The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 18: Malleus Maleficarum

193.948.M30 – Eremus Gate

The return voyage to Eremus Gate was a quiet one.

The colony on Eremus II endures, though the men there still call the place cursed. It is not cursed — merely young. Every world the Imperium tames bleeds before it heals. But they are alive, and that is enough.

---

219.948.M30 – Krynaros

The journey to Krynaros was quick, the warp placid. When we translated, the augurs were overwhelmed by light and ruin.

Two neutron stars, locked in their fatal embrace, circle one another like serpents fighting over the same heart. Their energies scour the void, dragging every wayward particle into their orbit — a grave ring of wreckage and stone. Ships, asteroids, ice, the bones of a thousand dead machines. And within that maelstrom hung the prize we sought: a space hulk.

Ten kilometers from the surface to the center. Layers upon layers of derelict vessels, half-fused, half-melted, bound together by gravity and the dutrius of space. Beneath the tangle of hulls and rock lay something older — a core of metal and stone, perhaps an asteroid, perhaps a seed of something worse.

There are no planets here, only the twin stars and a distant yellow sun, as if the system itself were watching the duel of its dying brothers. The Magos warned that the neutron stars would merge and give birth to a black hole in a million years. I told him we would be long gone by then.

---

We approached under silent running, but stealth is a meaningless concept in a place that screams with radiation. The hulk’s defenses woke as we closed — sporadic bursts of gunfire, ancient weapons coughing at our hulls. Ork attack craft swarmed from hollow bays, a green tide given wings.

The Ashen Daughter held her course, shields flaring, and answered with disciplined fury. The orks were many but disorganized, their attacks scattered. Even the wounded Ashen Promise, stripped of the Black Comet’s support, could have managed it.

The orks aboard the hulk were worse still — thousands of them, but feral. A population left too long without war, gnawing on the bones of their own empire. They fought with crude firearms and spiked clubs, howling through corridors filled with fungus and the stink of centuries. They died as easily as they lived.

We took the outer levels within a day. The Magos found little of worth — no functioning reactors, no archeotech, no logic engines that still sang. Only a few relics of unknown make, and the ever-present trace of corruption.

Then came the discovery at the hulk’s core.

---

At first, the Magos thought it an ork rok, but that illusion died the moment we breached its outer skin. There were no straight lines, no rivets, no signs of construction by hand or claw. The corridors were triangular, ribbed like the inside of some colossal creature. The walls pulsed faintly when touched, as if the walls remembered how to live.

I felt unease settle over the company. Something in those walls whispered to us.

I ordered the main force to hold at the perimeter. I would not risk them in the dark. Instead, I took my own squad — Daecrus of my own Legion, Erastes of the Emperor’s Children, Oskyr of the Wolves, and Karyth of the Alpha Legion. Warden Anaïs came with us. “For protection against maleficarum,” I said, though the word itself felt foolish on my tongue.

Superstition has no place in this age. But sometimes, reason has no purchase.

---

We descended.

The deeper we went, the more the corridors seemed to fold upon themselves. Every junction was a triad — three ways forward, never two. Our auto-senses failed to map the geometry. Anaïs murmured that the walls were “forgetting where they belonged.” I forbade her from speaking further.

After what felt like hours, we entered a vast chamber. Dozens of tunnels opened into it, each one identical to the one we had come from. And in the mouth of every tunnel, we saw ourselves — six figures, mirrored and repeating, stretching into infinity.

For a heartbeat, I could not tell which was us.

Daecrus began to convulse, clawing at his helm. Anaïs cried out a word that made my ears ring, and the illusion shattered. Whether by her power or by my own denial, I cannot say. The reflections were gone.

But the darkness that replaced them was worse.

---

It came from the center of the chamber, rising out of a pool of shadow that seemed to drink the light of our lamps.

A figure — no, a shape. Vaguely human, monstrously wrong. A skeletal giant, all sinew and claws, its neck a serpent’s coil ending in a mouth of knives. Its flesh rippled like oil over water.

I ordered Oskyr and Karyth to form a shield around the Warden. Daecrus was raving, lost to fear or madness. That left only Erastes and myself to face the thing.

Bolter fire did nothing. Erastes’ blades struck true but met no resistance — the creature’s flesh absorbed every blow like smoke. Its claws raked against our armor, not cutting, but draining. Each strike stole something from us — warmth, strength, life.

Anaïs invoked the Emperor’s name and unleashed her power. The air froze, the warp screamed, but the beast did not falter.

It was then, desperate and fading, that I drew the chainsword given to me by Captain Arend Kairon of the Glory of Kallas. Its teeth roared like a storm. I struck — once, twice, again and again — each blow an act of faith in a universe that allows none.

The creature howled without sound. It dissolved, its darkness peeling away like ink in sunlight. When it was gone, the air was cold and still, and I fell to my knees.

---

I remember little of the retreat. Erastes dragged me out, or so he says. Daecrus had to be sedated; his mind shattered. Anaïs was pale and silent. None of us spoke.

When we reached the surface, I sealed the tunnels. The Magos protested — of course, he did — but I overruled him. No one enters that place again without my explicit order.

The Warden believes the creature was drawn to the warp bleed between the twin stars, a manifestation of some ancient corruption. The Chaplain calls it a “daemon, an ancient xenos monstrosity from beyond the stars.” 

I prefer the term anomaly.

There are no demons, no gods, no maleficarum.

There are only things we do not yet understand.

---

228.948.M30 – Aboard the Ashen Daughter

Erastes and I recovered quickly enough. Warmth returned to our bodies, our strength returned. Yet I cannot forget how the thing in the chamber reached out and took a part of me to keep forever and ever. But we denied it and cast it back into the abyss.

Daecrus remains in stasis, his mind gone to pieces. Anaïs stands silent vigil.

The Magos wants to continue excavations. I denied him. The hulk is quarantined. Its secrets can rot in the dark.

Some doors are meant to stay closed.

Draco Vult.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 17: The Scouring of Droskael

 

176.948.M30 – Droskael System, Ashveil Reach

The guns fell silent over Droskael Major. For the first time since we crossed the Gate, there was no enemy fleet, no storm, no great calamity pressing down upon us. Only the slow, methodical work of cleansing what remained.

Victory is never the end. It is merely the pause between purges. The Magos calls it “system reclamation.” The Word Bearer chaplain prefers “purification.” The mortal crews call it “The Scouring.”

---

Droskael Majoris

The world still burns, though the orks are broken. Their warbands shattered, their warboss slain, their weapons silenced. As always, some survive, scattering into the wastelands to infest the ruins and the deep places. Orks are a disease, not a species. You do not cure a disease; you endure it until it mutates into something worse. That task will fall to the generations that come after us.

Our attention turned instead to the Ghouls — the foul breed the squats call “Thrax” and the voidsmen whisper of as “Eaters.” They had infested the shadow-cities that ring the habitable belt between day and night, burrowing into the cracked remains of human architecture, transforming them into hives of poison and rot.

A full company of Astartes made planetfall under my command, supported by the 2nd Legion’s wardens, auxiliary regiments, and the Ashen Daughter’s small craft. The fighting was brutal, room-to-room, tunnel-by-tunnel — the kind of war where light itself dies.

Their lairs betrayed them. Just as their ships’ drives could be tracked by their radiation plumes, so too did their burrows bleed poison into the atmosphere. We followed the stench like hounds through a graveyard.

The last of their strongholds fell in the ruins of Carthis, a city that once sprawled across the twilight zone of the planet. The broodmaster was a giant of fused flesh and metal, half-machine, half-carrion. It fought with the rage of a dying sun — and beside it, a new horror: a psyker. A Ghoul with the warp-touched mind of a human host, lashing out with waves of psychic bile that boiled armor and flesh alike.

Fortunately, Warden Anaïs of the Second was with us. She is small by Astates' standards, but when she raised her hand, the world seemed to still. The Ghoul’s psychic roar collapsed into silence, its power strangled mid-cry. We closed in. Bolter fire, chainswords, flame. When it was done, only ash and the smell of metal remained.

The Magos dissected the bodies afterward. His findings chilled even him.

The Ghouls are parasites in the truest sense. They implant their larvae through the ear canals of their victims — I have seen the scars myself — and the worms burrow into the brain, feeding and spreading until nothing of the host remains. For a time, the body lives on, a puppet in service to its masters. Then the larvae devour the brain and crawl free, consuming the corpse, and sometimes one another, until the strongest survives.

Each new Ghoul carries something of its host: posture, musculature, even fragments of memory. The older ones — those swollen with augmetics and scars — are patchwork abominations of a hundred lineages. Not gene-craft, but crude, instinctive eugenics. And always hungry. Always breeding.

It is a wonder they ever reached the stars. Or perhaps the stars are where such creatures belong — feeding upon the refuse of dying worlds.

We found no navigation data, but mountains of data-slates filled with what the Magos calls “scientific abomination.” He will decode them when he dares. For now, they are sealed in stasis aboard the Daughter.

---

The Remnants of Humanity

Human life endures here, stubborn as rust. Scattered tribes survive in the ruins, and others shelter in subterranean vaults — the largest called Persephone.

Persephone is a place of superstition, ruled by a matriarch named Halix Serane, who preaches salvation through the Patron. She calls it the “Savior in Silver.” The people carve its likeness into their walls and sing hymns to the ships that once came from the sky.

