It was a rainy evening, with the skies dark and gloomy casting a miserable atmosphere. There was a storm brewing and based on the howling wind and the darkening skies, it seemed to be a big one. A robed person hurriedly jogged down an overgrown cobblestone road towards a small cave carrying a large bag. He very nearly dropped the bag and panted in exhaustion before knocking at the entrance in a specific rhythm. He waited but for a moment when the door was opened and a similarly robed person pointed a crossbow at his throat cautiously before confirming his identity and letting him through.
With a thud, the cultist dropped his bag of supplies on the ground before kneeling before another robed man, this one with exposed arms littered with tattoos and scars that emitted a baleful gaze. The marks of the damned, of the lost, of the misguided and the horrific. In this virgin world it was but a mark of heresy.
Of dark gods from an ancient, begotten time long since forgotten. But to the fallen who worship such entities, they were the mark of Chaos.
The cultist laid prostrated before the marked one, blubbering excuses to the man. "A hundred apologies mi'lord for the delay, I barely avoided a pack of werewolves. I have brought the materials needed for our spell, but I still have reservations about all this."
The marked man gave his subordinate a dry look. "Explain. Now."
The cultist licked his lips nervously, gazing at the marked man with trepidation as he spoke, "Even as we speak, the gods continue to hamper us."
The marked man sneered as the cultist rambled on. "Ares has turned her back on us all, casting her despicable blessings across the world and preventing us from defending ourselves. The Chief God is but a paper tiger, unable to offer any aid lest she suffers more injuries. The other gods are against us, never have they lifted a finger to even help us. And the forces of the monsters continue to overwhelm the world realm by realm, emboldened by their success! What can we do against our foes and their gods? It's obvious that humanity has fallen out of favor!"
"Fool. The gods of this world are nothing but children in a playground." the man smacked his subordinate across the face savagely, stray teeth being sent onto the ground from the blow. "The true gods are far more powerful than these pathetic pretenders. Their parlor tricks are nothing compared to the sheer might of the Great Four!"
"B-But mi'lord what can they do?" the cultist asked fearfully, holding his sore face gingerly. The marked one could only laugh maniacally, a laughter of one who has been exposed to dark, dark truths of the world and came out emboldened by it.
Far away in another galaxy, it is the 41st Millennium, and there is only war. War and countless suffering of unimaginable proportions. Across the galaxy in hundreds of planets, in thousands of battlefields, millions of men fought, bled, and died for the two-headed eagle. For one man, he was born into a galaxy of war, molded by it, embraced it and made all the more lethal from it.
He was a son of Krieg, destined to die on the battlefield. Another faceless statistic to be used in the slaughter by uncaring generals.
This slaughterhouse had a name, the miserable planet known as Vraks Prime, a planetwide butcher's shop that harvested millions to billions of souls. An armory world that had flaunted the rule of the Imperium and dared them to retaliate.
A task only the Death Korps of Krieg were fit to do.
Like the rest of his regiment, Grenadier 859623-880465-Ludwig was deployed onto the planet with only one goal in mind. Take the planet back, or die trying.
And die they did, trying their damn best to complete their objective. Stalemate after painstaking stalemate, the Death Korps inched towards victory, paying in blood for every minuscule kilometer gained.
The Siege of Vraks was a miserable campaign, one that has been waged for twelve years now when the situation went from bad to worse. Chaos has arrived in full force. Fighting continued on regardless but the situation truly took a downward spiral for the worst when their position was suddenly full of traitor astartes.
The heretic marines had dropped in from orbit and the fighting was fierce. Thousands died and the ground was awash with rivers of blood, uncaring of whether it was imperial or traitor blood.
But now reinforcements were here, and supported by a legion of titans themselves, the Imperium prepared to make their counterattack. No longer would the Korps be on the defensive. Today they attacked.
The Kagori Offensive began with the roar of cannons and the cries of hundreds of thousands of men charging across no-man's land into Vraksian positions. They were supported by thousands of tanks and the titans themselves.
In the second line of defense, the Grenadier watched the first, second, and third wave wash over the heretic lines with acceptable casualties. Their armor soaked up damage and eliminated key targets while the titans cracked open super fortresses. The infantry took over their newly gotten gains and prepared for the counterattack.
He watched as an advancing wave of traitor militia charged forth in a counter push with critical eyes. His captain checked his chrono before pulling out a whistle.
At his signal the fourth, fifth, and sixth wave charged forward to support their comrades. Artillery and mortar rained down on them and scythed through whole platoons. Active heavy weapons emplacements reaped a heavy toll before being destroyed but on they charged.
