Greetings all! While the wife and I work on some other things and projects, we'll be dropping a series of intros to other characters in the New Imperium universe. They're more of a framing device, and will be non-erotic, but will open up other stories within the greater setting. Once they're all complete, let us know in the comments which one you want fleshed out first!
"How small you are," An enormous shadow flickered in a realm of tangible madness and liquid rage. A silhouette tumbled past it, plucked from one place of corruption and destined to be deposited in another.
"I did not fail, masters!" The smaller shape called into the void.
Silent cacophony.
"The portal opened!"
"A portal, insect," the shadow in the madness roared. "Not a rift! Not a gaping wound in reality. Not even a speck compared to the great tear in the cosmos created by your...brothers."
The small shape hurtled onwards, wreathed in lightning made of fear and flames of liquid hate. "I will use it, master! I will bring a new world to your glory!"
"Yes, you will, little worm. You have blundered into a place I thought lost, through a crack too small for me to wriggle through," the shadow laughed, and the mortal's body was flensed into a million agonizing pieces before being remade by every scintillating blast of lightning and flame. "Swear to serve me, and you will bear my mark into this new and fertile place."
The dying mortal sorcerer considered for only a moment, but the pain was infinite. Which god of the unending glories of the Warp had seen fit to take notice? Tzeentch, lord of change and madness? Slannesh, ever-thirsting, and giver of unimaginable pain and pleasure? Khorne, master of war and rage and blood? Or Father Nurgle, paternalistic master of rot and decay? He'd served all four in their own ways in his previous existence, but now he was being forced to choose.
The agony was too great, even for his enhanced physique, and the opportunity too delicious to ignore, "Yes, master! Yes! I swear to serve you!"
The laughter grew richer and more powerful, blotting out every other sensation than the endless pain, "Go, insect. Gather for me an army. An Army! An unending legion of hate, and I will see fit to grant you ever more power."
The chaos sorcerer's stomach dropped as he was hurtled ever onwards in the not-place of the Warp, towards a scintillating gash set against a softly glowing pearlescent wall. It shrunk as he approached until he was sure he would be unable to reach it in time, but he strained towards it with a taloned hand. He punched through, splintering the semi-solid wall on each side of the gash, and he was through.
***
I, Rugaz Lar, cast from the Corpse-Emperor's so-called love, apprenticed under Chaos Lords various and sundry, scourge of Trigos IV, thrice-cursed foe of the Order of the Blessed Rose, woke as I hurtled towards a landscape of rolling green hills and sandy-colored rock.
Cold air whistled past my helmeted face and residual pain fired through my nerves. My senses, enhanced by Astartes gene engineering, endless surgical tinkering, and exposure to raw Warp power, quickly estimated how quickly I was falling and how long I had before smashing into the ground below. As I tumbled, I realized that my projected impact zone was not another rolling green field but an expanse of darkened pits and charred, half-collapsed structures.
I still clutched my ancient staff, carved from corrupted Aeldari wraithbone, and focused my psyker magicks through it. The warp was different here and tasted strange to my corrupted mind, but I had no time to consider that. As the peculiar, half-ruined camp loomed huge through the eye-slits in my helmet, I sent a rippling wave of pure force away from me and let it ricochet from the mud and back into my armored form. It was an imperfect solution and sent fresh pain shooting through me, but it checked my lethal speed enough to slop me into the mud with breathless instead of bone-crushing force.
The mud was cold, and the air stunk of death, filth, and rot, but my armor and enhanced senses detected no lethal toxins. There were toxins, certainly, and my mind tingled with a robust but strangely flavored sense of the Warp. This place was steeped in the Warp but not like any other world I'd ever visited. The toxins stunk of Father Nurgle's blessings, but they were faint and almost...diluted.
Had it been Nurgle that had spared me and cast me here? If so, where was the mark he'd promised? My armor, a gift from a Warp-Smith of the Iron Warriors for producing two score daemon engines, registered nothing other than minor trauma from the fall. The minor daemon bound within it, an animalistic Fury, hissed angrily in my mind at having been cast back into reality after a brief return to its true home.
