W40K In Service to the Imperium: Episode 5 (OOC/OPEN/Reboot)

[The Nihilistic view]

"Stabbed? forty six times? " replied the lieutenant. "They look like scars from Dark Eldar torture to me. Can you be sure he did not just drop dead?"

[Legital]

Company name: Formerly the 45th Kryosan Infantry, known as the 'Pyrrhus Dregs'
Home world: Kryosa (Hive World)
Type of Company: Infantry Company
Commanding Officer: Chief-Adjudant (major) Enoch Penantes
Number of Guardsmen: 3 officers, 1 preacher, 420 Guardsmen (the sole survivors of a regiment once ten thousand strong.
Support (Weapons, vehicles, etc): Guardsmen sport lasguns and autoguns, twenty flamers.
Uniforms: Since the 38th millenium Kryosan factories have armed the planet's soldiers with Cadian pattern equipment rather than rely on inferior Kryosan armaments. However, Kryosan soldiers are of poor quality and accordingly their equipment is manufactured with great quantity rather than quality in mind. Their armour is poorly made, their fatigues are quickly reduced to frayed and tattered rags from the wear and tear of battle and their shoddy weapons are prone to overheating and jamming.
Their flak armour is painted an ugly dark brown and their fatigues are a drab grey. Their uniforms are designed to blend with the polluted industrial slums of their Hive world. They are a pious people, and Ecclesiastical symbols are often carved or daubed onto shoulder plates and helmets.

Miscellaneous info:

Kryosa Primaris is an Imperial Hive World like any other, entombed from pole to pole in a vast and hideous gothic sprawl of towering hab-blocks, gigantic cathedrals and titanic factories unthinkable in scale, and submerged in a choking sea of acrid, sulphurous smog and toxic industrial fumes.

Rising out from the billowing yellow sea of pollution are the great spires and palaces of the noble houses, where the rich and powerful families of Kryosa live lives of obscene luxury, their every whim waited upon by armies of slaves. In such stratospheric heights their lungs are untouched by the deadly smog that plagues the short lives of those below.

From their vast palatial spire-estates the noble families dictate the lives of those below with absolute and merciless authority, utterly uncaring for the plight of the squalid, starving billions who toil underneath them.

Rising even higher than the noble estates are the unspeakably immense gothic cathedra of the Ecclesiarchy, each built with the blood and toil a million slaves over countless forgotten millennia. From here the all-powerful Church of the Imperial Cult lord over the abject masses of the faithful with their cruel and hateful religion of slavery and death-worship. The Imperial Clergy is as hypocritically decadent and corrupt as it is fanatical, and it persecutes those down below with unremitting fury while turning a blind-eye to the unorthodoxy of the noble houses, and the deviancy within it’s own ranks. The statues of a hundred thousand saints and martyrs stand in eternal vigilance of plinths the size of mountains; all beneath will live and die under their ever-watchful gaze.

Greatest of all is the Palace of the Founders, the spires of which reach into space. This colossal monument to the Emperor is the embodiment of the Imperium’s absolute power on Kryosa. It is the iron will of Terra made manifest on this distant world. The rotting corpses of thousands of traitors, heretics and incompetents hang from cages on it’s walls, a constant reminder of the fate that awaits those who fail the Emperor.

Beneath the grand spires and palaces, submerged in the heaving sea of industrial smog, lie the immense and cavernous vaults and archives of the administratum. Here a bureaucratic underclass composed of countless millions of scribes, adepts, functionaries, clerks, administrators and officials toil millennia in and millennia out in thankless obscurity, bound to a life of thankless servitude under managerial hierarchies so vast they are measured not in rank but in generations.

Upon their long-suffering shoulders falls the arduous and futile task of administrating not only the teeming hive-sprawl below, but also the worlds of the greater Imperium: for the Kryosa system is at the cross-roads of many warp routes and thus a hub for the administratum in the Sub-Sector. This task is of such terrible magnitude that the bloated and hidebound Imperial bureaucracy on Kryosa is utterly unable to cope with its workload, and the ancient dust-choked archives of the administratum are filled with its backlog: centuries of lost and forgotten paperwork. It is possible to spend a lifetime searching for a long lost document in their endless, labyrinthine corridors and halls.

