed up and left on the good lady's advice. Heading for Reth. Course, just as we showed up did we learn that the pale had been seen marching towards it."
Guilliman raised a brow. "Strangleweed. Are you referring to that bright green vine that spreads rapidly?" If it managed to kill a dog in the night…
"Yes milord."
"How fast does it grow here? Have you measured that?"
"Eurh…" Tomas trailed off as he tried to think, eventually raising his deeply-calloused hand. "About seven-hand lengths between each day milord. I don't know for certain though. I'm sorry milord."
Guilliman leaned back, crossing his arms in thought, before coming to a conclusion. "That's about thrice as quick as it should be. It's almost certainly warp-fueled."
"Does it matter?" Morrigan growled out beneath her stiff cloth mask, glaring at the quickly-sketched map of the world on the table in front of them.
"It might, but I have little evidence of such at the moment. Only a feeling." Guilliman shook his head, and let the information sit in the back of his mind for the moment, focusing on the problem at hand. "Seven is an important number to nurglite sorcerers, it's likely that they're drawing power from it. Our focus should be in killing them quickly to diminish their numbers and surround their towers. The shortest peaks will be the easiest to reach, and the highest will have the greatest concentration of the toxins."
Morrigan grunted in agreement, but added a statement alongside a hooded glare. A flash of memory-pain flared up in his largest scar. He ignored it easily enough. "Necare is mine to kill."
Guilliman raised a brow. "The one who took you in, correct? He is one of the sorcerers?"
"He is the Pale King." She ground out challengingly, daring him to make a criticism. Guilliman took in the information, sorted it away, and adjusted his parameters.
"He dwells in the highest tower then, I assume. We shall attack him last then, to ensure he is at his weakest and without allies." The fact that she was apparently also raised by nurglite xeno sorcerers was something of a concern (and explained entirely too much) but she had clearly already broken free from its yoke, and was now attempting to bring the sorcerous overlords down. If it was a problem, it wouldn't be after they were killed and the planet purged of nurglite influence.
It wasn't worth immediate concern at the moment, it was something he would try to speak with her about after the present danger was over though. He wasn't sure if he could actually get through to her, but simply ensuring the planet wasn't covered in rotten warp-smog far earlier than it had been before would be the best he could do.
She blinked, staring at him for a moment, before nodding sharply and turning her attention back towards the map.
"You'll need a new center of power to build from regardless." Asarnil began, bringing a finger across the map for a moment before tapping the largest settlement on the map. A larger village named torchwood that was in the upper-right basin of the continent. Then his finger began to tap the other villages on the map. "We should be able to gather up the villages from across the continent, and bring them here. The harvests had just been gathered, so there should be enough food for at least one season."
"If we act fast enough, the combined manpower from all the settlements should be enough to lay the foundations of a proper city and defensive stronghold. Much of the essential buildings and walls can be created by the handful of bonesingers. It would provide a defensibl…" Guilliman trailed off as he looked upon the face of the increasingly-worried Tomas.
"Yes, elder?" Saying that to a man in his thirties was distinctly amusing, but now wasn't the time for humor.
"Getting that many in one place… that's just asking for a nasty pox to come claim us all milords… I don't claim to know any of this fancy war business but… It's old wisdom that you don't want more than a hundred in one place, and a thousand is just madness…" Tomas wrung his hands and his eyes darted about as he spoke, unwilling to look at them directly.
"Another thing on the list then, setting up apothecaries and teaching your people proper sanitation." Guilliman replied, turning to the map again. Still, the idea wasn't without merit, they would struggle with such for a while, especially in a world so shrouded by nurgle's influence. "Then if not one capital, a series of villages surrounding a central fortress. Torchlight in the center, then each half-day of walking away another village can be erected and fortified. That will force us to slow our pace somewhat, but will help negate potential illnesses. Two rings of such townships should be enough to house everyone on Barbarus."
"...Depending on how high you want the walls to be, that would take a month or so for my bonesigers to erect. Each township would require another day of constant work, assuming we do things properly." Asarnil roughly estimated, comparing his labor force to what he knew of Guilliman's architectural preferences. From here, Guilliman and Asarnil began a rapid back and forth of war-planning, in gothic, to make sure the other two could understand them.