Something hissed through the stench and clattered off of my power pack. I wheeled, all sense of curiosity gone and replaced by the cold rush of combat. Amber runes crowded my helmet's display, denoting distances and threat levels of the pathetic band of mortals approaching my impact site.
Their appearance only reinforced my assumption of Nurgle's involvement. Five half-rotted corpses looked down from the rim of the shallow crater. These were not the usual shambolic husks; no, well-made armor painted in deep purples and black covered their ragged frames, and each carried well-maintained weapons. One, with intently glowing yellow eyes, was reloading a large crossbow that had done nothing but rouse my anger.
I took a step up through the mud and kicked something loose. Unbothered by the plague-scum above me, I stopped to fish the offending object free. They were shouting at me in guttural and twisted voices, but they were of no real concern. A great ax slid free from the mud, with a long haft of ancient bone bleached pure white by the eons and wrapped in indecipherable black runes that twisted beneath my gaze. At one end of the head was a long, perfectly straight, tapered spike of the same impossibly hard bone, the tip blackened by whatever warp powers had been used in its forging. The other end was a stylized skull with the jaw opened impossibly wide to accommodate the razor-sharp blade made of some unknown black metal.
Was this my mark, my sign of favor?
Primitive black powder cracked in the cool air, and a lead ball flattened itself on my chest plate. Another of the corpses fired a crude rifle at me, though this projectile was rimmed with scintillating blue energy. It ricocheted away, but not before a fraction of its magicks wormed their way through my many psychic wards and thick armor to prick against my skin.
I gathered the unfamiliar and weakened psychic energies around me and forced them through my staff. Searing blue flame speared out and obliterated the corpse that had fired the surprisingly powerful projectile. To their credit, the others merely reloaded or readied their weapons even as smoldering gore and metal spattered their armor.
Another volley of bolts and bullets bounced away from my armor as I strode upwards. Thick smoke from their muskets half-shrouded the corpses, and my helmet seamlessly transferred modes to make them stand out in my vision as clearly as if illuminated by warp fire. One lunged forward with a heavy steel axe, still shouting guttural nonsense from a ruined throat.
I smashed him into the mud with my staff and felt bones snap beneath the blow. Another chopped at my knee-joint and drew sparks from the enchanted ceramite, and I decided to try out my new gift. The black-bladed ax sliced through my second assailant's midriff as if the steel mail were parchment, and the corpse's flesh gave far less resistance. Both halves flopped into the mud, and I smiled behind the snarling visage wrought onto my helmet.
The other two met similarly rapid and gratuitous ends, and I noted the brief flares of...something every time one died. They were brave without being mindless, attacking what they thought were weak points in my Astartes armor with a strength belied by their withered forms. I was not some mindless berserker or insane Tzeenthcian schemer, and I could acknowledge their bravery and discipline even as I cut them to pieces.
Once I gained the crater's rim, I could see that not all of the shabby structures in this place had been abandoned or destroyed. A bell rang in alarm where sentries peered down at me from a dilapidated wooden tower, and more purple-and-black soldiers trooped out of a large building fairly bristling with iron spikes and arcane devices fresh from a Warp-Smith's fever dream. With a chance to see it without hurtling towards it, I realized that this poisoned, muck-filled place had once been a sprawling camp of some kind. A prison camp, by the looks of the collapsed fences and burnt towers, but some conflict or calamity had reduced it all to ruin--all but the strange barracks and its company or so of feudal infantry.
Another musket cracked, and the impact twitched against my shoulder guard. I wheeled, snarling, only to see the bisected soldier perched in the mud, calmly glaring at me even as he smoothly reloaded the weapon. He seemed no worse for wear even after I'd halved his wretched mass.
The other primitives could wait.
I stomped back and lopped off both of his arms, but he just kept glaring up at me. Some kind of foul ichor oozed from his wounds, indicating he was, in some way, still living. Bemused and curious, I cast one of Nurgle's simpler spells to keep any more of his life from ebbing away. To my surprise, he barked something at me that nearly sounded like the black tongue spoken in Commoragh's gutters by the vilest and insane of the fallen Aeldari. Most curious indeed.
