Friday 40K: Senior Squid

Today on my paint bench,the long-delayed Space Squid Captain, who decided to push his way to the front of the paint queue after my last set of shots.  Painting a sword purple has always been one of my dearest dreams, and I'm delighted that I've finally managed to get it done.

 

 

 

Kraken's Dance: Part Three (Of Three)

When Tolofsson awoke, his enemy had gone. So had the cathedral.

And so, of course, had his left arm.

The first thing his rheumy eyes allowed him to focus upon was his brother Orfirsson, who stood over him with a steaming censor in one hand and a whirring narthecium in the other.

“Where-” Tolofsson began, but stopped himself. Something was wrong with his right cheek. It felt too tight, as though he had been burned. Every movement of his jaw threatened to split the skin .

Besides, he could feel familiar vibrations through the bench upon which he lay, travelling up through his body, shaking his teeth and sending lances of pain through his wounds.

“A Thunderhawk?” he asked Orfirsson. It was not a request for conformation. There was no doubting where he was. What he didn’t know was why.

“We’re en route to the Intractable" Orfirsson told him, guessing his meaning. “The duel is over. It did not go well for you.”

Blinking back tears from the heavy censor smoke, Tolofsson winced, more from humiliation than pain. In response, Orfirsson brought the clicking, trembling narthecium down towards him.

“Keep that damn thing away from me!” Tolofsson exclaimed, knocking the device aside with the stump of his arm (which he noticed was now cleaned and bandaged). “If I’m going to be poked and prodded, I’d rather it be by a professional.”

“That would be less than entirely wise,” Orfirsson told him coolly. “There are currently three apothecaries across the chapter, each of them born on Four Feathers.”

“And you don’t trust them?” Tolofsson asked tetchily, not particularly wanting to think through the implications of Orfirsson’s caution.

“Not right now,” his comrade told him. “And certainly not with your life.” He paused briefly, as though finding it difficult to speak his mind. “This is not the first time you and I have sat in a Thunderhawk and asked ourselves whether we were all that remains of our chapter.”

“Isn’t that a little melodramatic?” Tolofsson asked. “I still have three other limbs, after all.”

Orfirsson’s face grew darker than the pale crimson light strips that just barely allowed Tolofsson to see around the deck.

“How much do you remember of the duel?” he asked.

“Enough,” Tolofsson grunted disconsolately. “I remember letting that disobedient pup stab me, and taking away one of his legs in payment. I remember standing over him whilst I pulled out his own knife from my chest so I could kill him. I even remember losing my arm, though only distantly. I had hoped to find it only a dream.”

“Not a dream,” Orfirsson assured him. “Most certainly not a dream”.

He paused again, as though screwing up his courage. He took a long, deep breath, perhaps to buy more time.

“Blade of the Emperor,” Tolofsson exclaimed. “Will you spit it out? You make a blind Eldar seem hasty.”

Orfirsson didn’t reply. Instead, he held the narthecium out for Tolofsson to take. The intricate patterns of reflected light that the device produced danced across Tolofsson’s vision, and he realised his friend’s hand was shaking.

“If I won’t let you use that thing with two hands and no head injuries, then how likely is it that I’m going to want to try and repair anything myself?”

“The blades are polished adamantium,” Orfirsson replied. “A ghost could use the reflection to shave himself.”

“Check your face.”

There were undercurrents in Orfirsson’s tone that unsettled Tolofsson far more than he would ever admit to. Gingerly he took the medical device in his one remaining hand, and, trying to seem unconcerned, lifted it to his face.

A vicious purple stain lay across his right cheek like a Ymgarl boneleech. Its shape it was identifiable as roughly blade shaped, but that central outline was broken up by a hundred tiny tendrils of black capillaries that crisscrossed his face. A few of them ended in ugly purplish blisters, as though his face had been painted and then a part of it burned until it bubbled and ran. Unconsciously he opened his mouth in horror; the motion once again sent pain through his cheek, and several of the blisters began to weep a nauseating yellow-black pus.

“I assume Tegatchi wanted to prove beyond any doubt that there had been absolutely nothing stopping him from killing you,” Orfirsson explained. “That’s why he hit you with the flat of the blade. A blade from a sword he pulled from a mound of dead traitors.”

“A Daemon weapon?” Tolofsson asked, almost to himself, unable to tear his gaze from the horrific atrocity marking his skin. He knew it was simply a perverse subdivision of his imagination, but he couldn’t help thinking that the wound was gradually expanding as he watched.

“Or something so similar as to make no difference,” Orfirsson agreed. “What remains of your arm is not any prettier, I assure you.”

“I don’t care!” Tolofsson lied. “A Daemon weapon? Tegatchi has condemned himself. Surely not even his Caudan lapdogs can be blind to his treachery now.”

“It is not so simple,” Orfirsson said sadly. “Whatever else might be true, there is no denying that you lost the duel.”

“So the Cathedral is still uncleansed?” Tolofsson asked incredulously. “On the whim of a man who fights his battles with the blades of the Warp?”

“In truth, I could not swear he knew what he was doing,” Orfirsson said. “Perhaps he needed a weapon and he found one. Certainly, that is his telling.”

Furious, Tolofsson threw the narthecium across the bay to shatter pathetically against the bulkhead.

“The traitor claims no treachery, does he? How my hearts soar to hear the news! Where is he, Orfirsson? Carella‘s Maze? The fleet? Answer me! We need to find that blasphemous heretic and toss him into the flames we make when we burn that damned chapel to the ground.”