When the Grenadier reached the trenches, his comrades were embroiled in a deadly melee and he took careful aim along with his company and opened fire. Above them the titans opened fire with apocalyptic weaponry, smashing through any defenses they could find.
The Grenadier was honored to be fighting alongside the god-machines and as they wiped out the heretics in the sector, he continued moving. They couldn't stop now.
He has been fighting for only seven of the twelve years the war has taken place and he was eager to make this his last. He took up positions with his comrades in the conquered trenches as a fresh wave of traitors emerged from underground bunkers to push them back.
Their opening salvo annihilated the first wave. The next salvo pulverized the second wave. The third wave was barely gunned down before the traitors reached their beloved trenches. By the fourth wave they were in fierce melee, with traitor and imperial forces alike fighting with tooth and nail in the mud and blood.
By the fifth the Vraksians were supported by traitor astartes and the imperials were hopelessly overwhelmed, but they kept fighting on regardless. There will be no surrender. No retreat.
The chanting grew louder. The marked one was walking in a circle, anointing specific spots in a glowing symbol on the cave floor with a strange, almost ethereal resin. The sickly material was seemingly absorbed into the hard stone, the symbols hurtful to see for some of the less faithful present, but they carried on regardless.
Their faith burned bright. The marked one promised them salvation, a way out from the stagnating Order and the worship of the Chief God. As the ritual progressed, a wrongness began to seep into the air as the tendrils of Chaos were attracted to a world hidden deep within the immaterium.
People in neighboring villages began to feel shivers, as if some malevolent being was stalking them. The night felt more dangerous, more malevolent as the winds howled and nature itself seemed to protest this grotesque ritual.
The cave slowly began to feel colder, a deathly chill having settled in and reached deep within their bones. Distant cackling can be heard, malevolent amusement of a dark entity just beginning to notice a new toy to play with. Where before the world was hidden away, forgotten behind warp storms, now the beacon was lit.
The marked one beckoned his followers to bring forth a sacrifice and the cultists brought out a large, squealing pig. With a quick slash with their ceremonial daggers, blood was spilled and the ritual began in earnest.
And their world would never be the same again.
The imperials fought fiercely to push forward, driven by the weight of their numbers and the support of their titans. However, with the presence of traitor astartes bolstering the invigorated traitor militia, the regiment's assault was blunted and they began to slow down. Not helping matters were the constant counterattacks from the heretics emerging from underground bunkers.
It was too late to fall back in the face of the onslaught. There would be no retreating today. With the grim reports of Traitor Titans dropping in, the Death Korps of Krieg dug their heels in and died where they stood down to a man, making the traitors pay for every fortification, trench, and hole they manage to occupy.
Back and forth, they exchanged hands and fought savagely for every inch of land they could get. A trench cleared with bitter losses while another would be overwhelmed by the heretics and the guardsmen wiped out. On and on they fought.
With the Death Korps surrounded by all sides, they fought knowing that their sins would finally be forgiven. As the heretics continued to charge forward, the Grenadier recited the litany of sacrifice with the remainder of his decimated regiment and their collective might charged at the heretics with their bayonets held high.
As the deaths piled up, so too did the opposition as the Vraksian militia melted beneath the furious Death Korps counter attack and even the traitor astartes supporting them were given pause.
The Grenadier dodged clumsy strikes from the heretics, blasting the Vraksians to bits with his hellgun or stabbing them with his bayonet. He threw a grenade and watched in satisfaction as a horde of heretics disappeared into tiny bits and together with his tattered squad he blasted a traitor marine to a pulp even as the madman butchered their commissar and annihilated a whole platoon.
Pandemonium everywhere. With the imperials fighting with a righteous fury with lure of victory at hand and the traitors imbued with the savage desperation of a cornered beast.
Bodies littered the mud and blood stricken field and it almost seemed like the imperials could break through the enemy lines. The Grenadier almost smiled grimly as the flamer in all his fury bathed an entire portion of the battlefield in purifying fire.
A roaring wave of purifying promethium that burnt traitors to cinders, melting their flesh off their bones and turning them into screaming bonfires. The advancing Krieg guardsmen stepped over their burning victims. They were already dead and more important targets warranted their attention then the dying screams of the damned.
As the guardsmen fought and died in the trenches and in the graveyard that was no man's land, above them stalked the titans. With each step they shook the ground and with each weapon fired they roared to the heavens.
The 12th Line Korps will succeed.
