Members of the PPC, honored guests, random passers-by,

I bring you a legend today. A piece of fanfiction so beloved by its readers that the mention of its name makes some readers choke up. One that leaves me crying tears of joy every time I read it. Before I link it - or rather, them - I would like to take a moment to preface them, to give you some perspective as to what makes these pieces so outstanding.

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"Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

In this most grim of times, this most dark of hours, there are many sacrifices made. Sacrifices of men and machines, of entire planets at times, for the good of the Imperium of Man. All of them tragic, but none so poignant as the tragedy that befell - and continues to befall - the inhabitants of a planet known as Krieg.

Millennia ago, Krieg was simply another world among millions, its inhabitants serving the Emperor no more and no less than their fellows across the Imperium. Disaster struck, in the form of an uprising that left Krieg wracked with civil war for five hundred years. It ended, finally, when a Loyalist Colonel gained control of Krieg's nuclear stockpile, and laid waste to the entire planet in a storm of atomic fire. The loyalists were victorious, but at the cost of their very home. Krieg emerged a barren, irradiated wasteland, covered with great clouds of ash that left it in perpetual nuclear winter.

In the 41st Millennium, the soldiers of Krieg are the hardest, toughest men of the Imperial Guard. They know no fear, they are loathe to retreat even a single inch. They have one goal, and one goal only: to die fighting the enemies of the Emperor in penance for their ancestors' betrayal. Kriegers have been known to actually execute their own Commissars for cowardice.

They are broken human beings, bred in the vast cloning facilities of Krieg and raised from infancy to be soldiers in the most brutal, unforgiving, iron-disciplined army in a galaxy of total war. They almost never remove their gas masks, at they wish always to be prepared for enemy assault. They do not have battlefield medics, as treating those too badly wounded to fight is inefficient - they have Quartermasters, whose duty is to strip the dead and crippled of their gear (to be redistributed amongst the healthy) and booby-trap the bodies, that they might perform one final service for the Emperor.

There isn't much to like about the Krieg. They are the ultimate faceless mooks - no personality, no face, not even a name. Every gas-mask-wearing, Lasgun-toting figure has a serial number, nothing more. They are weapons of war, not human beings.

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Into that setting, within that army, came the most noblebright fic ever written about Warhammer 40,000. A story of misunderstandings, of confusion, and of growing love. A story of hope for the most hopeless humans ever born. A story of a chance for redemption for a planet with an unpayable debt.

A story...of Love and Krieg.


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Part the First, in which a Krieger falls in love: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/LoveandKrieg

Part the Second (Still in progress, thank the Emperor!), in which Kriegers find their peace: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/LoveandKrieg_Spinoffs

Please note: I am not linking from 4chan, but from /tg/'s wiki.

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Happy reading, and remember:

Terranis holds.