“No,” Orfirsson said, and his voice layered with the infuriatingly placatory tones he used whenever he thought his old friend was being painfully obtuse, “We cannot afford to challenge Tegatchi directly.”

“Do not play the diplomat now,” Tolofsson growled, “It never became you, and it’s especially stupid now. Tegatch is tainted, and he must be dealt with. Immediately.”

Eager to demonstrate his resolve, he tried to rise. The process was more complicated than he’d realised. His brain kept trying to do it by pushing off the bench with his hands, and the instinct was too deeply ingrained for it to be easily overruled.

Without warning Orfirsson lunged for him, pinning him back against the bench. The abandoned censor hit the deck with a sharp crack and rolled away, spewing incense and ashes.

“Will you listen?” he hissed urgently. “Take another look at yourself.”

“I smashed the narthecium, Alkin.”

“Fine. Then I’ll look at you. You know what the first word is the sight brings to mind? Infected.”

“You dare?” spat Tolofsson, trying to struggle free from his friend’s grip.

“Stop that,” Orfirsson admonished. “As you said, I have two hands and no wounds."

“If we move against Tegatchi, if we insist to all that can hear that to hold a Daemon weapon is to become tainted by it, then his first move, his very first, will be to argue that wielding a blade cannot be nearly so dangerous as losing an arm to it.”

“You can’t believe that!” Tolofsson said. "The idea I might be tainted?"

“Whether I believe it is very much beside the point. Others will. The Caudans, certainly. Perhaps even a handful amongst our own ranks. This one incident would blossom into civil war. And all this is to say nothing of any outside interference.”

“Outside – “ Tolofsson began to parrot, until realisation hit. “The Inquisition”.

Orfirsson nodded slowly, and released Tolofsson to sit back on the ammunition crate he was using as a chair.

“Inquisitor Gellial is already in-system,” he said.

“Gellial!”. This was quite some way from being good news. “She’ll burn the whole planet over what we’ve left at St Varakus’.”

“Almost certainly.”

“Damn Tegatchi! We could have saved the whole of Carella’s Maze!”

“Perhaps,” Orfirsson allowed. “Though even with St Varakus’ Cathedral cleansed, there is no certainty of that. Gellial has destroyed more over less. But the fate of Vestan Prime isn’t my concern at present. It’s what happens to you when Gellial learns what has happened."

“She will learn nothing,” Tolofsson said dismissively. “It pleases the Inquisition to think theycan issue us orders, but they cannot *control* us. They know only what we wish them to.”

“Ordinarily,” Orfirssom admitted. “But that requires that we tread carefully. If another confrontation breaks out whilst Gellial is snooping around, then she will learn of it, and I would give very little for your chances. Even if you survive, an Inquisition death mark would simply hand more ammunition to Tegatchi. All of which is actually the best-case scenario. We don’t have the strength to resist for long if Gellial decides to declare the chapter Excommunicate Traitoris.”

“This is cowardice, Alkin!” Tolofsson roared.

“This is prudence, Gossan,” Orfirsson replied in the same even tone. “To force a confrontation will cost you your life, and possibly destroy the chapter, either from the Inquisition’s interference or by our own hands. Stay your hand, and we live to fight on.”

“Fight on for what?” Tolofsson asked. “If we can’t even cut out the rot amongst our own ranks, can’t maintain the purity of a chapter that has served with honour for three millenia, whatever our name might be today, then what is there left to fight for?”

Orfirsson cocked his head, like a predatory bird considering which rodent to pounce upon next. “The future,” he replied simply. “Tegatchi has won this battle. But he has not won the war. And by returning to the fleet, we ensure that the war can continue in methods beyond us all simply throwing off our armour and trying to stab each other to death.”

“A war without blades?” Tolofsson scoffed. “What kind of war would that be?”

Orfirsson smiled, for the first time since Tolofsson had awoken. Or, now he thought about it, since as far back as he could remember.

“The kind that I can win."

Kraken's Dance: Part Two (Of Three)

Four seconds into the duel, and Tolofsson knew he was in trouble.

Tegatchi’s blade moved almost too fast to follow. Each glittering blur cut closer to Tolofsson’s flesh than the one before.

There was no time to find an opening, almost no time to even realise that that was what he was meant to be doing. Tegatchi was simply too young, and too quick.

Except.

Tolofsson trusted to instinct. Deflecting another brutal slash at his ribs, he leant to his right, continuing the course of his knife towards his enemy’s shoulder. Tegatchi’s own weapon was already waiting. A heartbeat before the impact, Tolofsson yanked his arm upward, smashing his elbow into Tegatchi’s jaw. There was a satisfying crunch of bone, followed by an even more satisfying cry of pain as Tolofsson straightened his arm, flicking his knife point along his opponent’s chest from hip to sternum.

Tegatchi staggered backwards, one step, then two. The third step saw him firmly planted again. Tolofsson noted a new wariness in his eyes.

“First blood is mine,” he said, trying to keep the relief from his voice. “And why, boy? Because speed is nothing without experience.”

Tegatchi shrugged.
.
“Simply a scratch, old man. Your knife will rust away before you kill me with such wounds.”
.
Tolofsson cursed under his breath. His foe might be a fool and a traitor, but he was also right; the cut was long but thin, essentially superficial. Tegatchi didn’t even bother to glance at his wound before he brought his blade up again, and lunged.

