Under the Walls of Night
Mordian. A death world. A hive world. One side bathed in light bright enough to strip flesh from bones in moments, the other submerged in darkness so complete that outside your hand in front of your face is invisible. She has no natural resources; long ago her oceans boiled away, her mines ran dry, her ecosystems were subsumed by the voracious appetite of humanity. Mordian has only one thing she gives to the Emperor of Man in her undying fealty- bodies. To be a hiver on Mordian is to be a faceless figure amongst countless billions, a raindrop in a typhoon. Beneath the artificial skies and in the squalid alleyways, the fetid tunnels, and the forgotten constructions, millions live and die, their lives not ever recorded or remembered. Rule of Mordian has been given over, by the grace of the God-Emperor, to the Tetrarchs; they are nobles in every sense of the word, except the nice ones. With no resources to speak of, their rule is harsh and absolute- resentment festers in every corner of the choked masses, a thousand plots born at daybreak to grow to choking fruition by nightfall, if such utterances had meaning beneath the cloak of eternal night. Only the men and women of the Mordian Iron Guard stand between Mordian and chaos, for the world is a man sinking under his own weight, and the rule of law can only be maintained by oceans of blood. Alongside the Iron Guard the Arbites stand ever vigilant, harsh beyond belief, but cruelty is justice in this howling night.
And these defenders of the Imperium will need every ounce of faith, every shred of hatred, if they are to stand against the storm. One battle has Mordian survived, one great victory recorded; they broke a host of Chaos upon the very steps of the Tetrarchal Palace when a foul spell allowed the Traitor Legions egress from the Eye, but this was only their first trial. Now the summer heat rises again. In the underhive the numberless gangs are restless, and man and beast disquieted. Mysterious disappearances have been reported to the Arbites, and no traces of the missing ever found. A foul force lurks here anew, perhaps, or another sinister presence has made its lair in the eons of stacked construction that are the hives.
Welcome, then, to Hive Tenebris. Ruled by the Tetrarch Arvail with a fist of steel, it produces some of the least valued units in the Mordian Guard- even with training, his hivers rarely amount to much, and are only more warm bodies to feed the bottomless appetite of the Imperium's wars. But bodies they are, and bodies can smother any fire when enough are poured on top of it. Beneath the streets of Arvail, however, trouble lurks. The Emperor's Tarot has been foretelling disaster for a fortnight now, and now the full measure of the future is obvious. A thousand enemies descend. Chaos. The Great Devourer. Even the Orkish filth are trying to lay their hands upon the birthright of the Iron Guard. But they shall not have it.
And these defenders of the Imperium will need every ounce of faith, every shred of hatred, if they are to stand against the storm. One battle has Mordian survived, one great victory recorded; they broke a host of Chaos upon the very steps of the Tetrarchal Palace when a foul spell allowed the Traitor Legions egress from the Eye, but this was only their first trial. Now the summer heat rises again. In the underhive the numberless gangs are restless, and man and beast disquieted. Mysterious disappearances have been reported to the Arbites, and no traces of the missing ever found. A foul force lurks here anew, perhaps, or another sinister presence has made its lair in the eons of stacked construction that are the hives.
Welcome, then, to Hive Tenebris. Ruled by the Tetrarch Arvail with a fist of steel, it produces some of the least valued units in the Mordian Guard- even with training, his hivers rarely amount to much, and are only more warm bodies to feed the bottomless appetite of the Imperium's wars. But bodies they are, and bodies can smother any fire when enough are poured on top of it. Beneath the streets of Arvail, however, trouble lurks. The Emperor's Tarot has been foretelling disaster for a fortnight now, and now the full measure of the future is obvious. A thousand enemies descend. Chaos. The Great Devourer. Even the Orkish filth are trying to lay their hands upon the birthright of the Iron Guard. But they shall not have it.
Day One of the Crisis
High above the teeming masses Tetrarch Arvail made his eyrie, lord of all he surveyed. From the heights of plassteel and blastcrete, above even the clouds, the Tetrarchal Palace loomed over all below. The fetid masses. Truly, it was as the Arbites often joked in private, the humor they never showed to Imperial citizens; their job was not to defend the rule of law against outside forces, but against the blasphemous masses and xenophiles that masqueraded as the God-Emperor's faithful. Arvail sighed, his heavy double chin wobbling against the tubes of his rebreather. An enormously fat man, he had grown corpulent on the excesses of power- only the most expensive machines could keep up with his lusts, and in the night he felt something call to him. But so far he hadn't responded to that plaintive appeal- the Tetrarch was a stupid oaf of a governor, corrupt and inept, but even he knew that Chaos held rarely any promise for her most devoted of servants. This made him, for a governor of a hive world, somewhat of a prodigy. Arvail didn't think of himself as such, sipping his synthwine as he stared down at the endless chimneys of pollutant smog pouring above the hive, but his rule could have been far worse.
Unfortunately for Hive Tenebris, it could also have been far better. Neglecting the Guard and the governance of his dominion, many foul things had crept into the city. Now they were emerging in force. The Red Summer had begun.
