This is a maintenance and event thread for various abominations, horrors, and gribblies. Everything here is IC. Others may join in to showcase their own space-terrors or encounter already highlighted monstrosities, first send a TG requesting admission and an outline of your idea and it will be considered.
Outskirts of Torshir, Grevon
Dorvon System, Spinward Brithiske
Apostle Kyrthos was ferried from the bowels of the deceres lander upon a dozen tendrils of ferrosteel and quivering tendons, the multitude of warped bodies and metal plates that made up the ramp groaning under the razor-talons. Light both natural and artificial bloomed across his body as the whipping and snapping tentacles pulled the grandeur of his mutilated form out from under the shade of the towering wargalley. Where the light of the distant yellow primary was obfuscated by cloud of ash and fallout the bloom of detonations distant and near shone across the seven lenses and four wet globes that were sutured into the lump that was his face. Robes once white but long since rotted to red and black from the constant soak of blood hung from his seven shoulders, arms of moulded flesh and metal rising into the air as they dripped blood and oil from gaping wounds and shivering hoses. His face turned to the horizon, where the star of this system tried to hide behind the crumbling towers of the heathens and the flames of their salvation.
“I claim this world for Prophet Vormnenos, Grand Shepherd of the Scutum-Crux Crusade,” his manifold voices thundered out from the pipes and cables mangling his jaw and echoed through voxes impaled into battle thralls, quaking through the whole of the world, “Before the end of this cycle Grevon shall be brought into the Weld. You shall all be saved!”
The gargantuan landing craft responded to his declaration, cannons unleashing guided barrages while ports opened and unleashed squirming masses of the twisted from rusted hatches and bleeding sphincters. They slithered, crawled, leapt, and ran as soon as they hit the ground. Thralls made from discarded craniums and cables skittered like crabs, the charged coils that they moved with waiting to sink into flesh. Sturdier faithless formed from the remnant torsos of unwilling converts wriggled away as serpents as the rubber and nerves that coated their legless bodies gave them new locomotion while simple bombs in their chest cavities gave them purpose. More complex creations were the fusions of exoskeletal frames and less than compliant potential converts, ballistic and energy weapons bolted into their forearms and riveted to their shoulders while rudimentary cameras and other mechanical senses replaced harvested organs. They screamed into the world by the tens of thousands, futilely thrashing against their bonds as their bodies toiled under the command of a higher power they refused to acknowledge and forced to bear witness to the good works they would commit.
After them followed the true faithful, the fused who strode proudly down the ramps of the deceres in lock step. They were Kyrthos’ flock, his faithful converts who had given their flesh over to him so that they could be cut open and made whole with the Weld. Their legs and arms were implanted with ferrosteel augments, extra joints popping and hissing as the masks that had replaced their faces whirled with cameras and extended eyes upon sensory wires hovered around their metal-coated scalps. Rifles were held in cold grips, connecting through the cables and wires in their arms to the power supply implanted in their chest cavities beneath hardened plating pulled from the armour of dead soldiers. They sang hymns as they marched, two-toed feet clanging as their synthetic voices screeched over their stripped vocal chords as they gave praise to the glory of the Weld.
Vehicles mighty and frail followed between companies, looted and repurposed battle tanks and armoured carriers mounting battle flags made from the stretched skin of heathens grinding out upon treads repaired with tiles of hardened bone. Walkers, spindly legged with the stretched tendons of dozens giving them an extra spring in their step, were mounted by fused dragoons who clung to mounted machineguns and mortars as the thrall-brain transplanted into the jittery machine moved to their command. Even from the top of the mighty landing craft came the screeches of the airborne as gunships and fighters shot away to join the fight, the twisted thralls who were used as spare parts upon the wings and hulls wailing as their skin was freshly flenzed by the force. Tens of thousands of drones floated into the air after them, limbs, heads, and torsos implanted with will and basic engines along with harvested eyes that peered unblinking from between cages of meat and steel following along to surveil for the force.