Wrenching his head to the right, Tolofsson felt as much as heard the knife-tip that whistled past his ear. Almost instantly he aimed a brutal punch at where his opponent’s neck had been an instant before.

His fist hit only air.

Spinning around, Tolofsson brought his knife around in a long, desperate arc. With Tegatchi behind him-
.
His blade sighed as it passed over his foe’s head, as though disappointed. There wasn’t even time to slow his swing before his enemy sprang from his crouch, slamming his body into Tolofsson’s torso and lifting him from his feet.

Scorched skeletons shattered beneath him as Tolofsson hit the ground hard. He grunted with pain as bone splinters lacerated his back, heard the tortured screech as more shards forced themselves inside his vertebrae sockets in miniature fountains of blood and machine oil.

His knife was gone, lost in the fall. No time to find it. Reaching out, he crushed more bones, powdering them in his hands as he pulled himself upwards.

He almost made it before Tegatchi was upon him. The younger marine barrelled into him with enough force to knock the air from his chest. Once again, he fell into the pile of blackened bones. New wounds opened upon new shards; he had to bite his lip to avoid crying out in pain. Closing his fingers around a broken skull, Tolofsson slammed it into his opponent’s temple. Tegatchi’s head whipped sideways, blood flying out in a crimson curve, but he kept hold. Pinning Tolofsson’s’ right arm with his left, Tegatchi brought his knife down towards his foe’s ribcage.

Dropping what remained of his impromptu weapon, Tolofsson made a desperate grab for Tegatchi’s arm. The rest of the cathedral seemed to telescope outward into infinity as his entire world became about the fractional changes in the height of that blade.

That height kept slowly decreasing. Tegatchi wasn’t just young and quick, he was strong. He was smart, too, Tolofsson realised, it was clear the knife-point was aimed at the centre of the star of shatter-marks that were all that remained from an Ork Mek’s attempt to disembowel him a century earlier.

The knife slipped downward another half-inch. Stopping that blade was a battle Tolofsson could not hope to win, any more than he could have hoped to win this duel. He was quite simply outmatched on every level. Speed, strength, agility. All he had was experience, and at that moment it seemed even that counted against him. All experience really meant was that he had taken more damage, and borne more pain.

Except.

Something was scratching at the back of his mind.

What had he told himself?

Nothing without experience.

He had borne pain.

Suddenly, without warning, Tolofsson let go.

Tegatchi’s knife plunged downward, into his chest. The blade penetrated a little over an inch into the thick wall of his ossified ribs before he grabbed hold of his foe’s arm once more.

The younger chaplain’s surprise was splashed all over his face. For a sliver of time he slackened his hold on his knife hilt.

It was enough. Rather than continue his doomed attempt to keep the knife aloft, Tolofsson twisted his entire body sideways. The knife followed his roll, or tried to, and broke in half against his stone-hard rib bones as a result. Aiming a savage kick at Tegatchi’s left knee, and feeling the kneecap give way with a sickening crack, Tolofsson rolled off his bed of broken bones and scrambled to his feet.

Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the knife blade still buried in his chest, and pulled it out in a shower of blood.

“Not far enough in, whelp,” he announced coldly. “My heart is buried deeper than that.”

Tegatchi was back on his feet as well. He was still quick, even though his stance made it clear he was favouring his right leg with as much weight as possible.

In his hand glinted Svengirsson’s knife.

“Never mind. I can always just drive this through the other one.”Tolofsson let his strategy drown in his hate, and charged forwards, screaming out everything left within him.





A half dozen blows after Tolofsson reached him, and Tegatchi knew he was in trouble.

Perhaps he had made a mistake in enraging his foe. There was no doubt it had been a mistake to allow him to all but break his leg in two. Apparently he’d be taking something from today after all.

If he lived that long. Being a knife up and a leg down wasn’t really as fair an exchange as it might have sounded. It meant he was forced to hold the weapon in his left hand, the better to protect his shattered knee.

He knew how to fight with both hands, of course, but against a sparring partner as experienced and determined as Tolofsson, he couldn’t afford even a modest reduction in his fighting prowess. Nor did guarding his leg make it easy to shield his already badly damaged jaw.

Tolofsson clearly intended to take full advantage. For every lunge at Tegatchi’s face, there was another short, stabbing kick at his crumpled knee. For every low sweep of a leg, there was another savage elbow jab. Most of them were deflected, and none truly connected, but each glancing blow sent another pulse of agony along Tegatchi’s strained and protesting nerves. It wasn’t as though they needed any encouragement. The pain in his leg was already unbearable, and it grew still worse every time he gave ground across the cracked and bloodstained flagstones, which seemed to be happening with almost every blow.

Any thought of fighting back had evaporated. The best he could do was try to angle the knife into his Tolofsson’s attacks, in the hope the older man might actually drive himself onto the blade in his fury. It was a vain hope, but hope nonetheless. Certainly, it was only Tolofsson’s rage that prevented him realising he could now easily outdistance his opponent and search for a new weapon. He might even have pulled the shattered knife tip from his chest and attacked with that; even that feeble approximation to a weapon would-

Wait.

Go back.

Something was scratching at the base of his mind.

A new weapon.

Still falling back by inches, teeth clenched almost to the point of fighting each other against the agony, Tegatchi allowed himself to turn himself on his wounded leg. His eyes darted from side to side between each of Tolofsson’s increasingly vicious strikes. He risked glances at his fellow marines, each one just as still as when this battle had begun an eternity ago. He took in both Tolofsson’s Kringrimmi and his own supporters, all but indistinguishable from each other, mirror images across a broken hall.

