#1 | Death Guard, Aeldari and an Inquisitor clash in ... Xenthari Rift: Nexus War
A Warhammer 40,000 narrative crusade
++ PROLOGUE ++
Upon a dead world, silent and lifeless in the void, an Inquisitor unearths truths best left entombed. And with a single decree, kindles a new war whose fire threatens to consume entire star systems.
There is no stench fouler, no corruption more absolute, than that of the traitor.
The xenos may be repulsive, the witch an aberration, but the traitor? He is decay given thought. He is rot beneath armour. It is not merely his crimes we condemn, but his betrayal of mankind’s divine purpose.
The mutant twists flesh, but the traitor twists faith. He leads the enemy to our gate, and in doing so, murders worlds.
Understand this: our hatred is not born of passion. It is duty. Cold, measured and eternal. The scars we bear are not wounds, but warnings, etched into our flesh by the Emperor’s justice. And they remind us that leniency is heresy, that pity is weakness and that the traitor must be purged, utterly and without pause.
For in this galaxy of ruin, there is no room for redemption, only order or oblivion.
~Ordo Xenos Inquisitor Argus Yig
++ ERA INDOMITUS, M41 – SURVEY OF KALADOR SYSTEM ++
Kalador II was lost.
Not in uncertainty nor ambiguity, but in the cold clarity of fact.
The tyrannic scourge, insatiable, irredeemable, had consumed the system before my vessel breached its bounds. I arrived not to intervene, but to witness the aftermath: silent, lifeless, damning.
The evidence was incontrovertible.
There was no misinterpretation to be had – only the carcass of a world, eviscerated of all essence, stripped of form and fibre. Biomass: harvested. Resistance: obliterated. Life: extinguished.
The retreating forces, whose reports I had studied with due suspicion, had spoken the truth. Uncharacteristically so. Curious.
Their account stands. The record remains intact. There shall be no further censure, no additional purge.
Justice, in this rare instance, is satisfied.
And yet, even they, cowards though they were, had failed to convey the magnitude of devastation wrought upon Kalador II. I now see it with my own eyes. The scale is cataclysmic. The Imperium has sustained a grievous wound, and the hive fleets, the architects of this obliteration, continue their vile campaign unimpeded.
My thoughts, solemn and ordered, were cut short.
A signal.
From amidst the shattered bones of fleets both loyal and heretical, faint pulses emerged. Lifesigns, perhaps? Could it be that faithful souls remained, clinging to survival by the Emperor’s mercy?
For one fragile instant, warmth bloomed in my chest. Hope, yes, that dangerous thing, attempted to intrude. Perhaps there are the righteous left to save. Perhaps the Emperor’s light yet burns here.
But no. The Emperor demands vigilance. And vigilance revealed the truth.
The transmissions – garbled, profane – reeked of corruption. Not sanctioned, not approved. Certainly not pure. The words were encrypted, senseless; yet behind them lurked a sound, a constant droning, rhythmic and unclean, like the wings of a billion carrion flies. A voice slithered through, speaking numbers with no purpose but madness. Meaningless to man, yet not to the warp.
Then came the bell. A solemn, tolling sound, as if rung by the damned themselves. It reverberated through my flesh. I do not flinch from horror, but I confess: it moved me. Nausea rose, and my body, trained as it is to endure, wavered.
The world blurred. Time faltered. The flesh betrayed the will.
But the mind, the mind stood firm. My conditioning screamed through the mire: sever the link. Do not heed the voice. Abhor the mutant. Abhor the deviant. Abhor the witch.
And then it came. From the dark. From the cold edges of sanity.
A space hulk. Defiled. Infected. Touched by the empyrean.
A vessel not of this world. Not anymore.
Justice demands it be destroyed.
And so it shall be.
Mankind forges iron beasts that crawl and roar, lifeless husks stitched with sparks and smoke. They are but feeble echoes, soulless, sterile, compared to the fecund horrors birthed in the warp’s loathsome womb.
Only through the vile, the putrid, the diabolical, may Grandfather’s magnificence slough forth into this realm. In decay, His truth blossoms. In rot, His power is made manifest.
~Evren Rotgale, Malignant Plaguecaster of the Septic Abrupters
Submit to Grandfather. As I have. As your body already has, though your mind fights like a worm on the hook.
There is no shame in decay. There is only freedom.
We have wrought slaughter in His name, sevenfold. We have spread His plagues across systems, across time itself, sevenfold. The stars rot, child, and they rot beautifully.
This ship, this holy sepulchre, anointed in bile and blessed with sores, she bears His image in rust and sings in groans.
Let Him in.
Let the veil that blinds you be eaten by gentle mould. Let your lungs drown sweetly in the blessed phlegm of revelation. Let your limbs go soft. Let your bones bloom.
Come, virulence.
Come, malignancy.
Come, filth and fight with us.
Let every scab be a sigil. Let every cough be a hymn.
You are His. You were always His.
I am merely the usher, the priest of pestilence, the cradle of your rebirth.
Drink deep. Let go.
Say His name, not with your tongue, but with your rot.
Say it. And you shall never die again.
I have seen the hunger that devours stars, and I remain. Let the Mon-Keigh speak of survival. We endured because we remembered.