"...About one-hundred and fifty seven days then, one central township, then twelve surrounding inner settlements, then one-hundred and forty-four surrounding outer townships. Channels will have to be dug and new fields tilled, but we should have a human workforce enough for that. Can one of your singers be dedicated to producing tools instead? Shovels and scythes primarily."
"It would slow the rest of the work, but not disastrously so. In the meantime, you and your sister should be focused on bringing down the lesser sorcerers. The wraiths will care little about the toxins, the armor of my warriors is well-insulated, which leaves only a suit for your sibling. We should have the supplies to make such."
"The webway will allow us to attack all of them in a day if we manage to avoid injuries against each previous one. It may be prudent to see if the weapons on the ships can destroy any of their towers first, saving the effort of needing to perform potentially costly ground assaults."
"They may have tunnels to hide within, and basic divination would tell them to hide there quickly, a ground assault would be required to make sure they don't escape their tower's destruction."
"They do." A voice interrupted them. The Primarch and Eldar blinked, turning their gazes towards the serious looking Morrigan and the utterly baffled looking Tomas.
"They have underground sections?" Guilliman asked for clarification.
Morrigan nodded. "Necare did, at least. It's where the pale are kept when not being sent out. In the corpse-silos."
"Corpse-silos… Guilliman muttered. "Do you recall how many were in Necare's 'corpse silo'?"
"I never counted past a thousand, but perhaps about ten times more than that." Her dry voice echoed grimly.
An army of ten-thousand corpses like that… assuming a thousand of them were giants like before, that was still nothing that prepared defenses couldn't deal with. They were large, decently strong, and clumsy. Not a particular threat except through the weight of bodies, and that was something proper fortifications would funnel and destroy even with a fraction of their numbers in defenders. Still, ten-thousand was quite the stockpile of dead flesh.
Assuming each of the seven sorcerers had similarly sized battlegroups of the dead, that would be seventy-thousand in all. Significantly more troublesome to deal with using static defenses, but the webway gate-generator onboard each of the Eldar ships provided more than enough raw mobility to simply circle about such a force and attack with impunity. It would take quite some time to whittle down, but a force of that many unintelligent bodies without weapons simply wasn't a threat against half-decent tactics.
Asarnil sipped his wine, nodding slightly and likely coming to a similar conclusion as Guilliman. A potential threat on the open field, but nothing that proper ranged weaponry and prepared defenses couldn't deal with. They had more than enough ranged weapons, and more than enough mobility to simply kite such a force to death. Guilliman could likely do the same even without a proper ranged weapon.
Note to self, he needed a proper ranged weapon. Something one handed, he could wield it while having the shield strapped to his arm. Some variation of bolter would be ideal, but perhaps one of the shorter Eldar guns. Most of them were entirely too long, making them awkward to use in close-quarters combat. A consistent problem he had noted in their designs.
Tomas passed out, eyes rolling into the back of his head, forcing a nearby maid to catch him before his head smashed against the corner of the table.
—
"Would you like to meet your sisters?" Guilliman asked aloud, breaking the silence that descended upon him and Morrigan. They were on a balcony inside Charnac's Pride, overlooking the hangar bay in which the entirety of the two villages were currently contained and being treated by Eldar professionals.
Clothes were taken and cleaned of the thick layers of grime, sheets provided in the interim. Food was rationed out, met with disbelief and murmured prayers of thanks. Injuries treated and people washed in cleaned water. Sicknesses treated and medicine provided. All of which were supported by Eldar biomancy and blessings, just in case.
Roughly three-hundred people in total, two-thirds of which were incapable of fighting, were in the far corner of the hangar bay. More than enough room allocated to them to be rather spacious should they choose to be, and even then they barely took up a fraction of the five-kilometer long ship's interior.
Their supplies, as ratty and gnarled as they were, took up less space than an Eldar fighter-craft. Boxes of pale corn, sheets of moth-eaten quilts, tools of rusted iron and battered bronze. They made a distinct and unfortunate comparison to the elegant lines and pristine craftseldarship of their current benefactors.
Those three-hundred people looked healthier and cleaner than they probably ever have before, and quite a few of them were enthralled with the act of touching their flesh where pox-scars used to be, and staring at the faces of their loved ones, now free of muck and blemish.