The search grew harder as his pain grew worse. Spots of light began to swim behind his eyes, obscuring his vision, draining his hope. Tolofsson dodged inside his guard, fingers entwined, and pushed forward into a sledgehammer uppercut to Tegatchi’s neck.

The blow itself blinded Tegatchi as the spots of light burst first into stars and then into supernovae. The force of the blow almost lifted him from his feet. Instinctively he took a step backwards to steady himself, only realising his mistake a split second before his full weight pressed itself upon his left leg, which immediately conceded defeat with a hideous snap.

His eyesight began to swim back into focus as he fell, only to be snatched away once more as his skull made contact with the cold stone of the cathedral floor.

“Here we are again,” he heard Tolofsson say contemptuously. “I must confess, the appeal is more obvious from this perspective.”

Run, the voice in his head pleaded . Get away!

Running was out of the question, but the point was well taken. Blinking furiously in the hopes of regaining his sight, Tegatchi tried desperately to crawl away from the sound of his opponent’s voice. The blackness began to break apart as flickering yellow and green lights began pushing their way through the cracks.

When Tolofsson brought his foot down upon Tegatchi’s broken leg, the agony was so overwhelming that it took him a second or two before he could gather himself enough to scream.

Sadism brought more than simple pain, however. It brought clarity. In the eye of the storm of screaming neurones and crumbling bone, Tegatchi realised not every light dancing before his eyes was a trick of his damaged, violated body.

Something was shining in the wreckage ahead.

Move.

Punching his teeth together as though sheer force was the only thing ew require to neutralise all the pain our flesh has capacity to process, Tegatchi began to drag himself forwards.

Tolofsson responded by digging his heel in still further. The spots of light infecting Tegatchi’s vision began to grow, pulsing in time with the avalanches of agony running through his body, but he refused to give his opponent the satisfaction of a second scream.

“Hah!” Tolofsson barked. “I like determination in my enemies. But nothing about hopeless defiance is more important than the fact that it is hopeless.”

Move.

It appeared to Tegatchi as though the world was retreating from him. With each new handful of splintered bone and crumbled masonry, and each long scrape of his torso against the stone, it seemed the gleam of metal he sought was further from him, as though the universe had concluded that he would die here, and soon, and wanted to flee from the act of witnessing his final breath.

He's right, he old himself. This is hopeless. Better to roll over and face death.

No, some other part of his mind responded urgently. Move. Move!

Tolofsson twisted his foot again, inciting fresh paroxysms. Dimly, Tegatchi wondered whether he was screaming again. His senses didn’t seem to be working in concert anymore. Someone was screaming, he thought. Or whispering. It was hard to tell.

Above him, Tolofsson grunted with his own pain.

“Svengirsson’s blade would not have snapped like this,” he said, apparently to himself. He must have been pulling the remains of Tegachi’s knife from between his ribs. As he did so, he released his foot long enough for him to kick Svengirsson’s knife from Tegatchi's hand.

Tegatchi seized on the brief release his disarmament gave him ,and brought his agonising blood-stained crawl to an end.

The glinting object he had given everything to reach proved to be an ornate hilt, apparently of burnished gold, with its pommel carved into a leering skull. Whatever blade was attached lay hidden under an oozing pile of massacred cultists whose bodies had been tossed there after the Krakens had taken the cathedral.

It was a weapon, and Tegatchi grabbed for it. Though it was all but impossible not to lunge desperately forwards and start slashing for his foe’s innards then and there, Tegatchi fought to remain composure, reaching for the hilt as though he were simply attempting to crawl away by a few more inches, using his hand to shield the weapon from Tolofsson’s sight. As his filthy, bleeding fingers closed around the hilt (which surprised him with how warm it was), he turned his head upwards, attempting to see his foe’s face.

Tolofsson had indeed pulled the knife shard from his chest. Thick dark blood was running towards his legs, hardening even as Tegatchi watched as the genetic modifications in Tolofsson’s circulation system burst into hyperactivity.

As Tegatchi watched, Tolofsson stepped away from his wounded leg, allowing Tegatchi a full view of his would-be executioner. Tolofsson held the broken blade between his fingers, like the claws of a predator, it too was covered in blood already solid, but there was little doubt the edge could still cut Tegatchi’s throat without any appreciable effort.

“This is unfortunate,” Tolofsson said, indicating his improvised weapon. “I know you’ll be just as dead this way. But one does get attached to one‘s own weapons.”

There was the slightest hint of a shrug, and then Tolofsson was diving forwards and down, his arm outstretched, the fragment of knife screaming as it tore the air.

Kill him.

Tegatchi span himself onto his back, bellowing at the pain it caused, and pulled the hilt of his stolen weapon outwards and upwards in a long arc to meet his incoming foe. Striking at the only hope he had left.

It hadn’t occurred to him until he swung the hilt that he had no idea whether there was a blade attached.

There was. With a crackle of unfathomable energy and a burst of cold blue light, a savagely serrated glowing blade cut through the air like it was vacuum, and Tolofsson’s left forearm like it was wet paper.

In the end, Tolofsson was too surprised to even scream. All that could be heard was the muffled thud of his severed arm hitting the ground, and the hideous wet pulsing of his life blood as it cascaded from the stump. For a moment or two he stood there, swaying slightly, staring at the fountain of crimson liquid as it gushed from what remained of his limb. He might have been willing the coagulants to do their job, or perhaps he was simply waiting for the signals from his eyes to correlate with what his brain was prepared to believe.