It is heresy of the most wretched kind — the kind born not from rebellion, but desperation.

When I visited Persephone, I found their halls draped in banners of pale cloth and silver thread. Their air smelled of incense and rot. The Chaplain Iason of the Word Bearers came with me. He spoke the Imperial Truth for two hours, voice thunderous, eyes burning with zeal. When the sermon ended, Halix Serane spat at his feet and called the Emperor a false prophet.

I declared her cult apostate.

The Chaplain carried out the sentence.

What few recanted were spared. The rest were given to the fire.

Later, we found survivors from the outer shelters — wanderers, scavengers, hunters from the cold side. Their stories were different. They said the silver ships did not bring salvation. They brought death. They descended without warning, their hulls gleaming like mirrors, and when they rose again, the people were dead where they stood, untouched, unmarked. Then, inevitably, the Ghouls came to feast on the corpses.

If the Patron were a god — and it is not — it would be a god of ruinous extinction.

No wonder these ragged souls kneel in gratitude when we speak of Unity and the Truth of the Emperor. To them, the Imperium is the true miracle they have prayed for — the first proof in generations that there is order in the universe.

We leave behind a garrison — a regiment and a half of Auxilia, armored support, and a squat engineering cohort from the clan-ship. Their work will be slow and bloody, but they will rebuild. Perhaps one day, Droskael Major will be more than a tomb.

---

Droskael Minoris

There is nothing left to save. The cities are shattered domes, their skeletal frames littering a world scoured by time. No signals, no bodies, no life. Even the deep shelters are silent.

Yet there is power here. The Magos’ instruments hum with readings he cannot explain — faint traces of energy, like ghosts whispering through the metal. He warns against interfacing with any systems until a full quarantine is established. We remember the Myrmidon. We remember the madness that burned at Eremus Gate. Some knowledge is poison.

---

Cthonis

The demiurg holdfast, Kar-Kesh, answers our hails at once. The squat lords remember our aid, and the trade pact is renewed with firm handshakes and many mugs of some foul-smelling liquor. They offer us dock space, repair crews, and ore rights in exchange for protection and access to the Imperium’s trade routes — once we establish them, of course.

The Daughter’s wounded flank is patched and plated anew. The dwarves work like termites and sing as they weld. Even the Magos seems faintly impressed.

---

The Hadranis Belt

The last of the Ghouls hide here, scuttling between asteroids like rats in a burning house. Their own radiation trails betray them. We burn them out one rock at a time. Most die in the void; a few require boarding actions. It is ugly, short work. Bolters don’t sound the same in zero gravity — the percussion becomes a kind of heartbeat.

When the last nest is silenced, the Magos declares the sector “purged.” I am less certain. Things that feed on the dead have a way of returning when the lights go out.

---

Malis and Its Moons

The orks hold on longer than reason should allow. Their raiders swarm the moons and the orbital debris fields, attacking in packs, roaring their hatred into the void. Without a warboss to unify them, they are nothing but feral rage.

We answer with precision. The Comet lures them out, the Daughter’s lances slice their ships apart, and the Promise finishes what remains. The engagements are brief but fierce — the orks die laughing, as they always do.

When the last raider’s engines flicker out, the stars over Malis are quiet again.

---

Thus ends the scouring of Droskael.

Three worlds cleansed, one restored, a system reclaimed.

What remains now is not conquest but stewardship — and that is not our purpose.

Our next destination lies beyond the Gate, deeper into the dark.

The space hulk we detected months ago — the drifting grave of a thousand ages — waits for us still.

The Navigatrix says she can find it.

The Magos says it may hold secrets that Terra and Mars desire.

The Chaplain says it must be purged.

And I… I am eager to see what waits in its shadows.

Draco Vult.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 16: Big Guns Never Tire

 

820.947 Droskael System, Ashveil Reach

The warp was still and untroubled on the return to Droskael. The currents bent around our course as if guiding us home. Three ships in formation, three flames in the void: the Ashen Daughter, the Ashen Promise, and the Black Comet.

Our mission was simple to say and vast to accomplish: to reclaim the Droskael system for the Imperium. That meant the cleansing of xenos — ork and ghoul both — the search for survivors of human stock, and the pacification of whatever disease of heresy might have taken root during the long night. We knew there were people on Droskael Majoris; the vox echoes we had intercepted in earlier expeditions were clear enough. Droskael Minoris was a corpse, its domes and cities cracked and open to the void. So we turned our attention to the living world and its rotting heart.

The Magos warned that the “Ghouls” might yet linger, but the orks were the true threat. Two kill kroozers confirmed, and possibly more beyond the sensor range. We chose to hunt them as they would hunt us — with bait and blood.

---

We split the fleet. The Black Comet went to lurk near Malis and its moons, her captain Yurian Drex in his element — a pirate once more, but flying under the Aquila. The Daughter and Promise slipped sunward toward Majoris, their void shields low and their transponders silent. It was not long before we found our prey. One kroozer was in high orbit over the planet, the other far out in-system. Perhaps they believed the system theirs again, for they made no attempt at evasion when we struck. 

The first fell quickly. The Daughter’s lances tore through its flank, the Promise’s batteries bleeding it of life until its core detonated in a green sunburst.

The second, we hunted down in deep space. The Comet tracked it and fed us interception data. Three days of running battle, and then the kroozer was drifting, split open, its guts spilling into the void.

Two kills, no losses. Even I was impressed.

---

While we fought in the void, another battle was being waged aboard the Ashen Daughter. Chaplain Iason of the Word Bearers — a man so zealous he seemed to breathe fire through his mask — had found a cult festering among the lower decks. Spiral marks cut into flesh, charms carved from bone, their symbol daubed across the lower decks. He showed me patches of skin cut from the flesh of the wicked — a crudely etched circle spiraling ever inward. It reeks of faith and false gods, he said, and faith is heresy.

At first, he confined himself to “corrective surgery” — the removal of tattoos along with the skin that bore them, and the chastizement of the idolaters. When I heard of this, I ordered a purge. Half-measures breed rot. The Word Bearers took to the task with a ferocity that bordered on ecstasy. Their chants of Unity and Truth echoed through the corridors as the false faithful were dragged away. It was a terrible music, but the ship is clean again.

---

878.947.M30 – Droskael Majoris

Droskael Majoris hangs tidally locked to its sun — one face a cold wasteland of broken cities, the other a scorching desert that knows no true night. The orks built their fortress on the day side. There stands their great cannon, a mountain of metal and madness, its roots sunk deep into the planet's crust, drawing power from the star itself. From orbit, it glowed like a brand pressed to the planet’s skin.

Our bombardments were useless. The lances flared against its shields, and our plasma warheads did nothing. Then came blinding sunflares that reached all the way down to the planet's surface. Whatever this cannon was made of, it drank energy from the sun and grew stronger.

A landing was the only option.

The Black Comet remained in the outer system as watchdog. The Daughter took high orbit, guns ready to scour anything that rose from the surface. The Promise descended, its hull shedding fire, and unleashed its cargo of Astartes and Auxilia.

We took the landing zone at dawn and held it through the night. The orks came in waves — some riding wheeled contraptions, some on foot, all charging. They broke again and again upon our lines. I held the forward bastion myself; it is my duty to stand where the wall is weakest. When dawn came, the ground was carpeted with their dead, and the auxilia stood upon it to cheer.

By the second day, five thousand infantry and half our armor were planet-side. The air was thick with dust and smoke, the sun a dull red coin in the sky. The Magos warned of seismic instability; the planet itself shuddered as if in pain. We ignored him. There was work to do.

---

That night, they brought a woman to us. She was human, barely alive, and clad in chains. Four weirdboyz escorted her, their eyes boiling with green light. Through her lips, they spoke. Their warboss, Grak-Tok, sought parley. They wanted to “make deal.” I listened long enough to hear the blasphemy in their words and then had the woman and her masters executed. Diplomacy with orks is like feeding meat to a wild beast — you only make it grow.

The next morning, our scouts reported movement — tens of thousands of greenskins rallying beyond the horizon. The sky filled with their stinking smoke. I called for orbital strikes. The Daughter descended to range and was met by planetary defense fire of impossible caliber. Bolts of energy the size of mountains lanced upward, forcing her to withdraw behind the terminator. We had found our true target: the guns beneath the sun.

---

The ground battle became a siege. The orks threw themselves against us in madness and joy. When their bodies choked the barbed wire, their war-machines came howling through the gaps. The auxilia fought like veterans; the artillery sang. But we could not hold forever. If we did not break their guns, they would turn them upon the Daughter and burn our ships from the sky.

I chose three strike teams. One was my own — my command squad and the five Daughters of the Second Legion, warriors as fierce as they were beautiful in their austere way. The other teams I drew by lot. Favoritism breeds resentment, and resentment kills. By chance, the Ultramarines were favored again.

Each team was to destroy one of the planetary guns to open a corridor for the Daughter’s lances. We moved out under the veil of a dust storm, thunderhawks skimming low. The world was hellish — cracked stone, boiling air, and the roar of a star too close.