Bureaucratic inertia and delays in communication that last for years, a vast accumulation of rigid, inflexible, archaic, obsolete and pointless laws and dictates over millennia of byzantine bureaucracy, and the hopeless ineptitude of an unspeakably ancient, bloated and decaying institution that has long since ceased functioning as intended; all these things make effective administration utterly impossible. Under such conditions the administratum is forced to prioritise, and so when it comes to the governance of the hive cities on Kryosa, only the concerns of the rich and powerful can be competently addressed, and when they are flooded with desperate calls for aid from thousands of worlds, the administratum can only afford to save the most strategically valuable and economically productive planets, so hopelessly overstretched are the Kryosan Imperial Guard.

These hapless bureaucratic peons of the administratum are bound to their service from birth, condemned to spend almost the entirety of their lives hunched over their work-stations in dark, dusty scriptoria, illuminated only by ancient lighting fixtures that give off little more than a dull, dusty gleam. Over their years their eyes will be slowly worn out from the strain, their writing hands will become wracked by painful spasms and their bodies will atrophy away until they slump lifeless onto their desks.

Even in death their duty does not end. The mortal remains of the Emperor’s servants are preserved to serve him for all eternity as servo-skulls. These lifeless constructs flit through the muffled halls, carrying documents, quills, parchment and sanctified scrolls of scripture to instil proper reverence for the Emperor.

But even these poor souls are amongst the most fortunate of Kryosa, at least in comparison to those who live beneath the administrative complexes. For underneath lies the true body of the hive city, and it is a very unfortunate place to be alive.

It is a sprawling urban conglomeration of wretched, festering slums built up over millennia on top of the crumbling remains of derelict hab-blocks and abandoned factories flooded with ten thousand years of industrial effluent, and the ancient skeletal ruins of collapsed city spires buried in a decaying, tangled sprawl of derelict structures. Every available surface has been built upon; even the long abandoned and heavily irradiated ruins of ancient nucleus power plants, long since deemed uninhabitable by the administratum. Vast heaps of industrial waste that stretch from the cloud layer down to the bedrock, crashed star ships and the wreckages of ancient war machines from ages past, all have long since been subsumed into the ever-expanding sprawl of the Hive’s infrastructure.

The teeming billions of Kryosa’s citizens who live in these squalid depths must endure short, gruelling, miserable lives defined by hunger, pain, disease, death poverty and servitude. They have no rights, no value or worth. To their uncaring noble masters residing in the luxurious spires above, they are merely animals to be worked until they drop. Billions of men, women and children toil away in the vast slave mines and factories of the Noble Houses, living and working their entire lives in abject squalor in the dark bowels of the Hive. Kryosa Primaris is the industrial heart of the sub-sector. Millions of blazing war-forges and smelteries produce vast quantities of metal to feed the gargantuan and ravenous factories, pumping out a never-ending supply of munitions to be shipped off world to fuel the Imperial war machine. The cost of this ceaseless industry is rivers of human blood, sweat and tears, but in the Imperium nothing is sacred save the Emperor, and human life is the cheapest commodity of all.

Workers toil under horrendous conditions through brutal shifts that can be as long as twenty hours. Their only reward is a few scant hours of sleep between their labours, but even this is plagued by the foul cacophonous noise of constant industry, and the painful ravages of disease and exhaustion.

Those who survive the frequent epidemics that spread like wildfire through the cramped and squalid environs of the deep hive will inevitably be worked to death. When labourers collapse from sheer exhaustion at their posts, if they cannot be revived through a harsh beating then they will be thrown into the corpse-processing units, dead or alive.

Discipline in the factories is brutal, draconian and merciless. The endless shifts proceed under the ever-vigilant supervision of callous taskmasters and merciless tithe-proctors. These overseers are given free reign to use whatever means necessary to ensure tithe quotas are met, and they use their power to it’s full extent. Sadistic enforcers and lobotomised slave-wardens maintain productivity with whips and truncheons, administering brutal punishment to laggards and weaklings. The Tithe-proctors and their staff will not hesitate in their duties, for they know full well that if quotas are not met they will take full responsibility for their failings, and their superiors will in turn be no more merciful than they.