Whatever was passing through his mind, it didn’t make any difference. After a few seconds shock kicked in full force, and Tolofssson toppled in a cloud of grey masonry dust and darkly glinting gobbets of blood.

Gradually, by inches, gritting his teeth so hard he became certain he would shatter them, Tegatchi drew himself to his feet. The effort once more set motes of light dancing across his vision. In fact, the entire world was fading out at the corners again, but this time it didn’t concern him in the slightest. Quite the contrary. This wasn’t death, it was purpose. The universe now consisted of exactly three things: Tolofsson, and the sword, and himself.

As he hobbled over to his fallen enemy, Tegatchi could just about register shouts of outages. He ignored them. The shadows that flitted through the world outside his foe and his weapon were moving again. He ignored that too.

Kill him.

Tegachi dragged the twisted remnants of his leg over to the prone form of his foe, and watched the arterial flow as it continued to weakly pump blood onto the floor to thicken the dust into dark, viscous streams.

Kill him.

Eagerly, Tegatchi raised his sword. This time he could swear it sounded less like the blade screamed as the air flowed around it, and more as though it sang.

The shouting was getting ever louder. The sharp bark of bolter fire suddenly added itself to the din. Still Tegatchi ignored it. Tolofsson, the sword, and himself.

Kill him. KILL HIM!

For a moment, Tegatchi paused. Had he not already won? Tolofsson could no longer threaten him. He could kill the old man any time he chose. It was no longer a battle, it was a formality. How did the Krakens, both his Caudan fellows and what remained of the sullen Kringrimmi, gain from the death of their seniormost chaplain?

NO! KILL HIM NOW! You cannot set aside your task! It must be complete!

Tegatchi took one final look at Tolofsson, laid as though sleeping peacefully in the spreading pool of his blood. He took one final look at the sword, viciously jagged and glowing coldly. And he took one final look at himself, at who he was, and what he was, and what he might be tomorrow.

This time there was no doubt. When he brought the blade down to strike Tolofsson’s face, the blade was unquestionably singing.

Kraken's Dance: Part One (Of Three)

Tolofsson whispered his final prayer to his armour’s spirit as he twisted away the last piece of ceramite that protected his frame. Whenever he had cause to remove his protective shell, it was always this piece, enveloping his right forearm, that he saved until the end. Ever since he had shattered his ulna against a genestealer’s carapace aboard the Serpent’s Coil, so as to distract the xeno long enough to gut it with his power sword, the vambrace seemed to become tangled somehow in the mass of scar tissue that still clung to his flesh. It was rarely removed without difficulty, and never without pain.

But then no-one knew better than a space marine that old wounds never really heal. Even those from so long ago as this, received back when he still wore the badge of the Emperor’s Shield. Back when the master of his chapter wouldn’t respond to a plea for aid by asking how damp the battlefield was.

Back when those that ranked beneath you would never dare to question your orders, and had they ever done so, they’d be drowning in their own blood before they’d finished their second sentence.

Back when you could face your brother marine and not gag on the stench of chaos.

Old wounds never really heal.

Ten feet away, Tegatchi stood motionless, staring unblinking at him. Had Tolofsson not watched as the younger chaplain had removed his own armour, each piece obsidian black and with the sheen of perfect smoothness that betrayed its wearer’s innocence of the crucible of combat, he might have thought Tegatchi a sculpture. Perhaps one of the statues of the forebears that encircled Moot’s Cavern on Kringrimm before the Apostles of Minthras had come with contagion and death, or one of the images of the Emperor that honoured the surrounding cathedral before the Word Bearers had defaced them in an orgy of violent bloodshed.

No, Tolofsson realised. Not quite a statue. Whilst Tegatchi stood immobile, his eyes were working furiously, ricocheting from left to right endlessly as he tried to drink in every square inch of his foe. The effect was faintly upsetting, as though Tegatchi kept his auspex inside his skull, and even now was processing data from his vision. Compiling information. Preparing his strategy.

“He is studying you,” Orfirsson noted unnecessarily, as he took the proffered vambrace from Tolofsson’s hand.

“Counting my scars,” Tolofsson agreed. “Either he’s looking for a weak point, or he believes he can gauge my fighting style from those places I have taken most damage.”

“I confess I had not considered that,” his companion admitted. “I must be getting slow.”

“You were always slow, Alkir,” Tolofsson told his old friend. “It is simply that you are finally wise enough to recognise it.” He paused momentarily before adding: “Though not too wise to prevent this charade, I notice.”

Orfirsson shrugged absently.

“Better I lose you than I cast aside the entire chapter.”

He took a moment to cast his own gaze over Tolofsson’s impressive array of scars.

“You are more callous than man,” he judged eventually. “What clear directions could come from such a cluttered map? What is there that Tegatchi can learn?”

Tolofsson smiled, slowly, baring the edges of his teeth.

“That I have fought a thousand adversaries, and I have killed them all.”




Tegatchi waited impatiently as his opponent removed his armour. He had been ready for several minutes now, standing as naked as his various armour plugs and monitor implants would allow. His hand flexed involuntarily as he resisted the urge to reach for his knife, buried in the stone floor a little distance from his foot. Watching the old man gradually strip away his protection. it seemed to Tegatchi that every plate of ceramite pulled from his opponent’s body revealed another messily healed wound. With each ugly jagged line of pale flesh, Tegatchi learned a new angle of attack. Every new second, he had a new plan, a new vision of how the battle would play out. Lunge. Strike. Parry. Stab at weakness in right ribcage ossification. Parry. Feint. Cut upwards towards jugular.