My team breached first, fighting through orks entrenched in honeycombed caverns. Their defenses were crude but effective: iron doors, traps, and enough firepower to flatten a city. We reached the core and set our charges beneath the gun’s plasma feed. When it blew, the sky went white.

One of the other teams reported success; the third was pinned until we reinforced them and cut our way through. By then, the Daughter was already descending, ignoring the flak bursts that scorched her armor. Her lances opened like a choir of angels singing wrath. The ork horde broke beneath that fire, their machines melting into slag.

922.947.M30 – Droskael Majoris

Yet the great sun-gun still stood. No weapon from orbit could touch it. It fed upon the star like a leech. The planet quaked, mountains cracking, rivers of magma bursting from the ground. We did not wait for the dust to settle. We advanced.

Two days of fighting through fire and smoke, our armor blackened, our lungs seared. Then we reached the gun pit — a crater so vast it seemed to swallow the horizon. Within it stood the cannon, a mountain of steel and madness. We breached its shield with our own power fields and brought up the super-heavies: two Fellblades and two Falchions. Their cannon fire shook the sky.

When the core finally went, it was like watching a sun die. Light without heat, sound without end. The shockwave flattened everything for miles. When the dust cleared, the cannon was gone, and with it the last hope of the greenskins. Those who survived fled into the wastes to rot and breed in caves. We will hunt them later.

For now, Droskael is ours. The Imperium claims another world, one more ember rekindled in the dark.

The void is quiet again. It is never good when it is quiet.

Draco Vult.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 15: The Order of Time

 

733.947.M30 – Eremus Gate

When we recovered the orders from the dead fingers of Keeper Andropolous, it was no longer a matter for debate. By writ of the 11th Legion, I am the ranking officer of this expedition. Sergeant Kallin of the Imperial Fists accepted it without protest; that is his way. The others followed suit. The Imperium does not run on consent but on obedience, and the chain of command is sacred.

Still, I find myself wondering what the Dragon would think—his youngest son, barely into his Black Carapace, now commanding a flotilla on the edge of the known galaxy. But it is as the Dragon wills it; I am what I am by design, not accident. He put me here because this is where I am needed.

The return to Eremus Gate took only eight days of ship-time—three weeks sidereal. A smoother journey than any before. The warp itself seemed… acquiescent. It bent to our course rather than fought it, as if our passage had been prewritten. I do not like that thought.

The Ashen Promise led the way, with Iskandra at the helm. The Ashen Daughter followed, now my flagship, its new navigator—a dour woman pressed into service at Port Helikos—grappling with her unfamiliar station. The Black Comet took the rear. Three ships, one purpose. A fleet in name, if not yet in function.

The voyage was spent in relentless drilling. Less than a third of the men were true voidsmen; the rest were recruits, conscripts, or whatever the press gangs had dragged from the stations of Helikos. We lacked servitors, specialists, everything but muscle. Our only abundance was in ground troops—three regiments of Auxilia, one of them armored. The decks rang with shouted orders and clanging boots. The men are raw, but the sound of discipline is beginning to take hold.

---

When we reached Eremus Gate, I called a council of war in the strategium. Every Astartes sergeant, every shipmaster, every regimental colonel, every navigator, and the Magos himself attended. It lasted for hours. I said little at first. It is better to listen, to take the measure of the men who would follow me.

Some saw only doom ahead: a reckless thrust into the dark that could swallow us as it had the fleets before. Others saw destiny—a chance to carve out a new Imperium among the lost stars. All agreed that the Cindral Expanse was no longer a rumor but a fact, and that duty compelled us to press forward.

Then Sergeant Pheron of the Alpha Legion, ever the serpent, turned his gaze upon the Magos. “Tell us, Rhadamanthine,” he said, “is there something you wish to share with your comrades? Or must we guess at the purpose of this crusade?”

The room chilled. I had wondered the same, but Pheron had the temerity to say it aloud.

The Magos’ vox-grille clicked. His voice came out like steam from a furnace. “You wish to know the truth? Very well. The Cindral Reach has been under observation by Mars for many long years. The Fabricator-General himself commanded it. All previous attempts to breach the Reach have failed—Imperial and Mechanicum alike. Until now.”

He paused, letting the murmurs settle. “What lies within,” he continued, “is of the Dark Age of Technology. Perhaps older. Krypteria, the lost world, lies at its heart—a place of impossible design. Every trace we have found suggests that it once held secrets capable of unmaking worlds or remaking them.”

He looked at me then. “You have seen the signs, Brother Tyndarios. You know of the entity the locals call the Patron. You have witnessed what it can do—corrupt men, speak across the void, drive ships to madness. The eight silver vessels that appeared at Droskael may be its servants… or its hunters. We do not know. What we do know is this: we can no longer turn away.”

His augmetic eye flared. “We are not conquerors alone. We are explorers. We must not simply burn what we do not understand.”

The council ended with that. No one dared contradict the Magos when he spoke with the authority of Mars. But as we filed out, I saw in the eyes of many the glint of unease. Knowledge is power, yes—but power of what kind?

---

805.947.M30 – Eremus Gate

Weeks passed in disciplined routine. The fleet learned to breathe together. Gunnery drills, boarding exercises, convoy formations. We hunted down two of the three ork raiders that had fled when the Rok was destroyed. One was impaled by the Ashen Daughter’s lances, its green fire guttering out into black. The other we cornered with the Promise and Comet, driving it into a fragment field and shredding it until the void swallowed the debris. The third vanished, perhaps destroyed, perhaps hiding. Orks do not hide. Fran Kel tells me it is gone. Does he, too, gaze into the flames, or is his manner of his fortelling different?

It was near the end of that campaign that I received an invitation from Iskandra to dine aboard the Daughter. A curious luxury in the midst of war, but not unwelcome. She had been invaluable, and I owed her the courtesy.

The evening was well-prepared: soft illumination, chamber music played by servitors, fine wine that tasted faintly of nostalgia. She spoke of the warp as a living sea, of how it had grown calm, almost… listening. I told her she should not mistake silence for peace. She smiled at that—sadly, as though she knew it to be true.

Then her majordomo arrived.

Severin Klay, ever the polite ghost of the Societas Solis, bowed and asked for a word. His manner was grave. Iskandra excused herself with a knowing look; I suspect she had arranged the meeting.

Klay began with a confession: he was not merely her steward. He was, he said, a helot of the 11th Legion, placed aboard by design. And more than that—a servant of the Ordo Chronos.

The name meant nothing to me. He explained.

The Ordo was not of this age, nor perhaps of any age. Its purpose was to guard the continuity of time itself. Time, he said, was not immutable but fragile, easily warped by the tides of the Immaterium. Travel through it was possible—barely—but each incursion rippled outward, threatening to unravel causality itself. The Primarch of the 11th had helped found the Order, alongside others whose names Klay did not speak. Their task: to correct disturbances before they spread, to ensure that history remained intact.

Had I not already journeyed through time, I might have laughed. Then he produced the device—a silver cylinder etched with sigils that burned the eyes to look upon. The Chronomatograph, he called it. A tool that could measure a thing’s “inconstance”—its degree of deviation from the prime timeline. Its level of reality.

He demonstrated. The readings for my own ship, the Promise, were steady and strong. The crew, real. Then he tested a servitor taken from the Daughter. The readings fluttered and dimmed, as though the machine were half a ghost. The Daughter itself—less real still. A shadow of a ship from another time.

According to Klay, when the Ashen Daughter traveled backward through the warp to Port Helikos, it had not truly returned to the past, but created a reflection of it—a splinter of the universe where events diverged. The Port Helikos we had visited, the new recruits we had taken on, even much of the fleet’s crew—were all from that reflection. Real enough to touch, but not of the prime strand of reality.

His conclusion was grim: if the Daughter or those “echoed” souls ever tried to leave the Reach, they would tear open a temporal wound large enough to unmake the boundary between materium and immaterium.

He looked to me, eyes steady. “We must go deeper, Lord Tyndarios. To the source. To Krypteria. Destroy the Patron, and perhaps time itself will heal.”

I studied him for a long moment. His words rang like madness, yet there was the same cold conviction in his gaze that I have seen in my brothers before a doomed charge. I believed him.

I told him that if the Primarch himself had deemed time worth guarding, then the 11th would see the duty done.

Klay inclined his head, as if he had expected no less. “Then,” he said, “our true work begins. But first, I would ask that you accept this.” He held out an ornate syringe, filled with a pale blue liquid that danced like dark flame. "Your reality readings are impeccable, My Lord, but this will ground you even further. Do you accept?"

I held out my hand.

---

The warp is calm. The fleets are ready.

Beyond the Eremus Gate, the Reach awaits.

And somewhere within its burning heart, Krypteria calls our names.

Draco vult.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 14: The tomb ship

512.947 – Droskael

The Ashen Promise drifted silently through the Droskael system, her augurs fanning wide like the feelers of some cautious beast. For the first time since we entered the Reach, there was no clear path forward. The bridge had become a debating chamber: whether to risk a landing on Droskael Majoris, whether to press deeper toward the Ashveil Reach, or whether to turn for home with what knowledge we had gathered.

Captain Varenius argued for caution; the Magos and Kallin for knowledge and glory. I spoke only once, to remind them that knowledge means nothing if none survive to deliver it. A third of our astropaths were dead from the strain of our temporal misadventure; another third barely clung to sanity. Messages now cost lives. Every word we sent home was paid in blood.