The ritual seemingly growled, warp energies pulsating and emitting shocks and static everywhere. It coiled around the sacrifice like a thick miasma and to the shock of the cultists, the pig began thrashing again as if alive. Suddenly, like a whip, a lash of warp energy struck wildly out from the ritual circle. It smashed into a cultist and the man let out a brief shriek before he was turned into a charred corpse.
His eyes popped and the flesh was flayed off his bones, reducing him to little more than a gory skeleton.
His fellows cried out in alarm and before they could react, more warp energies began lashing out, with many cultists being suddenly vaporized by them. The damned barely had time to scream in agony before they were immolated and their blood oozed into the ground.
"What's the meaning of this?" one of them cried out, "You said this ritual would be our deliverance!"
The marked one chuckled coldly, "This is our deliverance. Soon this world will know the glory of Chaos…"
Another flash and the same man who cried out now gurgled uselessly as he was struck by the ritual, his side exploding into bloody mist while the rest of him splashed against the ground. The oily blood moved quickly, crawling into the crevices of the ritual and causing it to ignite into warpfire.
The rest of it began cooking around the body of the pig which began to mutate horrendously. The added blood and flesh added to the growing biomass and the pig began squealing incessantly.
The scalding heat began to choke the very air and gradually the hissing of the neverborn began to be heard as they willed themselves into existence. Too late did the cultists realize that the marked one had used them as the true fuel for the ritual.
The only thing they could do was scream hopelessly as their very souls began to be devoured by the warp all while the marked one never once ceased his infernal chanting.
The fighting was fierce and the imperials fought on zealously, but even pure determination could not save them as a corrupted titan made its presence known, having been sent to clean up resistance in the stubborn area.
The once venerable machine was a twisted, heretical parody of the noble war machines of man. With an almost dismissal flick of its arm, it spat a weapon soaked in the warp's power. It exploded and the people in the area just disappeared without a trace.
Tanks, guardsmen, traitors, and astartes alike disappeared.
It was almost anticlimactic. A shriek of warp sorcery and a bright explosion and that part of the battlefield just vanished, vaporized clean without a trace. Desperate resistance proved to be futile as the imperials began to be slowly and meticulously eradicated from the field, one sector at a time.
The guardsmen fought desperately and under the cover of their own titans. They tried to support their titans against the heretics but what could infantry do against the might of a god-machine?
The tanks of the 8th assault korps fired desperately but they were but stepping stones as the traitors annihilated them with their cursed weapons or else stomped them like a bug. Their titans dueled their counterparts and the guardsmen fought under the gazes of demigods as they unleashed apocalyptic weapons upon each other.
The ritual had reached its apex. All the cultists present have been killed, their very souls plucked out of their body and fed to the greedy ritual. The original sacrifice itself was becoming a beacon of sorts, warpfire crackling across its putrid, eldritch flesh as bones and limbs cracked and deformed into new limbs.
Still, even despite the numerous burns across his body the marked one never ceased his chanting. If anything it increased in fervor and he began making cuts into the corpses around him so that the blood would be shed quicker.
An ear splitting explosion deafened the world around him and the Grenadier briefly stumbled, falling onto his knees in the blood soaked mud. Above him, their titans burned from a hundred mortal wounds, the god-machine groaning as voracious fires burned it inside out.
It powered up its shields as the traitor titan primed its weapon again. The remainder of his mauled company raised their weapons and fired, never stopping even as the traitor titan seemingly grinned at them. Its broken and corrupted faceplate was the last thing they saw on Vraks before it fired a warp infused projectile towards their position. A terrifying mixture of warpfire and lightning came rushing towards them. So this was the end then.
The Grenadier almost smiled. It was a fitting end.
The madman smiled at the insanity before him, praising the dark gods and welcoming them into a virgin world ripe for conquest. The warp roared, the pig squealed, and the world began to shake.
The unholy projectile hit their titan and though the shield held, the sheer strength and blast radius washed over the war machine and enveloped it like a cloud. Ludwig had but a moment to see his doom when the wave of warp damned energy washed over all his comrades and him.
The marked one cried out joyously to the gods, offering up his very life and soul to them if they but gave him an audience and made themselves known to their faithful.
Just moments later all the warp energy was released as a large explosion, one that rocked the very earth itself. The cave exploded and engulfed in warpfire. The blast blew out of every opening in the cave and unleashed a wave of wrongness rippling across the land.
Ludwig registered something that felt like an intense electrifying pain to the point of being paralyzed before he suddenly just as quickly felt numbed and weightless. Distantly he heard the shrieks of warp abominations before all was dark and he was submerged in what felt like an ocean. His senses dulled, his conscience fading, Ludwig felt like he was both alive and dead all at once, stuck.