But the ones who Kyrthos graced with his attentions were the emanated. Underneath their shells their bodies were immaculate and pale, all excess tissue clipped and removed so that far more functional mechanisms could take their place as hoses and membranes, metal plates and insulated wires, servos and pumps enhanced every portion of their bodies and provided an integrated exoskeleton. This supported a second set of arms made of machinery and functional gristle which hovered over their original pair, a tail made from two salvaged spines and strong cable terminated in a powered blade, and the heavy armour that enclosed them from the outside world and pulsed with secondary organs and the nervous systems of a dozen harvested thralls. They were immaculate and powerful beside their lessers; robes dipped in consecrated blood and oil, heavy corpse-rifles and neuro-missile launchers produced by artisans in the forges of the Cult Manufactories, and the six eyes of the Prophet Vormnenos marked upon their closed helms.
Others poured forth from the wargalley. The twisted warhulks that waddled out were the amalgams of dozens to hundreds of faithless together with salvaged loaders and industrial machinery to form heavy infantry with basic shields, massive claws, and chemical launchers implanted into them. Howling and bloodthirsty fused gangers were commingled with their hoverbikes, their legs removed entirely and replaced with a set of cybernetic arms ending in scythes, saws, and blades while they gripped submachineguns and shotguns with frantic energy, flailing them in the air as they ululated the glory of the Weld and sped off. Yet his only care was for the emanated as they strode past him, bowing their helmeted heads and uttering prayers as they did so. He touched them, granting the blessing of the Weld as they made their way to the battlefields, translucent membranes of skin coating their armour, their robes, and even their weapons responding by shimmering and shifting, the warriors of the Weld flickering away like chameleons and leaving behind only their footprints as they departed on their sacred duty.
Even as he gave the last their blessings, the machinery and organs of the landing craft beckoned Kyrthos. Incoming missiles were shredded by automated defenses, the brains sown into them reacting as they had been instructed to, while a volley of energy weapons sparked against the shields and cast blue and yellow light across the expanding base of operations. Missionaries marched out undeterred, their robes billowing and staves held high as they ushered out the siege engines of the crusade. The cannons crawled out upon the legs of harvested titans, scales stretched over chemically enhanced muscle and hydraulics as two dozen stretched skinless arms grasped at valves and levers. The many eyes and cameras of the siege hulks followed the missionaries as they dragged themselves to the staging ground, the mass of their scavenged bodies digging a rivet into the dirt as they did so, and once they the missionaries stopped the obedient thralls they dug their legs into the earth. Whimpers and pathetic wails erupted from the siege machines as their cannons extended, barrels dripping lubricating expulsions as the automated arms and well-chosen eyes of the weapon did their work in conjunction with the swarms of drones. Only when the commanding missionary consecrated the ammunition did they fire, screaming as they did so.
Eyes bulged and blood erupted as the coils sprang to life and tore the magnetic round from the gut of the siege engine, sending the blessed round screeching into city in a blaze of sound and fire until it collided with a distant tower. The gargantuan shell didn’t explode, instead embedding within the sturdy structure and leaking out an intoxicating black cloud that swept out across the skyline to blot out the light, the heat, and even radio waves and most other such forms of detection. Hundreds of other bombs began falling on the city, the bilious smoke growing until all but the peaks of the tallest buildings were mired in darkness. Even his own ship began to geyser the smog, spiracles surrounding the ports and ramps gushing out inky black. As he became soaked in the lightlessness, Kyrthos uttered a prayer to the Weld, thankful for the blessings he had received that day, and instructed the landing craft to crawl towards the city.
He could not see it, but through the Weld he could feel the limbs extending from the gut of the war galley and digging into the soil as his flagship pushed itself from the earth and strode towards the city. Pulling himself along, Kyrthos joined the march, exulting the Weld with shouts for joy as he felt heathens being given the opportunity to join the Weld. Through his faith he could feel as the twisted, fused, and emanated began converting the apostates with righteous fusions of metal into their hideously untouched flesh. Soon the whole of the world, twenty four billion souls, would be Welded.