Kallin listened in silence, and perhaps he would have chosen prudence over valor for once—but the void had other plans.

A ship tore out of the warp at the edge of the system. Cruiser-class, Imperial pattern. Even before the cogitators named her, I knew the silhouette: Ashen Daughter. The ship I had glimpsed in the warp, the very vessel I had begged the Legion to send when time itself came undone. She had arrived exactly when I knew she would. Destiny, or the echo of an old paradox.

Others saw her too. Three ork kill-kroozers broke orbit from Malis, lumbering toward the newcomer, while two of the 44-R—what the squats call the Thrax, what the voidsmen from the Black Comet call “Ghouls”—sped from the Hadranis Belt. Each was far larger than the Promise, and either squadron could have crushed us alone. We moved to intercept.

The 44-R ships ran hot, radiation plumes bright as suns. I noticed how they blinded their own sensors, the afterglow of their drives smothering their augur returns. A blind spot, vast and fatal. I requested temporary command from Kallin—he granted it without hesitation, the glimmer of a test in his eyes—and ordered the Promise to arm torpedo tubes. Six volleys, staggered, timed to converge behind the enemy.

The torpedoes slid toward the alien hulls like shadows. No evasive maneuvers, no counter-fire. Then contact. The first ship simply folded in upon itself, a blossom of white fire. The second lurched, engines flaring, then died in silence. We finished it with lances.

When the glare faded, two xenos cruisers were gone, and the Ashen Promise still lived. I'm sure even Kallin smiled at that inside his yellow helmet.

But victory breeds its own doom. The orks were closing—three hulks, each the size of a mountain, their holds vomiting attack craft. The Daughter was still silent, drifting, answering no hail. Something was wrong aboard her.

We fought as we must. The Promise wheeled and fired on the lead kroozer, using its bulk to shield us from the others. We hurt it, but the swarm of boarding craft kept coming. Then the void itself changed.

Eight ships appeared without warning: vast silver daggers arranged in a perfect star, each gleaming like red quicksilver beneath the sun. They hung in absolute formation, motionless.

The orks saw them—and fled. I have never seen orks flee. They broke formation, drives flaring, clawing for the edge of the system. Whatever the silver ships were, the orks remembered them, and their memory was terror.

We struck at the retreating kroozers, crippling one before it could escape. Another improbable victory. The silver vessels remained inscrutable for a time, and then they split apart, moving in silence, without any visible thrust. Four angled toward Droskael Majoris; the rest scattered into the void. They made no attempt at contact.

---

We reached the Ashen Daughter hours later. She drifted cold but lit, power systems stable, vox silent. Our boarding party found only death.

Forty thousand crew lay at their stations, dried husks, uniforms intact. No signs of struggle or violence—just sudden, impossible age. The ship’s internal chronometers reported a paradox: lost in the Immaterium for “an indeterminate infinity.” Her hull was barely a decade old, gifted by the 2nd Legion to the 11th, for they know we much desire more strike cruisers of this make.

The Astartes contingent—two hundred and fifty in total, half of the Second Legion and the rest of my own—were sealed in their armor, positioned as if ready to repel boarders. They too were dead. I remember their faces through cracked helms: some frozen in confusion, others twisted in something like fear. Astartes do not fear; whatever took them reached deeper than flesh.

Keeper Andropolous of the Second was found in the strategium, a data-scroll still clutched in his gauntlet. Orders from the 11th: my own promotion, a commission to Second Lieutenant, carried across the void in answer to a message I had sent from the past. The ship meant to deliver my future had perished before it could reach me.

It is a hard thing to look upon your own salvation and find only corpses.

For a time, I considered the unthinkable—using what I had learned to step backward again, to prevent this tragedy. But time is a liar. Each correction births another flaw. Better to leave the dead where they lie.

---

Now there are three ships: the Promise, the Daughter, and the Black Comet—and far too few souls to crew them. Command fell to Kallin by the will of the Lord of the 813th, but he looked to me. “Do you seek command, Lieutenant?” he asked, using the title as if testing its weight.

I said that I did. He smiled, and for the first time since I met him, I saw peace in his eyes. “Then it’s yours.” He turned away as though a great burden had lifted from his shoulders.

---

We turned for home.

Iskandra calculated the passage aboard the Ashen Promise, transmitting the coordinates to Fran Khel aboard the Comet and me aboard the Daughter. But the warp was calm. No storms, no distortions, no voices. Perhaps it remembered us and was sated.

We tested the route by jumping to Eremus Gate, then on to Port Helikos. Smooth, almost gentle. For the first time since coming to this cursed place, the Immaterium felt like a sea at peace.

---

666.947.M30 – Port Helikos

Port Helikos greeted us with confusion. The docks bustled with transports, refit barges, and supply tenders, but no great warships—only the echo of fleets gone to other crusades. Fortune favored us: no higher authority was present to question by whose leave I commanded a flotilla. We docked, refueled, and set to work.

The Magos oversaw the repairs, ever efficient—his mechanical heart burns with the desire to get back to Expanse, back to the techno-horrors that wait for us there. We scoured every ship in orbit for volunteers and pressed every able body into service. The quality of the crews will shame us later, but numbers will suffice for now.

Astartes reinforcements were also present. Another squad of the Emperor’s Children, a Warden of the Second and her bodyguard, two squads of Iron Hands, a squad of Word Bearers, and half a company of Ultramarines. Why the latter two were here, none could say, for none had requested them. But when offered a chance to fight both the Hounds and the Ultras, they readily agreed. 

---

We depart again now. Three ships, one purpose. The storms have lifted. The Reach lies open.

The Navigatrix says the warp feels almost welcoming.

That alone should terrify me.

But it was, long before my birth, decided we shall know no fear.

Draco Vult.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 13: Exploring Droskael

496.947.M30 – Droskael System, Ashveil Reach

The Ashen Promise slipped from the Immaterium like a blade drawn from its sheath, the star of Droskael burning a cold orange before us, wreathed in great loops and bands of red.

Iskandra was triumphant. The xenos charts and the repaired astralabe conspired to deliver us safely to our destination. 

That she and I had briefly… rewritten time itself was a secret known only to the two of us. Outwardly, all was as it should be. Inwardly, I knew better. The Third Legion walked the decks, men who had died by their brother’s hand now alive. A superstitious man would perhaps think some god had taken pity on them. Or perhaps it was the universe merely sought to restore a symmetry too deep for mortal minds to comprehend. I did not pretend to know the universe's mind, nor do I accept false gods among us.

There was a sense of purpose aboard the ship. Repairs were underway, morale was high, and the Magos was content, muttering to himself about data yields and exploration protocols. 

Then came the summons.

Sergeant Kallin of the Imperial Fists—military leader of the expedition—called me to his command chamber near the bridge. He told me, in his characteristically dry tone, that I was to assume command of a squad. “Acting sergeant,” he said, though I could see the satisfaction in his eyes. He had already sent several dispatches to my Legion praising my performance, and it pleased him to see me rewarded.

I declined the honorifics and the chevrons—our Legion does not adorn its warriors like parade pieces—but the title clung to me nonetheless. Everyone began calling me “Sergeant” within the hour.

Kallin’s only condition was that my squad draw from several Legions, a gesture of unity. No Fists, of course; there were too few of them left, and he needed every man. I selected Daecrus of my own Legion—a fierce youth, untempered but brave—Oskyr of the Space Wolves, whose laughter I have come to appreciate, Karyth of the Alpha Legion, and Erastes of the Emperor’s Children, who now calls me friend. That last choice raised some eyebrows, but I trust the man. In this version of the world, at least, he has earned it.

We trained together in the ship’s training vaults. The satisfaction of commanding men came to me naturally—giving an order and seeing it carried out without hesitation. The squad began calling themselves “the Dragon’s Shadow.” I forbade the name, of course. The 11th does not indulge in such vanities. Nevertheless, someone—Erastes again, I suspect—applied a thin tracery of gold to the edges of our armor plates. From a distance, it forms the shape of a dragon in flight. I have chosen not to notice.

---

The Droskael system unfolded before us like the pages of a ruinous chronicle. Over two standard weeks, we mapped its worlds and belts, proceeding with the patience of stone. There was no rush; every mistake here could mean extinction.

Malis and its moons teemed with orks, their crude engines burning emerald across the void. The Hadranis Belt glimmered with 44-R activity—those mechanical abominations moving between the asteroids like ants around a corpse. Droskael Minoris was a shattered tomb, its habitats and domes broken, its air long since bled away. Droskael Majoris, once a proud world, lay half-ruined and half-alive: the xenos walked its streets, but somewhere beneath the ash and ruin, humans likely still cling to life.

Most curious of all was Cthonis, the inner world. A colossal ship, shrouded by the glare of the sun, hung in low orbit there, so vast it could be mistaken for a moon. We approached it cautiously, every weapon primed. What we found were not orks, nor 44-R, nor the remnants of any human empire—but the Kar-Kesh Holdfast, a roaming city of the demiurg. Squats, the ancient kin of mankind, but changed by long exile. They had been crossing the void for half a millennium, a slow pilgrimage through darkened warp-lanes, unaware that the Imperium even existed.