Worker uprisings are uncommon indeed; usually the brutalisation they receive at the hands of their superiors is enough to keep the downtrodden masses subservient. Most labour agitators meet their end at the butt of an overseers’ truncheon. On those rare occasions when uprisings occur, they are short-lived indeed. The Noble Houses have in their possession vast private armies; the primary use of which is to crush upstart revolutions. When these thugs in uniforms cannot deter the most determined of revolutionary efforts, the intervention of the Adeptus Arbites and Ecclesiastical forces swiftly will. Mass executions ensue, and the Ecclesiarchy will usually complement them with mass burnings. During the most thorough of purges the heretic pyres can be seen from space.
All this turmoil and death goes by entirely unnoticed by the planet’s uncaring noble masters. If the horrors of the city below are recognised at all, it is only by apathetic bureaucrats who mindlessly toll the deaths for centennial records that will never be read by anyone other than themselves. The documents will be lost and inevitably forgotten in the administratum’s ever-growing accumulation of pointless records. At most the Ecclesiarchy may hold a special state sermon on the nobility of service to the Emperor, which will be broadcast throughout the Hives.

Religion is an all-pervasive influence on the lives of Kryosans. While the decadent Noble Houses are required at most to uphold an outward façade of piety, the great masses that toil below are completely at the mercy of the Church, and any sign of unorthodoxy or dissent will bring down terrible retribution.

While the teeming multitudes will never lay eyes on the palatial grandeur of the Ecclesiastical Cathedrals, the Church maintains a constant presence amongst them. From birth charismatic preachers and demagogues indoctrinate them, rearing generation after generation of fanatical, unthinking zealots. Prayers and litanies of righteousness loop constantly over the public broadcast-system and the vox-channels, so that there can be no true escape from the Imperial Cult. Droning processions of clergymen throng through the sweltering factories in the midst of the workers toils, instilling the fear of damnation and the hatred of laxity into their malleable hearts. Any sign of dissent or heresy is eradicated by fire and blade, for the roaming bands of clerics that preach in the deep hive are rarely unarmed.

Indeed the populace are compelled to love and praise their beneficent Emperor, for only on days devoted to his worship, or the feast days of his saints, is there to be any reprieve from their toils. Only for the nobles however, is there to be any feasting or celebration. For the masses these rare and treasured days are spent thronging around monuments of the Emperor and other such sites of pilgrimage, expressing public adulation through acts of sacrifice, penance and mortification. The blood of heretics is offered to their God, daubed onto the monuments and statues, their skulls are hung from them like bunting. Mass flagellation and self-immolation are commonplace. Those who survive are considered blessed, and are showered with praise and adoration until they inevitably die from their wounds, or are killed by their overseers for their inability to work.

The further down you go, the more noxious and contaminated the air becomes, and it takes centuries for human and industrial waste to make it’s way down from the very top of the Hive to the long-abandoned bottom, giving the Deep Hive a hideous and ungodly stench the strength of which is so great, it is often said to be fatal to offworlders not native to hive worlds. Efficient waste disposal is impossible, as the vast and cavernous pipelines and waste channels that lead to the forgotten depths are so extensive and convoluted, that not even the Administratum knows their full extent. Only the upper layers of the pipelines have been mapped.

Kryosans make notoriously poor soldiers, because their home is a hive-world. The aristocratic families that dominate the planet are it's only healthy inhabitants, for they do not have to breathe the noxious air beneath their towering spire-estates, nor toil in the deep mines or the factories. And the nobles do not become common soldiers.

The average inhabitant of Kryosa is small and stunted from a lifetime of malnutrition, crooked and stooped from years of hard labour and ruthless beatings. His skin is pallid and grey, having never felt the touch of the suns light, and is riddled with weeping, putrid sores and festering boils from the ravages of disease, filth and squalor, daily realities for one living in the sprawling industrial slums. His unwashed hair is thin and scraggly, and only remains in withered clumps from years of exposure to industrial toxins and deadly radiation. His voice is weak and rasping, his lungs scarred and cancerous from breathing the foul polluted air of the deep hive.