Then just as suddenly, he felt himself be pulled away and then he knew nothing more.
Throughout the realm of man and monster, men and women froze up in cold sweat or else suffered terrible nightmares. Expectant mothers gave birth to stillborn babies whilst others gave birth to wretched spawn rife with mutations.
The sky roared as if in anger, with great storms raging for days on end while even the gods of the realm themselves began to shiver in fear. Change...was in the air. The laughter of thirsting gods began to grow more audible and the night was full of terrible dreams and omens. The end times grew nearer. A dark, harrowing future was coming.
On the day it all began, the dark skies were illuminated by the view of gorgeous, yet terrifying warp phenomenons. It heralded the change to come.
It started innocently enough, with the earliest days almost peaceful and normal if not for the feeling of something not right in the air. Deep down there was just a sense of wrongness permeating the air, as if they lived on borrowed time. The shroud that covered the planet before was being pierced as the neverborn servants began to haunt the world. They were especially drawn to places of great suffering under the yoke of the oppressive Order or debauched Fallen and Extremist.
The empyrean, previously missing, began to slither its tendrils onto the world. A connection was made, from one reality to another as they began to merge together as one. Displaced travelers of the 41st millennium began to appear all across the realm, in forests, in villages, even in cities and demonrealms themselves.
All with the same characteristic, bearing the mark of Chaos or the symbol of the Aquila. Over the months, the realm began to feel the effects of the damning ritual as witches, proper witches with uncontrollable psychic powers began to manifest themselves in horrifying ways.
Both human and mamono alike suffered from daemonic possessions, their only saving grace being the utter weakness of the host unable to handle the strain of such a horrific monstrosity literally tearing their soul apart.
A night of butchery where entire villages or forests became void of life before the daemon would finally be sent back into the warp when its mortal vessel came apart by the seams. Many horror stories began to erupt over such events and soon it became customary for fearful villagers to begin shunning foreigners, superstition and fear causing many to become more xenophobic and insular.
In the worse cases, they even lynched or burnt at stake those they deemed responsible for the growing crisis. And without the gods attentively watching over them, their fear only increased.
It was not just the daemons who found themselves upon the virgin world either. Foul heretics lost in the warp but not devoured wholesale found themselves drifting to a foreign land, one ripe for despoiling. They were madmen, doomsday prophets who harked at the ignorant masses to abandon the worship of weak gods and to follow the true Four. Some were bloodthirsty killers, who were often slain by the local militia or household guards.
Others however were craftier and saw this new world as an opportunity. It started benign enough as they began infecting the vulnerable populace with the words of the Ruinous Powers. Like wolves in sheep's skin, they pranced amongst the masses, corrupting them wherever they could.
Miserable and dour peasants toiling away in sickness and poverty found themselves being whispered sweet nothings by strange and altruistic gods. If they but quietly renounced the worship of their false idol, the useless Chief God, and embraced them, they would be saved.
Many living away in a thankless world with apathetic gods took the offer and thus Nurgle, was all too happy to have more converts in his family. Others took up Tzeentch's teachings and began to quietly scheme and climb their way up the social stratum. Others still lost themselves to a berserker fury, going mad with bloodlust as Khorne watched on impassively. And for the rigid, frustrated masses they turned to Slaanesh for some soulless comfort.
Khorne would make you strong and powerful, to never feel helpless again. Nurgle would nurture you, to make you indomitable to pain and misery. Tzeentch would give you hope, to give you a chance for change. And Slaanesh would give you the wildest pleasures of the world you would ever experience, unbridled excess and gluttony.
Slowly the dregs of society, the downtrodden, the abused, the abandoned, began to believe.
Why should they worship an uncaring being like the Chief God? Who was a paper tiger at best and a useless, selfish scoundrel at worst? Why should they give her their love? Their worship? Their adoration?
All of them began to set up their own cults, growing like a tumor within the realms of men. Needless to say the Order Inquisition began to crack down hard on such heretics.
Some would be identified and annihilated accordingly by the Order. Most however continued to grow uncontested as the ignorant and naive Order floundered and blundered in their investigations in heresy.
Most cults would slip away, secluding themselves somewhere to grow and nurture their flock. Most would be approached by strangers bearing the mark of the Hydra, whispering the name of their master. Ophidian.
Others, particularly those inclined to Khorne, instead offered their own paths. Their prophets shed their sheep's skin and emerged as wolves. They abandoned the pretense of helplessness, of a cordial altruism and showed their true fellhanded colors. They directed their flock, they blamed the Order and their tyrannical ways, and conflict erupted.