Their leader, Adnis the Younger, Thane of Kar-Kesh, met us with wary respect. His people value strength and trade in equal measure. He agreed to speak with Captain Varenius and the Magos, provided we granted them mining rights to the Cthonian crust. They offered, in return, the service of their forges and hullwrights. The Ashen Promise’s wounds could be mended—at a cost. The negotiations are ongoing, but I sense goodwill in them. The demiurg are rough, proud creatures, but they understand honor. Perhaps the Emperor’s dream still lives, even in them.

---

Later, a new contact appeared on the augurs—a ship emerging from the warp far too close to the system’s heart. No sane Navigator would attempt such a jump. Kallin ordered pursuit. When our batteries locked on, the vessel froze in place, broadcasting a surrender code in Imperial cipher.

We boarded her.

The ship was small—a modified Viper-class corvette, scarred and pitted by decades of poor maintenance. Her name was Black Comet.

Her captain, Yurian Drex, was a gaunt man with the eyes of someone who has seen too many voids. He claimed allegiance to the Emperor, and I believe him, though it is an allegiance worn thin by hunger and fear. The Comet, he said, was once part of the 813th Expedition—the first to attempt entry into the Cindral Reach. They were lost twenty years ago. The rest of their fleet was destroyed or consumed by the warp; only the Comet survived, too damaged to return, condemned to wander the Reach ever since.

How they endured, I cannot imagine. Two decades of scavenging, raiding, and evading xenos fleets. Their crew looked half-feral, their ship held together by superstition and scrap. Yet when we came aboard, they saluted the Imperial aquila and fell to their knees.

Drex was quick to pledge his loyalty. He offered their charts and their knowledge of the Reach, claiming that they had mapped corridors and anomalies unknown to us. He also offered the service of his “navigator,” one Lieutenant Fran Khel—a sanctioned psyker of low grade who somehow managed to guide the Comet through the warp without ever losing his way. Perhaps he sees patterns where others do not. One wonders and observes.

The Comet was woefully undermanned, her systems failing. We transferred crew and soldiers from the Ashen Promise to bring her up to strength. She now serves as our escort, her guns covering the Promise’s damaged flank. A fitting companion: two wounded ships journeying together through the dark.

---

We are far from home, yet the Dragon's work continues.

The Emperor requires no miracles of us—only endurance.

And endurance, at least, we have in abundance.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 12: The jump

433.947.M30 – Droskael, Ashveil Reach

The Ashen Promise is bound for Droskael.

Three days in the Immaterium, Iskandra said. Nine or ten real. She called it an easy passage—quiet currents, clear vectors, a stable stream. “A good lane for conversation,” she had smiled, “if you can stomach the view.”

The shutters of the navigation chamber were open when I arrived. She stood before the great astralabe, its rings spinning like molten gold, light from the warp filtering through its lenses in slow, breathing pulses. The ship was hers for the voyage—helm, course, and calculation all slaved to her will. For those three days, she was the Ashen Promise.

I was her shadow, sealed within my armor, locked to the deck beside her throne. No visual feed, no external sound but the measured thrum of my own hearts. My duty was to protect her, though from what, in the heart of the warp, I could not say.

Iskandra did not speak for a long time. Navigators rarely do when the shutters are open; they listen, not with ears but with the soul. Eventually, she said, “It is calm. You could almost forget what lies outside.”

She drank her wine, elegant even in her isolation. Her tenders had withdrawn—she needed no attendants for a short passage—and the air smelled faintly of spice and ozone. She seemed almost... happy.

I do not know what possessed me to speak then. Boredom, perhaps, or pride. “If the warp is calm,” I asked, “what would happen if I were to see it for myself?”

She laughed—softly, incredulously. “You would go mad. Or die. But not quickly.”

But I had already looked once, through another’s eyes. I had already seen the warp and survived it, and now I desired to see it again. I told her so.

She warned me it was unwise. But she did not forbid me.

I turned on my feed.

And I saw.

---

It is impossible to describe the warp in terms of reason, and I am no poet. It is not light, nor darkness, nor any color born of sun or fire. It is motion given shape. Rivers of flame that are not flame, oceans without surface, constellations that twist as you watch. A place that thinks, and in its thinking dreams of monsters.

But there was pattern too. Beneath the chaos, something moved—vast and coiling, a serpent of black light winding through the current, its scales made of numbers, equations, symbols burning with unrelenting precision. It pulsed like the heartbeat of the cosmos.

And then, for a moment, it turned its gaze upon me. Then it was gone.

 Iskandra was staring at me in silence.

“You shouldn’t be able to see that,” she said.

Before I could answer, the currents died.

---

The ship drifted. The warp became a void without movement or sound. We were becalmed.

To leave the warp here would mean nothing; we would emerge into empty space, lost and without reference. We waited.

Then the astropaths called. A message had been received. Not from the Legion, not from any Imperial relay, but from something else. It was addressed to me, marked for “Client,” and signed simply: Patron.

The message was not transmitted as sound or thought, but as presence—like a shadow falling across the mind. It spoke in perfect Gothic, yet without voice.

“You are not welcome here. Your presence is disruptive. Your passage distorts the equation. Turn back, or be erased.”

It was not a threat. It was a statement of fact, delivered with the calm certainty of a machine.

I told Iskandra what it said. She only nodded, pale beneath her crown. “We keep going,” she murmured. “We have come too far for ghosts in the data to turn us aside.”

We pressed on, though there was nowhere to go.

She joked, perhaps to hide her unease, that I should take the helm. I answered that I would be honored. She showed me how to hold the currents, how to follow the eddies of unreality that guide a ship through madness.

And then, as my calloused hand brushed the navigator's cradle, the warp moved.

The calm shattered. Currents roared to life, dragging the ship forward. The serpent was back, endless coils roiling, whipping the warp into a frenzy. The Ashen Promise was flung along its back like a leaf in a hurricane.

Iskandra cried out directions; I obeyed. We rode the storm together, blind, half-mad, exhilarated.

I glimpsed another ship caught in the currents, a ship of the 11th, I believe. A light cruiser of the Daughter class. Named the Ashen and something I didn't catch.

And then, suddenly, silence.

We had arrived.

---

When the external feeds returned, I saw Port Helikos. Intact. Alive. Ships at anchor. Transports loading for the front. The fleet banners flying as they had before we departed.

Iskandra’s hands trembled on the controls. The date flickered across the console: 239.947.M30.

We had returned to the place—and the time—of our departure.

For a long moment neither of us spoke. Then she said, very softly, “We must go. Now. No contact, no signal, no broadcast. If anyone realizes what we’ve done—what we’ve become—we are finished.”

I asked how such a thing could be. She whispered that Navigators have legends of this: ships that slip across their own timeline, that meet themselves and vanish. To violate the arrow of time is to invite damnation.

We turned the Ashen Promise about. She told the bridge that we had emerged in error, that a corrective jump was required. They believed her.

Before we jumped again, I sent a message. Not to the bridge, not to Iskandra, but to the Legion. A sealed dispatch. If time itself could be bent, then perhaps the message would find its way to those who must know.

As we prepared for the jump, a signal reached us from the void.

It was our own ship.

The Ashen Promise, hailing itself.

Sergeant Calvien’s voice came across the vox, taut and formal. “Unidentified Imperial vessel, you are within the approach vector of Port Helikos. Identify yourself, or be fired upon.”

His tone wavered on the last word, as if something within him knew.

We did not reply. Iskandra engaged the drive, and the warp swallowed us once more.

When we emerged, the coordinates matched Droskael. The voyage was smooth, uneventful, almost serene.

And yet the air of the ship felt… wrong. No, not wrong. Different.

---

When I returned to my quarters, Jocasta was waiting. She greeted me as always, but something in her eyes made me pause. A flicker of confusion. Of recognition that wasn’t there before.

Then I saw them—Astartes of the Third Legion walking the corridors, laughing, speaking, alive.

Men who had died weeks ago.

Brother Erastes found me later. He greeted me as an old friend, though we had scarcely spoken before. He thanked me for my counsel, for helping to reconcile him with Calvien. “We’ve made peace,” he said. “He gave me this.”

He held out a pendant: a golden eye, wrought in the shape of Horus’s sigil. “But it’s too much for me to bear. Too heavy, too strange. You have the steadiness of stone, brother. Keep it for me, will you?”

I took it from him.

When he had gone, I opened my chest and drew out the other Eye—the one Calvien himself had given me, after he killed Erastes and the rest of his brothers.

They are the same object. The same scratches, the same weight, the same faint pulse of warmth in the palm.

Two relics, one history. Both true.

The warp does not lie. It simply tells too many truths at once.

I do not know what is real anymore. Only that I stand here, breathing, the Eye of Horus cold against my skin.

The serpent stirs, no longer solely in my dreams, but ever there, at the edge of my vision.

I will endure.

Draco Vult.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 11: Of Patrons and Clients

 

403.947.M30 – Eremus Gate

With the orks gone, attention turned to Eremus II. Two landing parties were organized to investigate the radio transmissions. Sergeant Kallin himself made me acting squad leader, allowing me to choose my own team and landing zone. I took Malchior, Oskyr and another merry Wolf, and Karyth of the Alpha Legion. My chosen site was the River Confluence—Site D.