Guilliman felt pity for them, and what labors they were going to have to go back to soon.
"...Sisters…?" Morrigan muttered, leaning over the balcony and staring at him from the corner of her vision. She clutched at her worn scythe with a grip that tensed and untensed periodically.
"Petra, Kassandra, and Aurelia." Guilliman explained. "We'll be attacking the first tower as soon as it's daylight again, so you have a few hours before it begins. Your armor will be done by then, and a weapon can be too if you wish for it. There's not much to do now that the initial planning is finished, so you're free to do as you wish."
"...Why?"
Guilliman leaned back on the railing. "Well, I suppose you don't have to meet them if you don't want to. I'll simply say that you're busy if you wish."
"No." Morrigan denied, before turning to glare at him more completely. "Why are you doing all this? Bringing a massive fleet of sorcerers from the depths of the void just to help me? Putting in all this effort and resources into trying to fix my problem! What are you getting out of this!" She demanded, jabbing the top of her scythe into his ribs with a suspicious growl.
Guilliman stared at her for a moment, brows raised in slight surprise. His expression smoothed out into a calm understanding quickly enough, before he nodded and began to explain.
"The fleet wasn't just to help you. There were many tasks I needed to handle throughout the galaxy to prepare for what's to come. It just so happened that helping you was one of those many things I had to do."
Morrigan slowly retracted her scythe, eyes still glaring. Guilliman continued.
"And in truth, the use of the webway, the creation of wraithbone structures, and providing supplies and aid costs me little. We had prepared for ten years of voyage, double our predicted travel time. Home is only about a year away from here, so providing spare supplies like this doesn't provide much risk of running out. Wraithbone is psykery I barely understand, but it's essentially just a matter of time and effort, both of which we have a surplus of at the moment."
Morrigan planted her scythe on the floor, and leaned forwards on it, a lone eye still looking at him. He kept speaking.
"These sorcerers are worshipers of Nurgle, as near as my allied seers can determine. Nurgle is a daemon of rot and sickness, and destroying his followers is something that I was intending on doing in great amounts regardless, so this task isn't something that anyone here dreads. It's something we all look forward to, in truth."
Morrigan's eyes trailed down, no longer staring at him. So he finished his thoughts.
"But even disregarding all of that. I care about you."
She tensed, eyes jolting up to stare at him through ashen locks. He met her gaze directly, a gentle smile on his face.
"You're my sister, Morrigan. I'd be a rather poor example of a brother if I decided against aiding simply because it was inconvenient to me. I want you to be safe and happy, and as this is something you've decided to do, I wish to help you do it."
He reached up to scratch his cheek. "Of course, if what you wanted to do was evil, such as killing a large number of puppies or something, I'd like to have a strongly-worded conversation with you first, but this is just about the furthest thing from evil as you can get."
"Trying to save people from a cabal of sorcerers that summon clouds of toxin and command armies of the dead? That's about as righteous as it comes. I'm proud of you already, and I've barely known you for a day."
He let his gaze turn away, down towards the villagers of Barbarus as they marveled at how warm and dry the hangar bay was. At how their children didn't have to huddle about campfires burning damp wood for warmth and choke of the immense smoke that billowed from such. How they didn't have to suffer from cold and dark and fear.
How they were safe, fed, and clean. Luxuries they probably never got to have on Barbarus.
After a long few minutes of silence, broken only by the distant noise of awe-struck feralworlders.
"...Take me to my sisters." Morrigan muttered. "I want to talk to them."
Guilliman smiled, and pushed off the railing. Starting to walk out of the hangar bay, followed by Morrigan, he began to speak. "It would be my pleasure. I have to warn you though, they have their quirks."
"Quirks?"
"Petra is very grumpy, and tries to hide how much she cares behind criticism. Don't let that get to you though, she's a very sweet girl underneath, and she likes to hug. Kassandra is quiet, and stares a lot, but she's normally daydreaming, not trying to be offensive. Aurelia loves to learn, so if you let her badger you into answering questions about Barbarus you'll be there all day. Very excitable like that, but be careful abo…"
And off they went, Guilliman bragging about his little sisters the entire way.