Where once the inquisitors had the highest form of authority, they found to their shock the true strength of an angry mob that refused to listen to reason. Torn apart and murdered, entire teams of inquisitors often disappeared entirely, or were found strung up as warnings. The Order looked upon these heretics with distaste and horror. Slowly society began to unravel in these areas as the heretics converted more and more of the desperate and downtrodden.
The fires of a revolution, a violent one. And so too did the message slowly change, as the faith of the Ruinous Powers corrupted and turned the downtrodden and desperate into their pawns in the Great Game. Steadily they became changed, becoming increasingly more twisted and corrupted as their worship of the Ruinous Powers steadily damned their souls. Where once they were united, they slowly began to fight with one another just as often as the locals and mamono alike.
With such desperate times came desperate measures and the Order tried to react the only way they knew how. Slashing and burning away the heresy. But they were ignorant of the true scope of the danger. Only the locals investigated their own territories, with the overall Order itself resting on its laurels. The leadership of the Order were left indecisive, always trusting that the Chief God would guide them.
With her missing, none of them knew what to do definitively. None of them agreed to do anything together definitively. And they certainly did not trust each other. And so the Order's full might continued to stand idle, all while the world around them got slowly and slowly more corrupted by the day.
And of the spirit realms only dark words and omens are heard…
Other times however the mortal realm encountered curious strangers, wanderers with dead eyes and tortured souls. Clad in foreign clothes and armed with foreign weapons, they were given a wide berth by the people they ran into. Treated as outcasts, they occupy the edges of civilization, always on the run from something or someone.
All sharing a singular attribute, the worship of a double headed Aquila and a bloody conflict with those swearing allegiance to the Ruinous Powers.
Many a village was saved from the depredations of marauding mamono or cultists of the Four by such strangers, armed with powerful weapons that shot brilliantly crimson bolts of light.
Though they certainly made a difference between freedom and servitude, they were barely tolerated by the Order, for these "godless heathens" who speak foreign tongues and worship a foreign god were, in the Inquisition's eyes, just as bad as the mamono and the heretics, and infinitely more dangerous. Already numerous people have been found, tried, and executed for converting to the Imperial Cult of this blasphemous "God-Emperor".
As for the wanderers themselves however, the Order decided to leave them be. They were useful for now, fighting the increasingly more numerous heretics and mamono alike. Though there was an incident between a retinue of Inquisitors and one such wanderer whom they had hoped to capture to learn his secrets.
The man had easily butchered the team and it was only the intervention of a squad of Order heroes that they managed to capture him before he killed anymore of them. Though he was captured, he had committed suicide in their care before they could interrogate him more about his heresies and strange equipment. What kind of life did a man live to willingly take his own life whilst captive? It was a sobering thought and one that the Order did not know how to answer.
If only they were able to figure out how to work his strange weaponry. Even now, scholars are still scratching their head over how to work the man's strange weapon and what his resilient armor was made from.
Worse still is that these wanderers began to find each other, and recognize their brothers in arms. Slowly they began to grow into a wandering army, always on the prowl hunting for heretics and mutants. Most would only be that, just small bands of men roaming the countryside trying to survive whole others became almost akin to mercenary bands.
There were even rumors of an outsider having become an advisor to a city, turning it from a peaceful town to a fortified bastion of human might.
Other times they became just as bad as the heretics, marauding through their territories in their endless campaigns against their enemies. Some even got picked up by ambitious lords in neutral territories or clans of monsters. And so too did these outsiders begin to reap a fearsome reputation, growing ever more numerous as more of their ilk drifted onto the world.
Though these developments were concerning to the Order, their benefits were not to be underestimated, and they simply watched on with worried eyes. Even more worrying however is how silent the gods have been lately, with priests all over the realm becoming silent as their prayers went unanswered.
Meanwhile, in the realms of monsters, the Royal Makai's upper caste began to...experiment with increasingly depraved and degenerate practices in search of fulfillment. Horrid things were done and slowly, the upper echelons of the mamono society were steadily corrupted with excess and gluttony. The Extremists and the Fallen, working in tandem, continued to scheme and plot, making plans to dominate the world.
Ignorant of the parasite suckling from their lifeblood as they infected the organization and slowly corrupted its members. They became more twisted, more sadistic, and more callous, particularly those who had a penchant for such things already.
And of the Monster Lord herself, she was missing. Gone like the last few centuries, secluded in her sanctum researching for salvation. Without their leader, so too did the Royal Makai sit on their laurels and waited for her return, ignorant of what was coming.
