Warhammer 40,000: Discussione Generalis #1

• Story starts, we find out the parts of the 13th Black Crusade we've been hearing about for over a decade were only the first wave of Abaddon's assault on Cadia.

• Creed is determined to defend Cadia best he can. He believes Abaddon will eventually overrun it and kill everyone, and Abaddon doesn't even need to have anything make planetfall on Cadia at this point, but Creed believes Abaddon's pride won't let him pass it by, and that every hour he can defend it is a wound against Abaddon's pride, which is a priceless victory for the Imperium as a whole.

• Only one of Cadia's main fortresses, Kasr Kraf is left standing after the first wave, so Creed is stationed there.

• Creed takes the wreckage of a choir beacon from another fortress and has a magos install it. The few remaining psykers sacrifice themselves to briefly get it running in hopes someone somewhere hears their plea and comes in their time of need.

• Pretty much immediately after, Abaddon's xbawkz hueg fleet emerges from the Eye, headed by what is likely the last remaining Blackstone Fortress; ancient devices designed by the Old Ones that fire massive beams of unreality that obliterate planets.

• Cut to the world of Eriad VI, which had its research cut short and was deserted when Abaddon's 4th Black Crusade swept over it. Archmagos Belisarius Cawl and his homies have landed there due to reports that it might be hiding some spicy technology.

• An Ork fleet arrives almost immediately after and then proceeds to get wrecked in like two sentences, but the Orks escape via tellyporta and land on the planet. They then begin scavenging technology, throwing raids while using the planet's massive dust storms to their advantage, and overrunning multiple Mechanicus camps. Even after Cawl personally pulls out a ******* glock 19 and blows the Big Mek's brains out slays the Big Mek with his "Solar Atomiser", the Orks keep coming and remain a pain in Cawl's mechanical ass.

• Cawl gets pissed and gets ready to leave, but suddenly a Harlequin Shadowseer who the Archmagos had apparently met before shows up. She essentially just tells Cawl to keep digging because reasons.

• Cut now to Trazyn, who is in the middle of being annoyed when a fuckhueg bell he had in suspended animation starts suddenly wringing and breaking shit.

• After telling the bell to piss off and throwing it into the Webway, Trazyn goes to the planet of Thanatos to visit the Celestial Orrery, which is essentially an exact replica of the Milky Way upon which all changes are reflected and vice versa. He notices that it looks like something really bad is going to happen for the whole galaxy, the beginning of which is centered on Cadia, where Trazyn decides to go because really he has nothing better to do and thinks it would be fun to be the saviour of the universe.

• Another cut, this time to the Imperial Fists' battle fortress known as the Phalanx, which is under attack by Chaos forces headed by Warsmith Shon'tu and Daemon Prince Be'lakor. Things start looking bad for Captain Tor Garadon when hordes of Iron Warriors overrun his troops, daemon engines barge in, and machine viruses start warping the entire Phalanx.

• Garadon eventually goes '**** it' and has the Phalanx cut an entire tenth of itself off in order to stem the virus before proceeding to hurl the entire thing into the Immaterium to thwart Be'lakor's plans of using it against Terra. Shon'tu is beaten to death by Terminators, but Be'lakor keeps wasting Garadon's forces, also throwing his own troops away because victory seems so certain.

• Suddenly, Legion of the Damned. Because yes. Be'lakor realises it was probably really damn stupid to throw his troops away, and the Chaos Gods tell him to **** off when he asks for more. The Legion and Fists manage to fend off the daemons, and also end up heading for Cadia after getting Creed's distress signal.

• Back to Cadia. Abaddon's fleet wastes a bunch of Imperial forces on its way to the planet. Some Space Wolves and other dudes fly a ship towards the fleet in an attempt to reach the Blackstone Fortress and slow it down. They die almost instantly.

• Abaddon's fleet arrives and the Blackstone Fortress instantly fires its giant spehss laz0r at Cadia. Cadia blows up and the book is now over.

• Actually, the beam is dispersed and Cadia is saved. Only the magos with Creed knows it's because of mysterious xenos tech which hijacked the fortress' personal null shielding and spread it over the whole planet. Obviously, Trazyn has arrived.

• Lots of fighting. Lots and lots of fighting. In short, Cadia is slowly but surely overrun. Nothing super important happens until the Hounds of Abaddon show up and actually blow open the walls of Kasr Kraf.

• The leader of the Hounds, who has recently become a Daemon Prince, has been tasked by Abaddon with destroying the planet's shielding so he can go back to blowing it up with his Death Star. He succeeds, Creed says something borderline heretical, and suddenly help arrives from the skies as the chapter ends.

• Celestine arrives from the Warp, bringing with her five entire companies of Sisters who had been lost in the Warp. The Imperial forces lose their collective shit with joy and begin to fight with reignited fervor.