His eyes began to oscillate faster as his mind ran through ever more permutations. As one half of his artificially separated mind busied itself with evermore elaborate methods of dispatching his foe, the other watched with interest as Tolofsson’s alabaster skin began to darken, the melanochrome organ responding to its bearer’s exposure to air. He watched each ripple of colour as it burst outwards across his opponent’s torso, nodding in sympathy as the loyal organ attempted to protect its master. As it tried to adapt to new circumstances.

It was a noble effort, Tegatchi decided, and one presumably ignored entirely by its rigid, humourless owner. He felt a keen desire to see his own skin change so effectively, to prove his ability to adapt, but his skin had been far darker since birth than Tolofsson’s was even after the change. Perhaps his own melanochrome was defective, Tegatchi wondered. Or perhaps he had yet to find a situation in which pale skin would be of tactical advantage. That seemed strange, though. After all, there was so much of it scattered through the galaxy.

It didn’t matter. Tomorrow takes nothing from today, Tegatchi reminded himself, his tongue clicking subconsciously as he considered the old Caudan saying. And perhaps he was better off after all, he thought, noting with pleasure that the pale curves of Tolofsson’s scars remained stubbornly white, a map of weakness across the older marine’s body. The fracture in his solidified ribcage was even more obvious now.

At last, Tolofsson pulled away his last piece of armour, a dented, dilapidated vambrace that revealed a new patch of ugly scars, and handed the ceramite to his counterpart. They began whispering to each other earnestly. Tegatchi took a moment to consider the marines on either side of him, those born on Four Feathers to the left, and those that still enslaved themselves to Kringrimm’s memory on the right. Each one was stood still as death, waiting for what was about to happen.

In one motion, Tegatchi dropped to one knee, pulled his monomolecular-edged blade from the floor, and stood again, tossing the simplistic weapon from hand to hand. Trying not to think about the total absurdity of a genetically-enhanced warrior with access to lascannons and battle tanks choosing to slay his enemy with a piece of abnormally sharp metal, he resolved to break the silence first.

“That was certainly not over too quickly,” he called out. “I was worried old age would kill you before I could. It would have been quicker to step outside and let the ocean remove your armour by erosion.”

The older man sneered in disdain.

“Some day you will find that haste is not a luxury the Astartes can afford,” he responded, his tone no different from if he had been reading scripture in the Reclusiarium, save for an unmistakable skein of violent hatred. “Or at least, you would have, had you not chosen to throw away your life here.”

“Tomorrow takes nothing from today,” Tegatchi called back. “Only a fool gloats over a battle still to be fought.”

“This will be no battle,” Tolofsson told him. “I have killed more traitors than you have met loyal citizens. At most, washing your life’s blood from my skin will take so long it passes the point of amusement.”

Without bothering to look, Tolofsson extended his right arm, grabbed the handle of the knife Orfirsson was offering, and brought it in a short, savage arc to point at Tegatchi’s sternum.

“I was given this knife by Epistolary Svengirsson as he lay dying on Calliope,” Tolofsson informed him haughtily. “He himself received it from Brother Captain Agnisson just before they placed him in a dreadnought sarcophagus. I have watched more than four dozen enemies of the Imperium breathe their last with this blade buried in what passed for their heart.

“Impressive,” Tegatchi told him mockingly, before gesturing toward his own blade. “I took this knife from a table just before we hit atmosphere. It might even be mine.”

He allowed himself a tight smile at the look of shock and scorn that burst across Tolofsson’s face.

“You ignorant whelp!,“ the senior chaplain spluttered in outrage, “I shall carve the stories of my tribe into your bleeding chest!”

Tegatchi kept his face perfectly still in response. Then he said solemnly “I promise that when you lie dead at my feet , I won‘t let them burn your body either.”

Tolofsson’s first attack came so quickly Tegatchi didn’t even recognise his opponent had charged. It was only instinct that forced him sideways, brought up his knife to scrape along Tolofsson’s in a shower of sparks.

Grinning fiercely, Tegatchi pivoted on his left foot, and offered a lunge of his own.

It was time the Kringrimmi learned that tomorrow would not take them.

Friday 40K Blogging: The First Shoal

At long last, the first Squid squad stands ready for duty.

Eagle-eyed (and disturbingly obsessive) readers will notice that I've added the tactical arrow to the right shoulder pad. This was not my choice. Having been bought Assault on Black Reach by the Squid Seniors at Xmas I figured I'd use some of the tactical marines within to bolster all three of my nascent Space Marine forces.

Infuriatingly, said marines come with tactical arrows already modelled on.

Why? For the love of the Emperor, why? Not only does it completely unnecessarily limit one's choices if you want to paint up a non-Codex chapter, (I can't use them for Salamanders now, since the right pad is where the flame-burst goes) but the arrow itself is hideous, sprouting out of the ridge of the pad, instead of allowing space. This is deeply displeasing.

Also, it's worth noting that whilst I originally intended for this entire chapter to be black, I've decided it makes more sense two employ two skin tones; one for the taciturn warriors of Kringrimm, and the other for the more raucous brawlers of Four Feathers. I spent a while trying to decide which way round the tones should be, and whether I could somehow manage to accidentally send some unpalatable racial message by implying black people were either outdated and faded people typically subject to being massacred or former convicts now working for Chapter Master Whitey.