The tyranny and brutality of the Imperial Regime on Kryosa warps their minds as well as their bodies, for the Kryosan people are slaves in all but name, bound to a lifetime of servitude under their noble-born masters. Accordingly, common-born Kryosans are a solemn, pious and fatalistic people, for death, misery and hardship are all they have ever known and the Guard is no different. They are usually meek and submissive, a lifetime of degradation and subservience drilling obedience into their brains, but when they are roused by the ministrations of the Ecclesiarchy their wrath is terrible to behold indeed, even if in battle they serve to do little more than die like cattle.

-Company Commander info-

Name: Enoch Penantes.

Age: 49 Terran years.

Gender: Male

Rank: Chief-Adjutant, served as an advisor in the personal command staff of the Lord General of his regiment before it was destroyed in almost it's entirety. (his rank is broadly equivalent to major)

Background:

Enoch Penantes has become a truly vile man, a petty tyrant loathed and feared by all who serve under him. Uncaring generals may use them as human pawns from high above, but this is the man who has direct power to make their lives hell in the here and now, at any moment he pleases.

Enoch was born into a Noble Family of high standing and great wealth and spent his childhood in the luxurious spire-estates of his illustrious House, but alas he was a bastard, the shameful result of an illegitimate union between his powerful aristocratic father and one of his many slave-girls. Despite his intelligence and charisma, Enoch found himself rejected and shunned from the upper echelons of Imperial society, that the rest of his family moved about in so freely.

As a result of his peculiar status amongst the Noble Clans, from an early age Enoch developed a powerful and deep-seated inferiority complex. He was wantonly cruel to his servants and peasant labours, desperately trying to assert himself over anyone he knew to be of lesser blood.

Needless to say he was not content with his lot, regardless of his great privilege.

His father died at a ripe old age when Enoch was nineteen years old, assassinated by political rivals. Enoch was now left even more powerless and disenfranchised. His family refused to allow him to take on his fathers lordship, and they decided to rid themselves of him by buying him an officership in the Kryosan Imperial Guard.

Denied the title that he believed was his birth-right, and banished from his Home, Enoch Penantes was an angry young man. However, he would soon earn distinction serving as an officer in the Imperial Guard.

On distant worlds far away from the Noble Estates of Kryosa, nobody questioned the purity of his blood, and in every other respect Enoch found he could be a model Kryosan commander: He was cultured and highly versed in the effete traditions and mannerisms of the Nobility, and so he fit in well amongst his fellow officers. More importantly still, he was austere, arrogant and utterly uncaring for the men of common blood who served under his command. He did not associate or empathise with the rabble of the Imperium, preferring to direct his battles from the safety of a command bunker several miles behind the line, sampling fine wines and enjoying the company of his aristocratic friends.

And so for many years he led a pleasant life, casually toying with the lives of thousands as he did. Warfare was more of a hobby for him that anything else, and directing his men from so far behind the lines, the cost of his actions in human lives became little more than an abstraction to him.

But his comfortable existence soon came to an abrupt and horrifying end. He was thirty five years old, on campaign against the orks, when his bunker was breached by an entirely unanticipated dark eldar raid. He was the sole survivor. When he emerged from the ruins twenty four hours later, he was a changed man. He had gained his first experience of combat to be sure, but more pressingly he had endured terrible physical change. He staggered from a dozen vicious wounds, but his face was the most horrifying sight of all. He had once been possessed of a disarming charm, his good looks and charisma putting even his enemies at ease.

It was not the trauma of combat or pain that turned him into the man he is today, but the gross disfigurement he suffered at the hands of the dark eldar. His old insecurities that he had thought long buried rose up from his past, in full force. Even his closest friends could no longer stand the sight of him, and with every passing year his resentment and self-hatred grew.

Finally his superiors took note of his condition, and removed him from direct command of his battalion. This was not strictly speaking a demotion, for he now served as an advisor in the glamorous personal command staff of the regimental commander, an esteemed Lord-General, but Enoch resented the loss of his command all the same.