Perhaps they were annihilated. Perhaps they simply disappeared, as if never existing.
The Grenadier felt like he was in the warp for millennium, aimlessly floating around, the cruel cackling of neverborn surrounding him like a predator stalking its prey. Though he was never fully conscious, he felt his grip on his hellgun tighten, never once letting go. Many times he felt their hungry grasps, but he stubbornly kept his eyes closed for if he were to open them it would no doubt lead to insanity and ruin.
As he floated aimlessly along, surrounded by madness and heresy, he began to pray. Softly at first, quietly as if to remember the words, before eventually he began reciting incantations.
As he did so, he began to notice that he felt like he was being pulled away. Perhaps sensing their prey was going to escape them, the warp fiends began to snarl, as if trying to intimidate whatever it was trying to take him away to no avail. The snarls of the daemons began to die away as the Grenadier was dragged across the immaterium, as if sucked in by a powerful vortex.
Soon he could only hear deafening shrieks of the warp as he was seemingly dragged from one end to another before he suddenly met very solid ground.
With a painful grunt the Grenadier face planted on what felt like hard rock. Knowing that anything to do with the foul warp was likely to end in misery, the Grenadier cautiously opened up an eye, expecting to see he had landed on a blasphemous hellscape with a daemon ready to skewer him. Instead he saw only green grass as far as the eye could see and a beautiful clear sky that Vraks Prime certainly lacked.
It was too blue. Too...beautiful. He looked around some more and found to his horror a severe lack of trenches, razor wire, and corpses. There was no choking smog, no muddy earth chock full of chemical waste or toxic refuge. Just green grass as far as the eye can see.
The air was clean and the skies were a bright blue. It was horrible. Ludwig struggled to get up, finding himself painfully sore all over but his training had him force those feelings away.
Breathing hoarsely, he controlled his nerves and forced them to still. He sat up shakily, as if he just woke up from a long slumber. He tried to recall what had happened but all he remembered was falling down after taking a lasbolt to the leg and staring at the horrible traitor titan standing above him.
When it opened fire, his vision had mercifully blacked out before he got a glimpse at the horrific warp infused attack.
He was surprised to see that his body was virtually unharmed again as if it was never injured at all, just aching horribly, though his gear still appeared to be battleworn and scars still littered his body. But like his training had taught him, he pushed those thoughts and feelings aside and stood up fully.
His bones creaked and he was pretty sure he felt like his body was about to keel over, training or no training, when he leaned on a boulder. He patted himself down and did a quick sitrep, finding himself still armed with his trusty hellgun and a few spare charge packs in his webbing, along with a few grenades and blessedly, his bayonet and shovel.
The Grenadier stood up and began looking around his surroundings a little clearer, standing straight and shouldering his hellgun in case he needed to fire it quickly. All around him was the sign of a rather peaceful forest, or what he thinks is a forest anyhow.
There's a rather alarming lack of deadly fauna and flora trying to maim him. What a strange forest. He was in an unknown environment, possibly Chaos tainted after his exposure to the warp. He must find imperial territory authorities immediately and establish contact for orders. Grimly, he began marching forward in one direction, determined to reestablish contact with military commanders for further orders.
Across the realm situations like the Grenadier mirrored each other, with guardsmen being deposited down in varying conditions from barely scratched to as good as dead. Sometimes whole squads were dropped down, alongside the heretics they were previously fighting.
Other times fighting vehicles were dropped, smoking wrecks that had become steel coffins for the crew inside. One such tank was visibly writhing, as if alive. A few slimes nearby approached it curiously before they recoiled in disgust as they peered inside the numerous holes of the tank. Their trip through the warp was not kind to the crew, the tankers' bodies fused with the tank itself.
"K...ill...me..." moaned one of the tankers weakly in pained misery, his face half melded together with the auspex of the tank.
The slimes screeched in fear and retreated away from the damned vehicle. The demented leman russ was awake, and the corrupted monstrosity began to slowly churn it's broken tracks, sheer force of will causing the tank to rumble forward. Its barrel became a snarling mouth of the daemon and it breathed living warpfire that consumed everything in its path. Both human and mamono alike were burnt to ash and scattered to the winds.
Nearby snarling traitor militia brawled with imperials in a wartorn forest, the once verdant field becoming another bloody battlefield for the two sides as trees were uprooted and the ground became littered with the dead. Investigating monstergirls were slaughtered indiscriminately, either by imperial or heretic it mattered not. It didn't matter to the two sides that they had been dragged through literal hell and spat back out.