Eventually, though I decided that a) I was over-thinking it, and b) Three Chaplains is taking us to a place where a Kringrimm is unlikely to show up as a Sergeant in any case (even a veteran), so fuck it. Convicts and underdogs it'll have to be. Looks like their day's about to come in any case, though; the next chapter of the Krakens of Greyjoy is almost complete.

The Space Squids Part 6: Three Chaplains IV

Your humble scrivener recommences his continuing chronicle of the history of that most unique of chapters by returning to the newly created Krakens of Grejoy's offensive upon chaos-held Vestan Prime.

Upon reaching the Vestan System, the Kraken’s fleet was barely slowed by the anarchic blockade assembled by whatever traitors had resisted immediately attacking the Maze, and loyalist boarding torpedoes reached the surface of Vestan Prime’s unending ocean within seven minutes of their transport vessels' exit from the Warp. Another fourteen minutes later, and the torpedoes had reached the ocean bed. The Krakens plan was absurdly simple, and ideally suited to their methodology: they flooded the Maze.

Even the attacking Chaos cultists, in all their blood-crazed insanity, had taken care to keep the complex airtight. Indeed, lacking a space marine’s access to technology, they had little choice. The suddenness of the Kraken attack, combined with its meticulous planning, meant that seventy percent of the cultists had drowned before any combat took place, with most of the others suffering from the after-effects of pressure change (ranging from burst eardrums to fatal embolisms), or cut off and unable to reinforce their brethren. The Word Bearers, of course, had the capacity to face the Krakens irrespective of the crushing pressure of the silt-heavy brine, but their greater experience in general warfare made little difference against the Kraken marines, each of which was now more comfortable under the water than they were above. The flooded halls of the Maze allowed the Krakens to fight a three-dimensional war that the Word Bearers were unable to adapt to. Propeller-fitted servo skulls tracked the enemy as they trudged clumsily through the dark saltwater, allowing the Krakens to set up ambushes; each assault squad waiting until the last second to plunge downwards, hydro-adapted jump packs screaming as they propelled their owners through the surrounding water.

Once the Chaos marines realised just how efficiently they were being hunted, the patrols ended and they began a fighting retreat towards the area surrounding the largest structure in the Maze, Saint Varakus’ Cathedral, hoping to concentrate their forces. It was exactly the move Rekasson had anticipated. Whilst squads of the Third and Fifth Companies harried the retreating Word Bearers, heavily-modified escort vessels bludgeoned their way underwater, carrying the chapter’s Terminators. Once the optimum depth was reached, selected airlocks were double-cycled, allowing sea water to pour in, and the teleport runes were struck, flooding enemy-held compartments with explosions of water, a team of implacable Terminators at the centre of the storm. A room would be swept clear with the thunder of storm-bolter fire and the pale blue flashes of lightning claw strikes, and then the Terminators would cut their way out of the Maze, rendezvous with their ship, and begin again.

It took one week and sixteen casualties for the Krakens of Greyjoy to reclaim Carella’s Maze for the Imperium of Man. With the cathedral city swept clean of living enemies, Rekasson ordered sweeps of what had been so briefly enemy territory, in order to gauge the level of corruption visited upon that once holy place, and determine what should and could be salvaged, if indeed the planet could be allowed to escape Exterminatus at all. Ultimately, it became apparent that the Maze had been luckier than its inhabitants. The traitors had lacked the necessary time to do much more than slaughter the Ecclesiarchy, and had been too far from the warp storms plaguing the core-ward Allagon systems to have summoned daemons of any great strength or in any great number. The damage was extensive (even discounting that which had been caused by the Krakens themselves), but not irreversibly blasphemous.

The question that occurred first, though, was also the most pressing: what was to be done with Saint Varakus’ Cathedral itself? As the largest symbol of the Emperor’s divine power on the planet, and the former base of operations of the Chaos forces, more corruption had been visited upon it than anywhere else in the Maze.

All three Chaplains were present when the last Word Bearer fell and the Krakens gained entrance. What awaited them was a charnel house. Those holy men unfortunate enough to have been captured alive had been flayed here, their cracked skin daubed with profane symbols using their own blood, and draped across the now-headless statues that lined the central hall. The bodies themselves had been arranged on the pews, posed as though staring in wonder at the centrepiece of the cathedral, a eighteen-foot carving of the Emperor, now gouged and broken almost beyond recognition.

Several moments passed before any of the Imperium’s warriors were able to speak. Such pure and unrepentant evil was new to the marines born on Four Feathers, and to those who once called themselves the Emperor’s Shields, this was their first exposure to the true depravity of Chaos since the campaign that entered in disaster above Raxos. There was no question of allowing this blasphemy to remain, not for either group of marines, nor for me, nor you, loyal citizen as you have doubtless proved yourself in order to read these missives. The very moment thought became action, however, and Tolosson ordered his terminators to cleanse the cathedral, Tegatchi and his marines blocked their way.

Perhaps you recall the harsh tales of ruinedKrinngrim, a world cut from crystal and cold, upon which the Emperor was worshipped as the exquisite craftsman of all reality. To the dour Krinngrimi marines, the defilement of Saint Varakus’ Cathedral could only be rectified by carefully rebuilding it, piece by piece and stone by stone, until every line, curve, statue and pew was just as it had always been. Before that could happen, every inch of the cathedral needed to be cleansed by the purity of the chapter’s promethium.