• Celestine's first act of badassery is pretty great. She lands in front of the daemon prince sent by Abaddon and says the equivalent of "**** you, I'm an angel" before reviving two Sisters of Battle Canoness(es?) with her presence alone, turning them into super saiyans as they proceed to get revenge on the daemon prince who slew them.

• The Phalanx also shows up, some Imperial Fist Thunderhawks helping a group of Imperial Knights take down a Chaos Warlord Titan. The Phalanx also manages to crack the Blackstone Fortress' core with a near suicidal plan, causing a wave of unreality to burst out, destroying nearby members of Abaddon's fleet and leaving the fortress floating and seemingly dead.

• Aboard the Vengeful Spirit, Abaddon is told that his daemon prince was just ganked and his planet-destroying warship just came down with a bad case of suddenly wiping out a large part of its own fleet. Abaddon's response is basically 'eh', and he then proceeds to head down to Cadia, himself.

• While the Imperial forces have a brief several hours to collect themselves, angel waifu suggests they all pray. Creed doesn't give a shit, but lets her lead his forces in it because they desperately need the overwhelming morale that Celestine brings to the table. Also, Cawl finally shows up.

• Cawl tells everyone what he's discovered. Basically, there used to be a ton of pylons scattered around the galaxy on different worlds by the Old Ones and their forces. These were used to create a web that limited the Immaterium's influence on the material universe. Apparently, the Gods told Abaddon about this, and he's been using most of his missions as an excuse to wipe most of them out without letting anyone know. So Abaddon's the reason there's been such a greatly increased number of Warp storms and psykers in recent years. If Abaddon breaks all the pylons, Chaos will have just the foothold it needs into realspace, and you can say buh-bye to the galaxy. Cadia is apparently home to one of the last major pylon fields left out there.

• The damaged Phalanx uses itself to shield the pylon fields, as none of the Black Fleet want to risk blowing it up and killing themselves in order to achieve their goal faster. Everyone on the planet gets to set up defenses while Cawl tries to find a way to return the pylons to full efficiency.

• Trazyn reveals himself to Cawl and manages to convince the Archmagos to let him help with the pylons due to his superior knowledge. Cawl still insists on having a bunch of guns aimed on Trazyn during this process, though.

• The battle starts up again in full force, and with Abaddon's finest now leading the charge, things turn sour for the Imperials. Abaddon himself even shows up literally right next to Creed on his personal landing pad in order to kill him.

• Colour Sergeant Kell, who has been with Creed for countless battles, uses his last act to push Creed onto a nearby Valkyrie so the Lord Castellan can escape to safety. Abaddon then crushes his spine. RIP.

• Some of Abaddon's forces invade the area where the pylons are being worked on. Cawl is so invested he doesn't even notice his forces are being effortlessly slaughtered, so Trazyn throws a poké ball tesseract labyrinth that bursts open, releasing a bunch of captured Imperial warriors from all different planets and eras to help hold off the Black Legion.

• The Blackstone Fortress' ruins stir ominously and the chapter ends.

• Fighting in the caverns continues, the Imperials beginning to lose ground.

• Abaddon notices Cawl working on the pylon and realizes the Imperium might have figured out its secrets, and that he probably shouldn't have been such a massively arrogant twat, instead just blowing up the planet when it was easiest.

• Abaddon goes after Creed, because Abaddon hates Creed for making him look like a failure, even though this wouldn't be the case if Abaddon hadn't passed up all ten trillion of his lifetime chances to just press the "I win" button during a battle.

• Celestine bursts in, slaughters a bunch of Chaos Space Marines, and confronts Abaddon. Abaddon is by far the stronger one, and Celestine alone had no hope whatsoever of even coming close to beating him, but her Geminae Superia join her, and as Abaddon apparently has trouble killing more than one person at a time, they have an actual short fight.

• Katarinya Greyfax, an Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor from long ago who came out of Trazyn's tesseract labyrinth, watches the battle from the shadows. She hates Celestine for being prettier than her a disgusting abomination promising false miracles in the name of the holy Emperor. She then tries to shoot Trazyn, but he stops her using his Necron bullshit technology and tells her to go fight Abaddon.

• Cawl prays to his new best friend/the pylon before using it to fire a new giant spehss laz0r at the Eye of Terror, its null energy actually causing the Eye to begin closing. Lots of psykers start dying, daemons and the Legion of the Damned lose their hold on reality, and both Abaddon and Celestine are depowered.

• Despite being depowered, Abaddon is still an Astarte with 10,000 years of experience, while Celestine is a human in fancy armour. Terminators kill the Geminae Superia and Abaddon bitchslaps Celestine to the ground and cuts her with his daemon sword, causing her to scream in pain. The Imperial forces begin to lose pretty much all their morale.

