The chapel barge of the high priest Imhotep sat in low orbit above the planet where the break in the circle occurred. Throughout the ship a horrid hum can be heard revirberating down all of the corridors, the kind of noise that would drive a mortal insane. The closer to the deployment hangers the greater the noise grew. Inside the hanger was full of flies, billions and billions of flies turning the chamber into the deepest of night. At the centre of the maelstrom of wings was calm, and sat on the floor, sat is a very loose term for someone of that bulk, with a scythe the height of 5 marines layed out before them; the high priest himself. His eyes shot open and his master communicated straight into his conciousness.
"Imhotep, I know your passion burns true, but be wary my son. I feel the ebbs of the great beyond converging. And I sense that this was no mere accident of lost travellers stumbling upon us."
"I feel it too, but I must collect the souls left down there. If what you say is true master we will need all of the meat sacks we can get. I shall take my toys out for a stroll, we have been cowering in the shadows of the grave for too long. I fear they may turn to dust. Like our little cousins.'
"Be wary, and re-establish the circle.
Till death joins us my son"
"Till death joins us"
And with that the pressure in Imhotep 's head subsided. He grasped his scythe and parted reality with its blade, and stepped in.
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Silence hung in the air over the mega city, on the second planet of the system. Fresh blast craters littered the remnants of the city, and bodies of deaths followers littered all areas of the city. At the centre of the largest crater reality parted and out stepped a hugely bloated figure, swarms of flies followed in his wake. With a sweep of his great scythe he surveyed the carnage that was left of this point in the circle.
As he investigated his surroundings he came across one of his priests surrounded by the corpses of deaths followers. A single bolt hole through the priests head.
But who caused all this and didn't suffer?
As he surveyed the area and saw no source of the violence.
And then he saw something, a chunk of what looked like scrap, but on closer inspection it was the priests staff imbeded inside a hull panel from a vehicle of some kind. With faint flecks of purple and bone colour to the metal.
Imhotep retrieved the staff and knelt, his eyes clenched shut. For what seemed an eternity he stayed there, the only thing breaking the silence was the faint hum of a fly circling.
Then his eyes shot open and the flies radiated out from him to all the bodies in the city. As each fly landed on a corpse and crawled inside it. One by one a blue glow eminated from the eyes of the corpses and they began to rise.
"M'lord, do you require us to send your 'toys'?"
The request rang inside his head.
"No, do not waste the effort, do send down some new toy boxes though. I have aquired some more"
The he looked down and saw fresh bolter shells on the floor.
"So master was right, a convergence is upon us. Death will join us all, golden ones lackies, death will join us all!"
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Imhotep smirked as he observed how much more efficient bodies were when void of life. The ritual was underway and the break in the circle will be sealed again.
"M'lord, we have reports of ships entering the sector"
The helms-mans voice hung in his head as he played with one of his meatbags, he sent the corpse back to the task.
"Is it the cause for this disruption here?"
"No master it appears there are two signatures entering the system from two different trajectories. What action shall we take?"
"Well it appears a convergence is upon us, send down the priesthood and cloak the ship. Take her back to a safe distance I will call upon you when I need you. There is no point displaying all of our cards this early. We must appear as a shambles, and use that to our advantage."
"Your will master, we shall retreat into the moons shadow. Till death joins us."
"Until death joins us helms-man."
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Deathwatch
"kkzzzk... The watchtower.... 20th..... Keepers... Kkkzzzk......" the nav com crackled out again. Something in this Anubis system was interfering with the broadcast. Brother Captain Johanns Schnow uttered a curse under his breath. He hated going planetside without the thorough background.
"once we recover the equipment referred to in the Sons of Ananta's intercepted transmission, we head back to the Watchtower, see what the Keepers are grumbling about now" He stepped away from the marine at the comms bank, and strode to the next room of the transport craft.
"Kill Team Decimus, GEAR UP!" he bellowed to the waiting marines. "there's artefacts down there we need, and we're going against unknown foes; prep for big game! Brother Ulfgar, you have the lead on the assault."
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Blood Angels
Captain Ecanus and Sergeant Ariuk sat looking at the screen in the Land Raider's command panel. It was a tight squeeze, and they were long since past their normal tolerance of being hot and flustered.
"Here we go" whispered Ecanus, as the coordinates they'd been waiting for for hours blinked on the screen. "Time for act..."
"Sir!" Sgt Tabris dashed through the cramped Marines as best he could to get to the Captain, "I've had a new communication from the Land Speeder. They believe we're not the only ones after those relics..."
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This scenario had the chaos forces deployed in the middle of the table and the marines in each diagonal corner. The objective for the chaos was to get zombie units from one point to another, and any unit of zombies destroyed went into on going reserves. The aim for the marine players was to kill the champions of the zombie units to score points. And each time they killed a zombie champion a relic would be dropped and for each of these they held at the end of the game they scored points too.
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Deathwatch:
Ulfgar scowled, he had been tasked to lead Kill Team Decimus and all their duties seemed to be was escorting a razorback across the deserted surface to the long deserted manufactorum. It seemed the information intercepted from the Sons of Ananata had been useless.
As they drew closer to the drop site, it became clear this long dead factory world had been recently disturbed by a colossal force. Ulfgar activated his vox, "Johanns, its quiet down here, but somethings up. There's something about this place I can't put my finger on. It's almost as if... No! It can't be!"
That was the last of the communication that Johanns heard before the noise within his drop pod became too much. He and his kill team we're altering their drop location to the vicinity of Ulfgar's signal.
They crashed to the earth, expecting xenos hordes and alien assault. Instead, they were greeted by a quiet world, where only a doldrum of chanting could be made out. As the Kill Team rounded the corner, Brother Brutus was suddenly toppled and swarmed by a tide of what appeared to be walking corpses!
Brother Phoenixis roared litanies for the dead as he pulled the releases home on his heavy flamer, burning promethium reducing the living dead to ash.
As the squad rounded the corner, they saw a seemingly unending horde of reanimated bodies, all spilling from the gargantuan might of something the size of a titan, long since corroded.
"More is at work here than we thought Brothers!" roared Johanns, "stand firm!"
Ulfgar's auspex array lit up like night sky, among this wave of walking dead, it seemed that certain ones were bid to carry items of significance. These must be recovered. "Johanns, they've got something arcane. That belongs in the vault!"
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Johanns and the fought on against these cursed walkers. Despite their size, they took an unnatural amount of effort to put down. Bolter shells punched fist sized holes and chainswords chunks away, but the dead kept coming. Something crackled through the vox caster in his helm "others here... Traitors...angels..." the line hissed and went dead. It seemed the brothers tasked as scouts had been slain, he would mourn them later. For now, the walking dead were the priority.
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Ulfgar too heard the broadcast from the scouts. He turned to the brothers he had been tasked to lead, only too see two of them fall to the swing of a crackling scythe. Traitor marines! The corrupt parodies of loyal marines strode through the sea of undead like ships, their leader called Ulfgar out, all while maintaining a steady chant. His power axe crackled as strode toward the abomination.
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After falling back from a break in the waves of the undead, Johanns and the few remaining brothers climbed into the razorback with a few of the cursed artefacts. As the doors were closing up they heard a yell "hold brothers!"
Ulfgar landed next to vehicle, jump pack sputtering "cursed thing seemed to cut out near that sorcery" muscling into the transport as he snarled. "the rest fell to this new evil, but I got this"
The space wolf grinned as he held up a corroded looking power armour helm resembling a dog.
Something about that helm unsettled Johanns...
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