He became renowned by his men as a brutal sadist, a merciless taskmaster who would take any excuse to inflict pain and humiliation on the commoners who served under him. Soon the guardsmen hated him more than even the Lord-General, for while he was callous and uncaring, Enoch actively relished their pain, even going so far as to advise particularly dangerous and bloody courses of action in battle, purely to spite them.

The most popular jokes in the regiment were those concerning Enoch's infamous sexual deviancy, which had become gradually noticed by the men since the Dark Eldar incident. Those that dared to make such remarks in earshot of the man himself however, he personally flogged, made them beg for their lives and then impaled them on his ceremonial bayonet. But even his eccentric style of summary execution only lent more credence to the crude jokes. The humour was a coping mechanism to deal with fear, but even that stopped as Enoch's violence escalated over the years. Even the bloodthirsty regimental clerics became quietly concerned.

With his distinguished service Enoch managed to secure Noble marriages for himself. It was common on Kryosa for the daughters of lesser families to be shipped off-world to marry officers and generals. Most who joined the Imperial Guard never heard from their homeworlds again, but an officer from Kryosa was first and foremost a Nobleman of his House. Enoch went through two wives. Hestia, then Dysis. Both popular and beloved by the men, both quickly disappeared, never to be seen again. From then on Enoch only had discardable concubines shipped from Kryosa, and they became younger and younger with every passing year. The sinister fate that befell all these women was an open secret.

Enoch Penante's unsavoury fall from grace (if he ever had any in the beginning) came to an abrupt end when his entire regiment was destroyed, and he was left nothing more than a Company Commander in a shameful regiment cobbled together from deserters and deviants (in his eyes). He was suddenly deprived of his luxuries, cut off from the Homeworld and the Nobility, and forced to lead a sorry band of common dregs on the field itself, a momentous indignity.

Humiliated, furious and terrified, Enoch would not make for a pleasant leader in the coming years. He never quite came to terms with what had happened, so sudden had been his fall.

Physical description: A tall and imposing man, Enoch's noble birth is plainly evident when standing anywhere near his wretched men, with his strong, upright stature and healthy skin. But his otherwise commendable features are marred by hideous facial scarring, and with his piercing green eyes and constant sneer, (but mainly penchant for violent sadism) he is an altogether extremely unpleasant man both to look and at and be near.

Brilliant description for the Hive World and Enoch's background, truly. The Hive World description was just about as W40K as something can get.

Accepted. We just need to figure out where to put you.

I don't think so, sorry.

Oh. Right.

Mind if I ask why?

It just strikes me as an odd idea, and I think it may cause some confusion in the IC to have a colonel who is, well, not really a colonel. It's best to use a lower rank and keep it at that.

[Imperial City-States]

Leg I could run across his Unit while i'm on the road heading to the fort

[Toolofdarkness]

fixed my post sorry for the confusion.

[Legital]

Leg I could run across his Unit while i'm on the road heading to the fort

You're on the other side of the fort, you could not be able to meet him. You'd meet us first before you find the PDF cadets.

[Aelosia]

I have been reading The Lost Gaunt Series, wondering about the resistance on Pan Arcadia. In both Verghast and Gereon resistance to Chaos occupation was harsh. I had included some storyline in the squad thread based on the existance of some sort of underground partisans loyal to the throne and opposed to the "independence" movement.

Funny thing is, Vanhayn will like Enoch at the beginning. More likely until the first serious tactical gathering is taken.

Bored to wait for the Necromundans. I'm writing in both threads as I write this.

[Carcharhinidae primari]

okay. I've yet to start on that series. need to see when I have time.

I might be getting quite busy this week. not sure if I'll be able to make a post in either thread.

[The Nihilistic view]

Leg I could run across his Unit while i'm on the road heading to the fort

You're on the other side of the fort, you could not be able to meet him. You'd meet us first before you find the PDF cadets.

I believe Imp means the 45th Kryosan not my cadets.

Leg I could run across his Unit while i'm on the road heading to the fort

Make sure you run over the right unit of his company.