~Spiritseer Maur of The Righteous Ancients – Warden of the Echoing Path
They come, as I foresaw in the dreaming gloom of the Infinity Circuit. A tide of rot and rust, thick with the reek of mortal decay, drifting on carcass-ships through the void like bloated carrion beasts.
The Death Guard.
Foul sons of entropy, who once walked as men but now shamble as vessels for disease and despair. They bear gifts from their Corpulent Patron, each spore and weeping sore a hymn to his grotesque joy. I feel it, the psychic static of their presence, like flies scraping against the soul.
But this world, this maiden world slumbering beneath jade mist and verdant canopy, it is not theirs to corrupt.
I stand upon its soil, barefoot in ritual defiance, my helm unfastened so that the whispers of the departed may find my ears unclouded. The spirits of our kin murmur through the wraithbone, restless yet resolute. I have bound them with soul-runes etched in grief and fire. They will fight, though long past flesh.
Your plague-fleets may scab the stars and your blight may wither the bloom of life, but here you will find no triumph. You face not mortals, but memory incarnate. Each Wraith construct you shatter will rise again, borne aloft by the fury of those you cannot comprehend.
Turn back, servants of rot. For should you descend, you will find no death here, only wrath eternal, shaped in spirit and seared in pain.
We do not fear the end.
Where fate, rot and ruin converge
Once a quiet shipping corridor between the Kalador system and other forge worlds, the Xenthari Rift now pulsates with violent warp anomalies, creating unstable transit routes.
Rumours speak of a buried Aeldari webway junction beneath the stellar crust, its psychic emissions slowly poisoning reality. The Death Guard, drawn by these energies, have begun seeding rot within the fabric of space itself.
Thanks to the unexpected intervention of the elusive Aeldari, Inquisitor Yig barely escaped his encounter with the traitor legion in the Kalador system and has found refuge in the Xenthari Rift. There he will repair his vessel, tend to his crew and bide his time.
#1 | Rotting Biomass on Biletarax
Biletarax was once a minor penal colony, until it vanished in a warp storm centuries ago. It recently returned, spewing out plague-slicked voidships filled with bloated horrors. Nurgle’s gifts now saturate its atmosphere, making survival without full-body seals impossible. Here, the Death Guard reign supreme. Yet strange crystalline ruins suggest it was once a lost Aeldari shrine world. Its desecration now fuels the Aeldari’s vengeance.
These forces are about to challenge the status quo.
Death Guard Virulent Vectorium
Aeldari Seer Council
Highlights:
Turn 1: Bolters, blight launchers and plasma guns blasted the reapers taking cover on the second floor of the ruins.
Mortar fire followed but the reapers remained steadfast from their vantage point.
Meanwhile, guardians tore seven poxwalkers to shreds with shurikens
An eldritch storm obliterated another two poxwalkers however the vectorium’s worldblight ensured the Death Guard held the objective in no man’s land.
A wraithlord fried a plague marine with a brightlance (eight damage!) while the starcannon killed a blightlauncher.
The reapers had their revenge and blew up a red bloat-drone. The deadly demise killed a poxwalker and wounded a plague marine cowering in ruins.
Maugan Ra’s ‘Harvester of the Souls’ sprayed poxwalkers and plague marines with deadly debris.
Turn 2: The blightlord trio teleported behind enemy lines and opened fire on guardians killing three with rapid-firing combi-bolters.
The blight-hauler melted five guardians.
Concentrated fire almost wiped a guardian unit.
The blue bloat-drone melted three guardians.
And then the reapers blew up the blue bloat-drone …
Scatter lasers bounced off the blight-hauler’s armour but a farseer inflicted two damage.
Wraithguard found a chink in the blight-hauler’s armour plating and promptly annihilated it.
Turn 3: red plague marines destroyed the three windriders.
Blightlords killed a farseer (nine hits but only three wounds made it through).
The stratagem ‘disgustingly resilient’ was played on the plagueburst crawler.
The wraithguard murdered a blightlord.
Guardian shuriken catapults and an eldritch storm were ineffective against plague marines in ruins.
The reapers shelled the same marines and killed four.
Turn 4: a wraithlord smacked a blightlord.
Plague marines shanked guardians with plague knives.
The wraithlord finished the blightlord unit with a brightlance.
Maugan Ra wiped the red plague marines while the reapers wasted the tallyman.
The malignant plaguecaster cracked a farseer over the head with a staff.
Turn 5: the Aeldari mopped up.
The Death Guard forces did not incur any battle scars!
The Aeldari claimed victory, establishing a foothold on Biletarax
Spiritseer Maur held more biomass silos (55 victory points) than Malignant Plaguecaster Evren Rotgale (40 victory points).
The reward for seizing control of the death world industrial complex is 200 supply for the Aeldari. Reinforcements are on the way …
A major setback for the Death Guard, the vectorium suffered a penalty to its ‘Path of Contagion’ project. Rotgale ordered a tactical withdrawal to a nearby stronghold to plan a counter offensive.
And what of the Seer Council’s ‘Threads of Fate’?
While the battle for Biletarax rages, the nexus war has only just begun!