Subject: Grand Admiral Thrawnisco Thrawnco Still Not Dead =]
Author:
Posted on: 2022-01-02 05:18:17 UTC
I'll have to take you at your word regarding the Chiss. The novels of the Expanded Universe are, haha, a closed book to me. I picked them because frankly the thought of the "we're very good at tech" guys getting their hands on Necrontyr technology is extremely bad for the setting, for all that they're a bunch of isolationists. I also think the Syndics are entirely correct in their decision not to push back the Crusade further - not because they can't win the space war, they absolutely can, but because I think they'd struggle mightily to win any kind of protracted ground engagement with the Imperium. Even with their magpie approach to tech, the Chiss ground game likely doesn't have the numbers to deal with the Astra Militarum; maintaining a blockade over Ord Mantell is all well and good, but the moment the Chiss drop planetside they'll receive the traditional Guard welcoming committee of enormous cannons. And that's assuming it's just the Guard; Crusades tend to attract the local Space Marines, and the Realm Of Ultramar is fairly close by in Galactic terms, so the Successor Chapters would definitely support the Crusade effort.
That's a point, actually. Rowboat Guiltygear's gonna wake up first, and despite the Dark Angels' reputation for secrecy, the awakening of the Lion is something I think Big Bobby G's gonna know about sooner or later. The Cicatrix Maledictum is extremely difficult to push through, but his homeworld and his captured brother are on the other side. Right in the path of Tyranids, the Chiss xenos that reversed the Imperium Crusade, that upstart Empire of witches with the big triangular ships, and of course, the filth that is the T'au. The T'au whose propaganda efforts make their way to Roboute by the hand of trusted servants, who we can be at least 80% sure aren't Alpharius. The T'au who showcase their high command not as saints or officers, but celebrities. The T'au whose Water Caste of foul sirens interview those celebrities to further indoctrinate the masses in revolting displays of impious filth. The T'au who show his brother... peacefully interacting... with his interviewers? The T'au who have put together a montage of moments from history involving his gene-brother?
Ha! The foolish xenos have sown the seeds of their own annihilation. See, he says to his aide. Here they give him one of their "battlesuits" - vile heresy, but, Guilliman grudgingly admits after perusing notifications from the Damocles Gulf Crusade, effective vile heresy. It is clearly armed and operational, and thus they seal their fate; for what xenos could stand against the First Angel bedecked in battle and armed to the teeth? He will turn on them now! He tests that screaming gatling weapon, his Legionaries did always so favour the destructive capabilities of plasma weaponry, and now he will turn it upon them! Now he will!
Now, surely he will.
He.
He will.
Surely.
...
The captured drone, already mildly damaged, is smashed to pieces by the rage of the Lord of Lightning's gene-son. Then the broken parts are smashed further. No trickery could so fool Roboute Guilliman that he succumbs to rage. His attendants do not quail in fear, which takes considerable effort. The servants outside make no such efforts, and they swiftly find other jobs to do, which coincidentally involve them going somewhere else. The Alpharius in the building, because of course there is one, hears this and smiles in his heart; for sometimes the greatest act of sabotage is not to lie, but to tell the truth, unalloyed and unprotected by its bodyguard of falsehoods. The Imperial Regent sees his brother consort with xenos. With xenos that did not even exist during his previous lifespan! Such perfect betrayal. Such a blow to the mind and spirit of the Primarch. The perfect plot. Alpharius wishes only that he'd thought of it himself.