[Kryosa]

You're on the other side of the fort, you could not be able to meet him. You'd meet us first before you find the PDF cadets.

I believe Imp means the 45th Kryosan not my cadets.

Leg I could run across his Unit while i'm on the road heading to the fort

Make sure you run over the right unit of his company.

Telegram me whenever theres an opening

[Legital]

Anyone have any more posts to make before I try to scrounge something up to keep the story going? I've been a bit pressed on time, but I'll see what I can do as soon as possible.

[Drakulstan]

Nothing here, waiting for effect upon the enemy.

[Carcharhinidae primari]

I'm waiting on the enemy too, and maybe the necromundians if they aren't overun.

[The Nihilistic view]

I'm waiting for people to arrive at mah checkpoint. Suppose I could post some fluff about the guys there.

[Great Houses of Xie]

yeah, sorry about that. got nailed by a number of school group projects at once. i'll get a post up of the xie company finally arriving at fort mach from.....the east gate, i think.

[Aelosia]

Anyone have any more posts to make before I try to scrounge something up to keep the story going? I've been a bit pressed on time, but I'll see what I can do as soon as possible.

Same as the others, it would be stupid for me to write something about the full company preparing to withdraw with my main elements facing an enemy incursion. Once the PDF backs off, I'll post the bits I have written about the retreat.

I wonder if we should give the Emperor's Mercy upon the grave wounded, tho. No way we can carry so many,..

[Carcharhinidae primari]

Anyone have any more posts to make before I try to scrounge something up to keep the story going? I've been a bit pressed on time, but I'll see what I can do as soon as possible.

Same as the others, it would be stupid for me to write something about the full company preparing to withdraw with my main elements facing an enemy incursion. Once the PDF backs off, I'll post the bits I have written about the retreat.

I wonder if we should give the Emperor's Mercy upon the grave wounded, tho. No way we can carry so many,..

well, since most of the companies have to move on foot anyway you should be able to commandeer chimeras and such.

[Bredtonia]

Anyone have any more posts to make before I try to scrounge something up to keep the story going? I've been a bit pressed on time, but I'll see what I can do as soon as possible.

Same as the others, it would be stupid for me to write something about the full company preparing to withdraw with my main elements facing an enemy incursion. Once the PDF backs off, I'll post the bits I have written about the retreat.

I wonder if we should give the Emperor's Mercy upon the grave wounded, tho. No way we can carry so many,..

Also, if we want to fabricate sledges, I've got engine power to spare (and 2 mostly empty chimeras). That is assuming my company isn't tasked to forward recon.

[Drakulstan]

Sleds could work, pulled by either the Tonatians or the Steel Legion.

And you could commandeer Chimeras from companies that don't need them, like the two that my company has.

[The Nihilistic view]

I thought the snow was yet to come? Aren't you better off making carts in that case?


Also, wounded can go in the vehicles whilst the fit ride on the top, no?

[Drakulstan]

Carts would take too long to fabricate. And it's only gotta be a matter of time before another airstrike hits us. And we're definitely a little low on AA.

[Bone Fort]

Sleds can be dragged across anything if you pull hard enough, it's merely easier on snow.

[Bredtonia]

I thought the snow was yet to come? Aren't you better off making carts in that case?


Also, wounded can go in the vehicles whilst the fit ride on the top, no?

Given that we're moving at walking speeds because we're mostly infantry - wounded can go in vehicles while the fit walk.

[The Nihilistic view]

Sleds can be dragged across anything if you pull hard enough, it's merely easier on snow.

You don't think pulling them across hard rocky mountainous terrain will destroy them in short order? Secondly you are making them yourselves with about an hour of time put into them. They won't be the universes strongest sledges ever by a long way.

[The Empire of Pretantia]

Sleds can be dragged across anything if you pull hard enough, it's merely easier on snow.

You don't think pulling them across hard rocky mountainous terrain will destroy them in short order? Secondly you are making them yourselves with about an hour of time put into them. They won't be the universes strongest sledges ever by a long way.

If they're made of 40k steel, you bet they're the universe's strongest sleds.

[Bone Fort]

And you can make them as easily as lying down a sheet of shield.