The planet was a grave. Swamps and jungle had reclaimed the ruins of habitation. The air was heavy, the water poisonous. Yet there were traces of the men who had once lived here: hab-blocks half-swallowed by vines, rusted vehicles, collapsed towers. The Auxilia worked diligently under my supervision, establishing a perimeter and beginning to scavenge.

The signal came from a makeshift radio mast in the heart of the settlement. Its transmission was garbled, but it repeated one message: a warning to stay away, invoking something called the Patron, or maybe warning against it.

When the perimeter was secure, I allowed Iskandra to leave the Rhino. She stepped out into the swamp air and laughed aloud—it was the first time she had ever stood upon a planet’s surface. For a moment, watching her turn her face toward the alien sun, I felt something I cannot name.

In one of the crumbling structures, we found a functioning terminal—astonishing, after so long. I interfaced with it, and a voice answered. Cold, mechanical, ancient. It called itself the Patron, and it told us to leave. When one of the junior tech-priests attempted to commune with it, his implants burned out from within. He died screaming, his circuitry liquefying in his skull. The Magos later confirmed what I suspected: this “Patron” bore the same digital signature as the corrupted code aboard the Myrmidion. A machine intelligence. An Abominable Intelligence.

Rhadamanthine forbade further contact. None of the Mechanicus are to interface with any system planet-side. I do not argue.

The other landing team at Site A found similar ruins, but their signal called to the Patron, begging aid for something named Krypteria. One beacon warns intruders away; another prays for rescue. This world is fractured in more ways than one.

We moved next to Site C, the Southeastern Ridge. Scans suggested structures below ground. When we arrived, beasts burst from the tunnels—pale, ogrish things. We burned them, then collapsed the entrances with grenades. The ground gave way beneath us, and we fell into a vast subterranean facility. Clone vats, laboratories, all long dead, yet not silent. The creatures we fought had been born here.

We cleared the place at last, though the last beast—a thing of tentacles and bone—proved a tougher match than most. Still, we endured, each man doing his duty regardless of Legion.

After regrouping, we moved to Site E, the Eastern Heights, an observatory still half-intact. The jungle there was burned away by some kind of thermal field. Inside, we restored partial power, though at the expense of the field that had kept the jungle and its denizens at bay. The telescope’s last alignment pointed toward a yellow star far beyond the Ashveil Reach—perhaps Krypteria itself, the mother world of this dead colony.

Reports from the other team were mixed. Site B was a ruin, a last stand of men armed with spears. Site F was worse—or better, depending on your view. A manufactorum still labored in the dark, some forges still spitting out weapons and armor with no one to wield them, though most had stopped working or run out of materials long ago. Tanks slept in their cradles, untouched by war. Why the colonists never used them, we cannot guess.

Then the creatures came. Bigger, hungrier, unending. They poured from the jungle toward our encampments. We called for orbital support.

The Ashen Promise answered. Plasma warheads fell first, a rain of fire that erased forests in moments. Then the lance batteries struck, scouring the land in sheets of jagged lightning. Macro fire followed, fragments of molten iron falling like meteor storms. Finally, the ship’s small craft descended, their guns stitching the earth. The night burned brighter than the day.

When it was done, silence. Smoke and ruin. The jungle reduced to glass.

Over the following weeks, we built. Auxilia, servitors, and what few specialists remain established a colony upon this reclaimed world. They call it Patron now, in grim humor. It will never be a paradise, but perhaps it will serve the Imperium’s needs.

I walked its burned soil and felt pride, but also unease. The orks are dead, the monsters scattered, yet the Patron’s voice still lingers in the data we brought back. It is watching, somewhere beyond our reach.

Still, the banners of the Imperium now fly here. Humanity not only endures, it reclaims, it conquers.

The Journal of Brother Tyndarios, 11th Legion – Part 10: The Astralabe

 

331.947.M30 – Eremus Gate

I had scarcely set foot upon the deck when duty found me again. The Thunderhawk’s ramp had barely kissed the landing bay when one of the Navigatrix’s new servants appeared, pale and trembling, babbling that I was requested immediately. Iskandra Veyra demanded (not in those words, of course) my presence—no delay, no excuses—for, as the servant gasped, “the safety of the ship depends upon it.”

I was in no shape for haste. My armor was shattered, ork blood still steaming upon the plates, a hole through my thigh, savage slashes across my chest. I told him to walk faster.

He led me on a pilgrimage through half the ship: from the landing decks forward to the prow, then back and up through the command levels. Why, I cannot guess; perhaps it is a Navigators’ notion of ritual, or perhaps Iskandra merely wished to be certain I would not ignore her summons.

When we reached the Navigator’s sanctum, she was waiting in the navigation chamber, standing by the astralabe. The thing glowed faintly in the chamber’s half-light, its armatures and lenses twitching like a wounded insect. She did not look up as I entered. “It’s not broken,” she said. “It’s you.”

I confess I thought the wound in my leg had made me mishear. But she turned and explained that the astralabe was somehow attuned—to me. Every calibration, every sweep of its sensorium, was thrown awry when I was near. Or, more precisely, when I was somewhat near, yet not near enough. I affected the ship’s navigation field as if I myself were a Navigator, bound to the astralabe.

I did not tell her why. The Navigator whose brain I devoured was long dead, his memories scattered through my flesh. That is a burden for the Keepers, not for her.

She half-jested that the simplest solution was to throw me out the airlock. Failing that, I would have to accompany her during future warp transits. We agreed to keep it quiet, under the pretense that she, being young and untested, required a personal Astartes bodyguard. I said nothing, though part of me wondered if the joke was not closer to the truth than either of us realized.

The Ashen Promise turned its guns upon the ork rok. Torpedoes, lance strikes, and macro shells tore it apart, scattering its fragments into the void. Of the surviving ork raiders, four were destroyed outright; the rest fled into the dark. For the first time since we entered this cursed system, the void was silent.

It was a great victory, and the mood aboard the ship rose. The Auxilia toasted themselves. Even the Wolves seemed content. Yet a shadow lingered among us. The Third Legion’s decks were silent now—every last Emperor’s Child dead but Calvien. Their deaths were said to be “accidents” during sparring, but we all know better. It is one thing to lose brothers in battle; another to know they were killed by their own hand. None of us knew what to say. The Wolves grumbled. The Alphas said nothing, which was worse. We, the Guard, endured.

In quieter hours, I petitioned the Mechanicus to train my servant Jocasta in the care of Astartes wargear. She is quick-minded, even if her soul is crooked, and Rhadamanthine agreed that a mortal who can service our armor may be of use. She will do well.

We received an astropathic reply from the Legion at last. My dispatches had reached them. The Keepers, in their wisdom, ordered that I be tested for psychic sensitivity—again. If any change were found, I was to be placed in stasis until further notice. Fortunately, my readings were unaltered: still as inert as stone. I remain myself, though the Navigator’s dreams sometimes whisper at the edge of mine, and I glimpse patterns where others see none.

Astartes in combat

This post doesn't replace the Combat chapter from the rules, but is instead intended to show how combat specifically works for Astartes. To highlight some of these differences, comparisons with mortals and xenos warriors will sometimes be used.

Awareness

The 2d10 system encourages the use of actions to make Perception checks (typically using the Vigilance skill). The idea is that the more attention you pay, the easier the check becomes. Thus, a Major action spent is +0 TN (you're fully focused on your surroundings), a Minor action is +5 TN (you're paying attention), and a Free action is +10 TN (on your way to Terracbucks for a spicy soy latte recaff).

Because of the auto-senses packaged with all power armor, Astartes typically never have to use Major actions for their Active Perception checks. Using auto-senses, Free = Minor, and Minor = Major. So an Astartes can move, be fully aware of his surroundings, AND be ready to fire at a moment's notice for the price of a single Minor action. He can even be fully aware and move at full speed (convert Major to Move action, for 2 Move actions).

In addition, both the Alertness (Advantage on Perception to avoid surprise) and Battlefield Awareness (Advantage on Perception checks in combat) talents are very common among Astartes, so not only can they take Minor/Free actions without huge TN spikes, but they also have Advantage on most of their Perception checks. Additionally, the auto-senses allow the Astartes to ignore many types of Disadvantage that would normally be incurred by factors such as darkness and obstruction. 

Finally, the armor's vox suite automatically shares tactical data with friendly forces, so if one Astartes is aware, they are usually all aware. Jamming, interference, and technical issues are possible, but these systems are very robust, so this shouldn't be an issue most of the time.

Surprise

Astartes can still be ambushed or taken unawares, but it's damn rare. 

Initiative

Astartes have quick reflexes, but their reflexes are not the "wired-reflexes" kind of fast. Typically, Astartes have Agility 6-7 and Cunning 5-6, as well as the Combat Reflexes talent, so they roll 2d6 and pick the best, then add 11-13. That's high in the "Normal" range, but not enough to get more actions.

• Slow 0-9: No Minor action (Major + Move)
• Normal 10-19: No change (Major + Move + Minor)
• Fast 20-29: Bonus Minor action each turn (Major + Move + 2xMinor)
• Lightning 30-39: Bonus Major action each turn (2xMajor + Move + 2xMinor)
• Superhuman 40-49: Bonus Minor action each turn (2xMajor + Move + 3xMinor)
• Supernatural 50+: Second bonus Major action each turn (3xMajor + Move + 3xMinor)

Normal humans, including Auxilia soldiers, have 1d6+6 initiative, so will 50% of the time end up as "slow," which isn't good, but they can still use their Major action to attack, and if they don't need to move, can convert their Move into a Minor action and do Aimed fire or whatever.