All they knew was that their enemy was near and that was enough for them to start fighting with each other savagely.
A few human peasants who saw the fighting retreated in fear, frightful of the "magic" weaponry and legging it back to their village, causing a few traitor militia to cackle as they followed after them despite the fierce fighting, abandoning their comrades in favor of weaker prey. One of the peasants tripped and fell onto the ground, crying out in fear for help before a heretic caught up with him and grabbed him around the head. Snarling, the traitor pushed his fingers into the screaming man's eyes and began brutalizing him in the name of the Dark Gods.
A few mamono that were nearby intervened to stop the madness, tackling some of the heretics before they could murder any more. But there were too many and the traitor militia rushed forward like wolves pursuing sheep, ignoring the monstergirls and following after the fleeing peasants. The ones that were stopped fought on fiercely and a mantis felt genuine emotions for the first time, potent horror at just how demented the man she was struggling with was.
"What is wrong with you?" the mantis said slowly, unused to speaking too much. He just screamed gibberish at her, spitting and cursing.
"Grrraaaaghhhhh! For the Dark Gods!" he frothed at the mouth, slamming his head into her face and cracking her nose, dazing her.
With a sadistic glint in his eye he slam his fist across her face again and brought her down onto her knees before he whipped out a cruel curved knife, intent on gutting her like a fish before a lasbolt messily blew his head apart. The mamono stared at the corpse in terror before gulping and turning to thank her savior. She froze as she saw the lasgun pointed at her head.
"Kill the mutant." the faceless man said monotonously as he executed her, punching a hole right through her head and killing her instantly, "Purge the heretic."
He turned his lasgun and made a sweep, firing crimson bolts at monstergirls and traitor alike, gunning many of them down before a few Vraksians began firing back at the Krieger. The korpsman grunted as the return fire perforated his greatcoat and punctured his lungs. He was blasted off his feet and backwards onto the ground, coughing up blood but content that he died fighting.
As the light died away and he joined his Emperor in heaven his comrades caught up with him and the killing resumed.
The village living peacefully on a river bank nearby woke up to a scene of nightmares as their fleeing huntsmen and gatherers were chased by madmen intent on butchering them. Brave militiamen began to form up to tackle them but they were inexperienced and fought against veterans of trench warfare. The cultists cared not of the wounds they got or whether they even died and gleefully charged into the lines of pitchforks and makeshift weapons.
In the treeline hidden from view a pair of succubi who were tasked with observing the village watched the humans kill and maim each other in gaping horror.
"W-What are they doing?" one of them said to her sister.
She could only mumble quietly, her eyes unable to leave the slaughter that was happening in front of her, "I do not know, b-but I've never seen anything like it before."
They watched on as the Vraksians wasted no time butchering the poor defenders, the militiamen never having to fight this viciously before in their lives. They were picked and quite literally pulled apart limb from limb. A screaming militiaman looked on in disbelief as a heretic gleefully tore into his guts with his bare hands, heedless of the pitchfork stuck through his back. The militia were hacked to pieces by the traitors and it seemed the village's defenders were going to be annihilated when the korpsmen caught up finally.
"Bayonet charge!" ordered a watchmaster, his platoon rushing out of the forest and letting out a fierce battle cry.
The Vraksians, maddened as they were with bloodshed, were expecting the imperials but they were still too preoccupied with the village militia.
As such, the heretics were impaled in the back or stabbed by opportunistic militia. The melee was fierce with the korpsmen using shovels, bayonets, and sometimes their own bare hands to kill the enemy. The succubi could only look on in stunned silence as the imperials messily killed the Vraksians, blood and gore soaking the ground which was beginning to be littered with bodies.
One of the heretics growled as he opened fire with a heavy stubber in his hand, scything down foe and ally alike. Heads exploded and bodies disintegrated as hundreds of rounds flew through the air indiscriminately.
It was only stopped when the traitor himself was gunned down, a dozen lasbolts hitting him all at once and causing him to blow up into fine red mist. The fighting was fierce but the traitors were outnumbered and the korpsmen and the village's militia slaughtered them to a man.
The terrified villagers stood shakily, as if in disbelief at what had just happened. All around them were the slain bodies of friends, lovers, and family with the same frozen expressions of horror and agony. A dozen korpsmen were also dead, surrounded by thrice the number of Vraksian traitor militia.
It was a quiet moment of horror and uneasy peace, one that was so fragile you could just feel the tension.
That peace shattered the moment a flare shot up into the sky from deep in the forest. Faint shouts were heard as were death screams and explosions. Suddenly a corrupted tank plowed out of the forest, wreathed in warpfire and spewing death in every direction.