Had he the stomach to continue, Roboute would have seen just what else his brother had been doing. Lion El'Jonson is not just consorting with xenos - he is actively submitting to their doctrine. For he is a padawan, under the guidance and teaching of the Jedi Knight General Leia Organa, who herself is aided in her teachings by Master Yoda and her brother Luke. Whatever psychic pulse had coincided with his awakening, it was not of Lion's doing; the man was no psyker, and as such he was able to dedicate himself to learning mastery of the Force as he had mastery of the hunt on Caliban and of warfare during the Great Crusade. Han attends these training sessions too, partly to see how the new guy's settling in, but mostly to see him get whacked with a stick by a two-foot swamp goblin that looks small enough to have fallen out the guy's nose. It is intriguing for the Lion as well - it is incredibly rare for him to be bad at something, and his lessons with Leia and Master Yoda have taught him that he is far from strong in the Force. Other padawans seek him out to spar with him, and it takes his training as a Knight of Caliban to hold his own against them. He wins as often as he loses, but that is his swordsmanship alone. In contests of Force manipulation, he finds himself lacking and falling behind. But there is no mockery. No laughter, like that of the Wolf. There is no feeling of failure. Should he fall, he is offered a hand up. The hand is often blue, or green, or covered in spiked chitin, but it is offered in comradeship. The Lion has had ten thousand years of slumber and contemplation to unlearn a lifetime of hatred, and he is still learning. He takes the hand, whenever it is offered, and offers his own in return. For all that he dwarfs his fellow padawans - Kroot, Vespid, Demiurg, T'au, and so many more - he is kept humble by their progress. It is they, more than Leia, who truly teach Lion to stretch out with his feelings.
I don't know when Roboute and Lion will meet again. I don't know what Cawl's planning. I don't know what kind of battle will commence. I know only that it will. The tides of fate will bring them together. What wreckage will be left afterwards, I cannot say. War is coming. The Imperium of Man is now headed by a man riven with a fury not felt since the Horus Heresy. There are the Rebels. There is the Empire. There is the Ascendancy. And there are the Hive Fleets, and the Ork Waaaaghs, and the Drukhari raids, and whatever in the Throne's name the silver terrors of the Necrontyr are up to.
There is Chaos too, their minions ascendant after the success of the Thirteenth Black Crusade. Angron, the mad Daemon Prince, is rage incarnate, a hurricane at the head of a legion of storms. He and his warriors burn with the power of the Dark Side. For all that they have been steeped in the Empyrean for ten thousand years, the original Legionaries of the World Eaters have a natural affinity for it. I've mentioned it before, but the implants in their heads that make them so savage also make them potentially very strong in the Force, or at least in the Dark Side. They reward passion by stimulating the brain directly, and they deaden neural responses to all passion save that created by slaughter. No more perfect means for submerging someone in the Dark Side could be created, at least in my opinion. These things break people. Angron was broken by them more than ten millennia ago, and his Legionaries are no different. Their minds might be fractured, but they're still alive and not one of them is a psyker. It is those implants, though, that funnel the Force into their bodies and brains. The Nails have coiled deep into their bodies, infecting every nerve and sinew even as they yet live. They are truly mad. The Force, the Dark Side, makes their madness all the deeper. The chainaxes of the Eaters of Worlds hum with power, lightning skipping from tooth to bloody tooth. Khornate Daemons, Angron included, cannot perceive it, but Kharn the Betrayer is himself rapidly becoming stronger and stronger in the Dark Side with every passing moment. These moments are truly eternal, for time flows differently in the Eye of Terror. It is Kharn who finds himself most empowered by this, Kharn whose immense strength and power is warped further by the Dark Side... and Kharn who finds himself directly arrayed against this upstart Vader. Gorechild is a Daemon artifact in a Daemon Realm, and it was a masterwork of archaeotechnology before that, but it is nearly sundered by Vader during the duel that seals Anakin's fate. It also almost seals Kharn's. The duel lasts for four hundred and forty-four days and nights, for four is the sacred number of Khorne. Each nearly has the killing blow four times. Khorne revels in this bloodshed. Every ounce of strength either has is utterly spent. Kharn and Vader are both broken, unable to continue. It is Vader, though, who still has strength enough to knee once more before Khorne. Kharn can only watch, beaten and broken, as Vader achieves the selfsame apotheosis that was given to his master and Primarch. The black armour that preserved Anakin Skywalker's torn and pallid flesh shatters as the man grows to enormous size. Whatever is left of Ani dies there, on a planet of blood before a throne of skulls. Vader is the only thing left. The flesh knits as it swells, but the hideous scars remain the same, and his body explodes in blood-red fire along the places where Anakin Skywalker burned on Mustafar. This is apotheosis. This is Daemonhood. This is a Daemon Prince who can still touch and shape the Force. All hail Prince Vader.
Let the galaxies burn.