Human combat veterans are typically 1d6+8 with a reroll from Combat Reflexes, so they should (almost) always end up in the Normal range and get the standard Major + Move + Minor actions. However, they'll typically act after the Astartes, which is a significant advantage since the Astartes are pretty effective in their attacks...

Tier 2 Astartes will almost always get into the Fast range and get a bonus Minor action each turn. From there to Lightning is quite a stretch. A Tier 3 Astartes could have Agility 10 + Cunning 9 + roll 4d6 and pick the 3 best dice. That's a late-stage Tier 3 Astartes that's fully committed to Initiative, so some might not reach it until Tier 4. Tier 5 Astartes can reach Superhuman levels of initiative, and might have access to talents that radically change what they can do in a turn.

Actions

Astartes are famed for their ability to put out a lot of fire on target, and they do this through a combination of high initiative, good equipment, high skill levels, and clever use of their Major (Attack), Move, and Minor actions. Plus any bonus actions from high initiative, and clever uses of their Minor actions to fuel many combat talents.

What's a major action, anyway? In this system, anything that interrupts your shooting is considered a Major action; for example, switching magazines is a Major action. Some talents, such as Fast Hands, can help reduce the cost of some Major actions to 1 Minor action.

Downgrading actions: You can downgrade ONE action each turn. So you can turn a Major into a second Move, for example, to move at least twice as far. Or turn your Move into a second Minor action.

All of this combines, so a Fast (20+ Initiative) Astartes with a bonus Minor action can downgrade their Move to get THREE minor actions (this can unlock some interesting combos).

Movement

Astartes in power armor move faster than normal humans (16m vs 12m, so a pretty big difference, especially when running or sprinting) and can ignore many instances of Difficult terrain. They just plow straight through it, being unconcerned with mud, jagged rocks, or spiky bushes. Very Difficult terrain can be treated as Difficult, and some (but not all) terrain types that are Impassable might be passable for Astartes.

Keep moving: Although movement is abstracted, you do want to keep moving. If you did not spend your Move action to move at least 2m on your turn, you cannot use your Dodge defense and must instead rely on base TNs from range and cover (see below). If you're at long range, in cover, and/or facing light infantry only, this might not be an issue. But if facing tough opposition at short range, it's probably not a good idea.

Attacks

You attack using your combat skills.

• Base TN is determined by the type of attack, range, and a host of other factors, ranging from 10 to 40+
• The target's Dodge (vs. both ranged or melee) or Parry (vs. melee only) Defense is used instead if it is higher.

This means that, vs. a melee attack, you probably always want to Parry unless you have a very high Dodge. Against ranged attacks, you might end up dodging a lot at closer ranges, but when you're at longer range or in cover, you might use base TN unless your Dodge is sky high.

Ranged attacks

Base TN for ranged attacks is 20. This is an attack within the weapon's effective combat range against a battlefield target under battlefield conditions. That's approximately 15m for a pistol-type weapon and 100m for a long-range weapon, such as a bolter or lasgun. At twice that, the TN is 25, and at 60m/400m, the TN is 30, which is typically the maximum practical range for a weapon, as the TN increases to 40 at longer ranges.

Shooting at a static target is usually TN 10, although this will vary depending on the target size.

A typical Auxila soldier has a Dodge of 20; a veteran might have a Dodge of 22-23. These guys will want to stay in cover most of the time! Astartes are in the 25+ range, so they are at a level where their Dodge is actually quite relevant.

The same Auxilia soldier probably has a Ranged (Precision) skill of about 10 (3+3+4), with veterans and snipers having as much as 14-16 (and probably some useful talents to go with their skill). Astartes, however, typically start at around 16-18 and increase from there, with veterans easily reaching 20 (and likely possessing better gear and more talents).

This means Astartes are hitting a lot, even at long range, and they hit well enough for bonus damage with their already devastating weapons. The mortals hit a lot less, and they don't hit well when they do, and they have trouble damaging the Astartes. And that's just the shooting; to say nothing of battlefield awareness, tactics, morale, and so on.

Fire modes

Bolters can fire in semi-automatic (SA) mode. This uses a Major action, consumes only 2 ammo, but doesn't provide any particular benefits beyond being the most effective way to utilize your ammo.

• SA can be combined with the Aimed Shot attack option (using 1 Minor action), giving you +1d6 damage but also Disadvantage. Remember that the suit's targeter removes 1 Disadvantage, so with Aimed Shot, you basically trade 1 Minor action for +1d6 extra damage.
• Many Astartes use Double Tap to boost their damage with SA, trading a Minor action for +1d6 extra damage. This stacks with Aimed Shot (as long as you have 2 Minor actions to spend).
• SA mode can also be combined with the Fire Discipline talent to make sure you "never" run out of ammo.

The default Astartes attack, however, is a burst fire (BF) attack with a bolter. This uses a Major action, eats 5 units of ammo, and either gives Advantage on the attack or +1d6 damage on a hit.

• Either +1d6 damage or Advantage.
• This can be combined with the Aimed Shot attack option (using 1 Minor action), the same as for SA attacks, giving either +1d6 damage & Advantage or +2d6 damage (but no Advantage).

Advantage is very powerful and might, in turn, deal more damage, but don't forget that Astartes are such skilled shots to begin with; they almost always hit and very often achieve Solid and/or Perfect hits. If shooting at low Defense targets, more damage is better; otherwise, Advantage is probably better. The target's PT is also important; perhaps you need both perfect hits and maximum extra damage to penetrate? 

Finally, bolters can do automatic fire (AF) attacks. This uses 15 ammo (so a third of the clip of a regular bolter) and, unlike SA/BF, 1 Minor action (in addition to the Major action oc). You have three distinct options:

• Attack a single target, gaining either +2d6 damage or +1d6 damage & Advantage.
• Attack up to three separate targets (one per 5 shots fired, basically) that are at Close range (a few meters apart) relative to one another. Each attack has Disadvantage.

Melee attacks

The TN for a melee attack is 10 if the target isn't defending. 

If the target is defending, use Parry defense instead.

Hulking: Astartes in PA are so big and mean that they have an advantage on all melee attacks against smaller opponents (ork nobs are not smaller, for example, but mortals are) and those opponents have Disadvantage in return. Which in turn means that, even if you are swarmed by smaller opponents, the Advantage they get is nullified by your sheer size.

Defenses

Dodge

Equal to 14 + Agility + Cunning

So an ordinary soldier is Dodge 20-22, but most Astates are 25-28. It might not seem like a huge difference, but it actually is. The difference is significant enough that some attacks will outright miss, but even those that hit will usually only be normal hits and get no damage bonuses. Which, when coupled with armor, will stop many more attacks.

• Remember that Astartes Power armor does not encumber the wearer in any way and does not reduce your Dodge defense when worn (regular PA would be -5 to Dodge, even light PA is -2).
• Dodge defense absolutely requires you to be moving. If you do not move (you didn't spend a Move action to actually move, either because you're in cover or used your Move for something other than movement) on your turn, you use base difficulty instead.
• Example: You have Dodge 28, but you're in cover, so you don't want to move. Some xenos or the other is shooting at your Astartes at Medium range (TN 20) with Full cover (+10). The TN for the attacker is thus 30.
• Example: Later, you stop in the open to convert your Move into a Minor action (for some Talent tricks). The range is pretty long, so the base TN to hit you is 25, not that much lower than your Dodge, so it's a worthwhile tradeoff.
• Example: You are held in place by the psychic power of a xenos beast. You count as Helpless. The beast's human thralls rush forward. The TN to hit you is only 10. Fortunately, they are armed with little more than sticks and stones. Except that one big guy with the horns... is that your power sword in his hand?.

Parry

Equal to 11+ your Brawl or Melee skill, depending on what you're defending with (hint: defending with Brawl is not always the right choice).

Composure

Your "social" defense. 

No special rules.

Disipline

Your "mental/willpower" defense.

And They Shall Know No Fear: Astartes are immune to mundane sources of fear. They are not anxious or jittery in the face of the unknown, nor do they flinch under fire. In a sense, their "flight" instinct has been purged, leaving only "fight." That does NOT, however, mean they are suicidal. They will gladly go to their deaths if that serves a purpose or there is no other way out, but they WILL retreat or change their tactics if that will improve their chances of victory.

Furthermore, even when at maximum adrenaline (and whatever combat drugs they are taking), Astartes will have clarity of mind and purpose. They do not devolve into simple, frenzied slaughter. If they do, it is deliberate and calculated to be the optimum way to pursue the encounter.

Astartes are not immune to supernatural horror, but given their high Discipline defense, they can usually resist all but the most potent of cosmic horrors (and those are just superstitious nonsense anyway).

Resilience

Your "physical hardiness" defense. 

Your PA grants you a +2 bonus to Resilience.