The watchmaster watched it stoically as the remaining villagers screamed and ran at the sight, turning to his remaining battle-scarred troops and shouting, "Forward! For the Emperor!"
The Grenadier marched on stoically, never once slowing his pace as he walked through the strange landscape before him. He had stumbled upon an old overgrown cobblestone road by chance and had been on the road ever since.
He didn't recognize where he was. This world he found himself on appeared feudal in appearance, with clear skies and untouched landscapes for miles. His eyes scanned his surroundings and found technology and trappings of what could only be feudal worlders.
Cautious, he kept moving forward as he pondered on what to do. Along the lonely road, he encountered people, wary travelers who avoided him as much as possible. They seemed frightened of him and were suspicious, unfamiliar with all his words.
They called him an outsider, a foreigner and a heathen. He snarled at them and demanded answers. They cowered before him and he could see that they were not heretics, simply scared fools.
They did not know of the God-Emperor. They were ignorant of mankind's master and savior. Ludwig sneered at them and was sorely tempted to kill them before shaking those thoughts aside. They were ignorant and beneath his notice.
They did however have a name for him.
Lescatie.
A powerful "Order" bastion that, should the Grenadier continue down the road, will eventually see. He left them aside, ignoring their fearful glances and unfamiliar iconography. They did not worship the hated Eight Pointed Star of Chaos and as such he will leave them be. The Emperor knows his own and will sort them out soon enough.
"Preposterous. What godless world have I found myself in?" growled the Grenadier as he marched on. However to his distaste there was another situation.
"Oh? What's this?" purred a sultry voice, causing the Grenadier to pause and turn to see what had spoken.
And his disgust instantly went up a notch. In front of him was a trio of what could have passed for scantily dressed humans if it weren't for their obvious beastial attributes. One of them made a strange expression as she leered at him, "What's a dour looking man like you doing on such a road all by his lonesome?"
The Grenadier stared at them stoically, fingering his trigger and ready to fire at the barest hint of aggression. The line between mutants touched by chaos or borne from abhorrent technology and those simply divergent of the holy human form naturally is a fine line. He pointed his hellgun and ordered, "Identify yourselves or be eliminated."
They stared at him in confusion before laughing amongst themselves. The Grenadier felt a twinge of annoyance but he kept his guard and discipline up. He viewed the strange mutants carefully and watched as they made a move as if to pounce him, licking their lips and looking at him with what he could only perceive as lust. They held clubs in their hands and leered at him, giggling.
"Will we do this the easy way or the hard way tough guy?" she taunted, a lecherous smile on her face.
Hostile then, possibly slaanesh tainted as well.
"Kill the mutant." he said monotonously as he lifted his hellgun up and opened fire quickly before they could react.
The lasbolt shot out with a loud thunderclap at lightning speed and punched a giant hole in the leading mutant's chest, bursting through and causing her to fly backwards into a broken heap.
The two mutants looked on in shock at their fellow's death and the Grenadier easily put them down before they could react any further. Their deaths were brutally quick and straightforward mercifully enough. Nonchalantly he checked his hellgun over, content with it's condition and ammo supply before moving on as if he hadn't just murdered three people. He left their rapidly cooling corpses behind callously and after that he didn't have any more incidents on the road.
Soon he was at the edges of what looked like outlying farms, the golden fields being worked by farmhands and millers. His appearance terrified many and the farmers kept their distance away from him. He walked up to the city's gates and the guards on duty sputtered in surprise at the stranger in front of them. They held their spears at him fearfully, causing the Krieger to pause. Seeing how they were refusing entry, he lifted his hellgun up.
"Let me in." Ludwig demanded, the guard on the left scoffing, though he was shaking uncontrollably.
"H-Halt! W-We've had your type before and we don't want any trouble. You d-damn foreigners always give us so much trouble!"
The imperial gave the guards a blank look, causing the two Lescatian guards to sweat even harder as they stared into his skullfaced gasmask which seemed to look right into their souls. He was fully prepared to just shove his way past them both when someone walked up to the guards and whispered something in their ears. The guards appeared confused for a bit before they adopted relieved expressions and stepped aside for the Grenadier to pass.
Narrowing his eyes, he walked through suspiciously, his hand close to the trigger.
The man was clad in a concealing robe and simply said, "Come. Follow me imperial. There is much for us to do."
The Grenadier was sorely tempted to just ignore the man when he flashed the imperial a symbol he finally recognized. A small pendant with the Aquila on it.