• As Abaddon prepares to kill the now mortal Celestine, Katarinya actually saves her by using her own incredible remaining psychic powers to mentally punch Abaddon in the brain. Abaddon shakes it off before Kat starts shooting him with her condemnor boltgun, which he completely ignores, proceeding to walk ominously towards Celestine for the finishing blow instead of shooting her with the ******* massive gun he always seems to forget is mounted to his talo.

• Some of the Cadian 8th jump in to defend Celestine with their bayonets. It's the thought that counts, right?

• Creed jumps into the fray, shifting Abaddon's focus to the person he hates most. Abaddon chops up one of Creed's arms and grabs him by the throat, mocking that he had already assured the planet's fate before he landed, verifying that Abaddon even doing this was stupid and entirely pointless.

• Before Abaddon can choke Creed to death, Celestine, who Abaddon seemed to have forgotten existed, stabs Abaddon in the spine with her sword, causing him to drop Creed. Abaddon's response to being literally impaled is basically to go "Ow ****!" and stagger slightly. Knowing the planet is about to be destroyed, he grudgingly orders his forces to teleport away, glaring at Celestine the whole time.

• Katarinya is in extreme pain from nearly having her sole sucked out, so Celestine goes over to soothe her. The Inquisitor basically acts super tsundere because Celestine is a total baka.

• Back on his ship, Abaddon orders the crew left on the Blackstone Fortress (the ones who somehow weren't killed by a massive unreality explosion) to throw it into Cadia in a final act of "**** you". They do so, causing Cadia to be completely wrecked as it splits in half, all the pylons are destroyed, and the Eye of Terror not only returns to full size, but expands to engulf Cadia.

• Time for evacuations! Creed and the remainder of the Cadian 8th stay behind, fending off Chaos forces as they try to destroy ships before they can escape.

• Eventually, everyone else is gone and Creed remains in the middle of an apocalypse, falling to the ground as he bleeds out. Obviously Trazy "a metal giant in a scaled cloak" tells him that he need not die here, and that all of eternity awaits him.

• Numerous escape ships are killed during their multiple-day trek to safety, Black Legion ships ever on their tail. Meanwhile, Abaddon sits on his ship, watching Cadia burn while drinking wine out of the Horus clone's skull like literally Hitler/a Saturday morning cartoon villain. This actually happens.

• One of his officers comes in and asks why he's not pursuing the escapees, mentioning the mysterious name of someone in cryostasis aboard Cawl's Ark Mechanicus. Abaddon loses his shit and pilots the remainder of his fleet after the survivors.

• As soon as the escape ships reach safety, all of Abaddon's forces show up. Cawl's fleet stays behind while the other ships full of survivors teleport away. Unfortunately, this is Abaddon's target, so he keeps attacking.

• Not wanting to lose his precious cargo for his super secret mission, Cawl takes the cryostasis chamber and along with Celestine, Katarinya, Black Templar Marshal Amalrich, and their soldiers, travels on an escape ship down to the ice moon of Klaisus while the Black Fleet duels Cawl's remaining battleships.

• Kat gets grumpy that Celestine is leading the way based on her presumably false faith and keeps arguing that she's a heretic. This falls on deaf ears, especially when Cawl points out he knows that Trazyn effectively gave the Inquisitor Necron microscarab injections to keep her under control.

• Lots of walking through ice. Cawl is worried, Kat is grumpy, and Celestine is adorable.

• As soon as they reach the destination Celestine was leading them to, the Black Legion shows up, this time with Abaddon at the head. Knowing it is impossible for them to defeat the Warmaster, Cawl accepts death, hoping to at least die swinging and not faltering from his mission.

• In an ending that literally nobody say coming (because actually WAT), suddenly ELDAR! Lots of 'em! Multiple Eldar forces, both Craftworld and Dark, burst from the snow. Jetbike riders, Aspect Warriors, Wyches, Archons, Wraith constructs, etc. All of them show up to protect the ragtag Imperials and successfully repel the Black Legion through sheer volume and force of fire.

• Continuing ahead with the Eldar, the group comes to a large Webway gate, and even more Eldar. Even Eldrad is there. There are also two Eldar who we know absolutely nothing about but are probably super important, considering one is in an elaborate gown and seems to be directing most of the other Eldar, and the other is in a crimson outfit mixing both aspect armour and kabalite plate (actually wat). The Shadowseer who spoke to Cawl back near the beginning shows up, telling him there's a parley to be struck, as the ending has passed and it is time for a new beginning. The book ends with Cawl, Celestine, Katarinya, and their group following the Eldar through the Webway gate, likely leading into the next book.

• Side note, Celestine and Cawl's rules are ******* broken.

Azathoth the Abyssal Idiot said:

How would we rate Creed?
I definitely wouldn't be surprised if it was Vulkan. The ones I can see as most likely possibilities for models in 40k next are Vulkan, Leman Russ, or Daemon Primarch Angron.

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Matthew Schroeder said:

That's too low.

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