Damage and injury

Sooner or later, you'll not only get hit, but you'll get hurt. Astartes are very hardy, but the number of deadly weapons is not insignificant. That said, the chance of an Astartes just dying outright to a single random lasgun shot is minuscule. A power klaw or lascannon, however...

Armor

Armor is easy to understand: there are two values, Penetration Threshold (PT) and Damage Reduction (DR). 

If a weapon does LESS damage than PT, it doesn't penetrate, and does NO DAMAGE. Essentially, it bounces off the armor, gets absorbed by a refractor field, or whatever.

If a weapon does damage equal to or greater than the PT, it penetrates. The damage suffered by the target is REDUCED by a percentage equal to DR.

• For example, if you have PT 30/DR 50 and are hit for 40 damage, the attack does penetrate, but you only take 50% damage, or 20 points.

Astartes in power armor have an effective PT 40/DR 70 (DR 60 from the armor +10 from the Black Carapace), so even when they get penetrated, they usually won't die or be taken out of the fight. 

In the case of Astartes power armor, conceptually, a large part of the DR is damage stopped by the armor, the rest is tied to the suit's auto-doc systems that can help keep the man inside fighting despite injuries.

Cover

Cover is kind of like armor in that it provides PT/DR against shots that hit the cover. However, the attacker can try to hit the exposed parts of the target by taking +5 (for half cover) or +10 (for Full cover) to their TN.

Is cover useful for Astartes? Well, the answer is: sometimes. If you have very high Dodge, you have less use for cover, of course, provided you keep moving. But if you can't or won't move, or you really need an extra Minor action, then cover can be very useful indeed. That said, if the range is very long (low hit chance) or the weapons used against you are light (no to little chance of penetration), you might as well just stand in the open (famous last words).

Injury thresholds

All characters have 5 injury thresholds: Light, Moderate, Serious, Critical, and Lethal.

These are all derived from your total Health. Astartes have very high Health thanks to their massive Strength and Vitality scores. Anything less than 36 HLT would be rare for Astartes, and 40+ is common enough. Ordinary humans have 20 HLT; a real tough guy could have 25. Your typical ork boy is around 30 HLT (ST 7, VT 6), but the really big unz can have 40 no problem.

Generally speaking, injuries inflict a secondary Stamina hit, reduce your Initiative by 10 or more for X turns (probably costing you actions), and also give you Disadvantage for X turns.

Astartes suffer the same effects as everyone else. Yes, they are big and mean and have special blood and all that, but that's all baked into their Health to begin with. An Astartes taking a Serious injury has taken enough damage to instantly kill a normal person (blow him apart, actually). And when you factor in armor, he was probably hit by something that could cripple a light tank. So no, you don't simply shrug and walk it off.

Light injury (less than 25% of HLT, or less than 10 if you have 39 HLT)

• Suffer 3 Fatigue
• Make a Resilience defense check TN 20 or fall prone.
• Reduce your Initiative by 10 and suffer Disadvantage on all checks. Duration: 1 round.

PT 40/DR70 means this will never happen. This is deliberate; weapons this weak simply do not penetrate power armor!

Moderate injury (25% or more of HLT, or 10 or more if you have 39 HLT)

• Suffer 5 Fatigue
• Make a Resilience defense check TN 25 or fall prone and be Stunned for 1 round.
• Reduce your Initiative by 10 and suffer Disadvantage on all checks. Duration: 1d6+1 rounds.

PT 40/DR70 means that this is the most common type of wound. 

• If a shot does 40 damage = 12 final damage, 50 damage = 15 final damage
• A bolter round doing 50 damage would overpenetrate and do 25 damage (20 if it were a Kraken) instead, pushing it to the next higher category!

Serious injury (50% or more of HLT, or 20 or more if you have 39 HLT)

This is where the fun begins!

• Suffer 10 Fatigue
• Make a Resilience defense check TN 30 or fall prone and be Stunned for 1d6+1 rounds.
• If you succeed, you remain standing but are still Stunned for 1 round.
• Reduce your Initiative by 10 and suffer Disadvantage on all checks. Duration: Indefinitely.

PT 40/DR70 means that at least 60 damage must be done.

• So for Tyndarios, that's 20 or more damage from a single hit. That might sound like a lot when you're wearing DR 70 armor, but imagine getting hit by an overpenetrating heavy bolter round that reduces DR to "only" 50. Then anything doing 40+ damage (which is incidentally enough to pen PA) will cause this level of injury.

Critical injury (75% or more of HLT, or 30 or more if you have 39 HLT)

• Suffer 20 Fatigue
• Drop prone and be stunned for 1d6+3 rounds.
• Reduce your Initiative by 20, lose 1 Move action each turn, and you cannot attempt Reactions or skill checks (including attacks). Duration: Indefinitely.
• Every round, you suffer 1d6 additional damage applied directly to your total. This continues until you either die or receive first aid.

Lethal injury (100% or more of HLT, or 39 or more if you have 39 HLT)

• Suffer 40 Fatigue
• Drop prone and become Unconscious regardless of your Fatigue thresholds. 
• Your Initiative is set to 0 and cannot be increased.
• You expire in 1d6+1 rounds unless stabilized.
• Even if stabilized, you require immediate, extensive medical care, including trauma surgery, or you will die within 1d6+1 hours.

Cumulative damage

Taking lots of minor hits can also take you out of the fight:

Equal to or greater than your HLT (39 HLT for Tyndarios)

You're incapacitated. Whether or not you're unconscious is up to the GM, but regardless, you're unable to act beyond muttering a few words or screaming in pain.

Equal to or greater than your HLTx2 (78 HLT for Tyndarios)

You are dead, or will be very soon, unless an Apothecary miraculously saves you.

First aid

First aid can stabilize serious injuries to prevent further damage or death and restore a small amount of Health. Once you’ve received first aid, you cannot benefit from first aid until you’re injured anew.

• Light injuries (TN 15): Restores 1d6+1 Health (+1 for every 5 MoS, to a maximum of 1d6+3).

• Moderate injuries (TN 20): Restores 1 Health (+1 for every 5 MoS, to a maximum of 3). 

• Serious injuries (TN 25): You count as being Moderately injured, with no other effects.

• Critical injuries (TN 30): You count as being Seriously injured. 

• You do not suffer additional damage.

• Lethal Injuries (TN 30): You count as being Critically injured. 

• You do not suffer additional damage.
• You still require intensive medical care, or you will die.

Special Astartes rules:

• Astartes in PA always count as having a Medkit when trying to target themselves with the Medicae skill, which effectively cancels out the Disadvantage for self-healing. 

• They can also help their battle brothers without needing to remove their armor; the suit and the medical and armorsmith tools provided are specifically designed for this type of work.

Stamina and fatigue

Stamina reflects a character’s endurance and ability to perform strenuous actions. The system does NOT track Stamina on a round-to-round basis. Instead, fatigue is incurred through secondary injury effects, the use of certain talents, and above all, by the use of psychics.

That's not to say that Fatigue can't be incurred by strenuous activity. It can. But this would be more like a role-playing tool. The GM might inform the players that they are down to half Stamina because they've been tracking through the jungle or for a day. Or that breathing in those noxious fumes is causing 1 Fatigue each turn.

• Fatigued  ≥ 50% of Stamina: You are getting tired, but you can still fight. It’s time to take a break, though.

• You lose 1 Move action each turn.

• Exhausted ≥ 100% of Stamina: You’re completely exhausted. You need to lie down and just breathe.

• Reduce your Initiative to 0.
• You immediately collapse (drop prone). You’re still conscious.
• You can only do 1 Minor action each turn, regardless of your remaining Initiative.
• If you do nothing (except maybe some Free actions) for 1 minute (10 turns), you regain 1 Stamina until you are no longer exhausted.

• Unconscious ≥ 200% of Stamina: You’re beyond exhausted.

• You immediately collapse (drop prone). You’re unconscious, so you can’t take action, and initiative is no longer relevant.
• You regain 1 point for stamina for every 10 minutes that pass until you’re no longer Unconscious.

Resting

If you’re Exhausted or Unconscious, you automatically recover (at the specified rates) until you have 1 point of Stamina. Beyond that, you need to rest to recover. Or use stim patches or certain combat drugs, but that’s hardly a long-term viable strategy.

There are two kinds of resting:

Short Rests: 

• Max per Day: 2
• Duration: Approximately 1 hour (something a little more than a quick breather).
• Stamina Recovery: Recover 50% stamina.

If characters don’t have time for a 1-hour break, the GM can allow a shorter rest (10 minutes, for example), but this will only recover 25% of stamina and still use up a short rest for the day.

Long Rests:

• Max per Day: 1
• Duration: Approximately 8 hours (basically a whole night’s sleep).
• Stamina Recovery: Recovers all stamina.

If conditions are less than ideal, or the rest is interrupted, the GM can still allow partial recovery, for instance, 50% for 4-5 hours or 8 hours in the wilderness without shelter.

Stimms

Stimms can be taken by anyone. The PA's auto-doc can also administer them.

A stim patch removes 1d6+3 points of Fatigue.

• After 1d6x10 minutes, make a Resilience check DC 20. 

• If successful, you suffer no ill effects. 
• If you fail, you suffer 2d6+6 Fatigue.

• For each additional stim patch used between long rests, increase DC by 5 and add together the Fatigue hit for each patch.