Those marines that hailed from the ever-shifting fungus forests of Cauda on Four Feathers saw the situation entirely differently. To them, the Word Bearers had succeeded in changing the cathedral according to their perverse desires. The idea that somehow this could be undone was obvious folly. Saint Varakus’ Cathedral might change again, would change again given time, but to attempt to turn back the chronometer would be to deny the Emperor his twin roles as destroyer and re-builder. If the Krakens were not to allow this monument to change to stand (and it is whispered in dark corners by the bravest and most foolish of heretics that the Caudan obsession with change is entirely too close to a respect for Chaos itself; a topic to which we will one day return), then it must be destroyed utterly, and rebuilt in a new form. Promethium would not suffice; the situation demanded nothing short of high-yield explosives.

Tegatchi outlined his position in a few clipped sentences. Outraged at his junior’s interference, if not outright mutiny, Tolosson might have ordered the First Company to begin the cleansing by burning down the Caudans had Orfirsson not stepped in. A more diplomatic man than his fellow Krinngrimi, Orfirsson pointed out the sheer impossibility of ever rebuilding the cathedral once it was destroyed. Already Carella’s Maze stood on the knife’s edge of total destruction, its millenia-old spirals, hallways and corridors on the verge of complete collapse. Either the Cathedral was cleansed, or it was destroyed forever; no other alternative existed.

Tegatchi remained unmoved. His only reply to Orfirsson's logic was to order his fellow marines to raise their weapons. For long moments Caudan and Krinngrimi faced each other inside the depraved place of butchery that had once been sacred ground. Tolosson accused Tegatchi of betraying his chapter; Tegatchi responded that he was doing the only thing possible to avoid betraying his Emperor. Facing the possible end of the Krakens of Greyjoy during their very first campaign, Orfirsson tried one last time to salvage the situation. His solution was simple. It was also all but unprecedented, but the need to prevent the chapter from imploding overrode all other concerns.

Solemnly, desperately, Orfirsson placed himself between the two opposing forces, and demanded the argument be settled according to that most ancient of traditions: trial by combat.

The Space Squids Part 5: Three Chaplains III

Already you have heard of the massacre at Raxos, and the blasphemy that befell Kringrimm, and of the strange continent of Cauda on the world of Four Feathers. You know now of the stern, unbending artisan worshipped by the Krinngrimi, and of the endlessly destructive force of nature to whom the Caudans pay homage, and how both call their God “the “Emperor”. Above all, you know the three names around which this tale is centred: Tolosson, Orfirsson, and Tegatchi.

To those few people who know the story of the Three Chaplains (perhaps none of which lie outside the ranks of the Krakens of Greyjoy themselves, save your humble scribe), it must seem as though the crisis was as obvious as it was inevitable. In those early days, however, the Krakens were under intense pressure from every direction; pressure from Rekasson to learn his new way of warfare, from the local governors and the Inquisition to hold the line against the alien and the heretic, from the memory of the Emperor’s Shields to live up to their example, and from the basic laws of attrition and recruitment to not vanish in the night before they had ever had a chance to make their mark. What might be going on in the shadows of the Reclusiam was a question nobody felt particularly compelled to answer.

As always in these matters, things started small. The various litanies of faith and fury employed by the Krakens date in the main back to the days during and immediately following the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy, and remain almost entirely untouched by the dogma of the dour Krinngrimi. Relying on such ancient wisdom, the first few months Tegatchi spent performing his duties could not be faulted by his more experienced counterparts. And if the Four Feather recruits sought him out over Tolosson or Orfirsson for spiritual guidance or the application of penance, then this seemed not out of the ordinary. After all, at that time there were few Caudans in the Second Company, and none whatsoever in the First, and the scramble to ensure those two companies were battle-ready spiritually as well as physically meant that the Krinngrimi Chaplains were all too happy to leave the nascent Third, Fourth and Tenth Companies in the apparently very capable hands of Chaplain Tegatchi. The occasional combined manoeuvre demonstrated the Caudans’ capacity for recalcitrance and impertinent questioning, but beyond requests for more tightly-focussed hypno-indoctrination procedures during recruitment, nothing seemed to come of it.

Some would point out that given the weight of those dark, desperate days, in which a tiny, inexperienced chapter attempted desperately to be worthy of the dream their Chapter Master had shared with them, perhaps Tolosson and Orfirsson can be forgiven for failing to consider the long-term possibilities of their situation. Those same people might argue that Tegatchi, too, can hardly be blamed for attending to the spiritual well-being of his countrymen in the only manner he and they had ever known. It is those self-same voices who condemn entire sectors to flame and ruin in their attempts to understand problems rather than to solve them. The truly enlightened know that it matters not why mistakes were made, why cracks were allowed to appear that would one day become chasms: all that matters is where the chasms opened, what we lost to them, and how much blood it will cost us to seal them once more.

The unofficial and unconsidered segregation of the Krinngrimi-born marines and their young Caudan counterparts continued until the Kraken’s first major military action during the Hestanian Crusade. A strong force of rebels had staged a counter-attack against Warmaster Chellak’s overstretched flank, allowing hordes of daemons and legions of rebels and cultists to spill out into the Allagon sub-sector. Most of these forces were eventually countered by the hastily reformed picket fleets, but a small fleet of traitor guardsmen, along with several warbands of Word Bearers, managed to push their way through into the Vestan system, an otherwise insignificant system that contained the shrine world of Vestan Prime.

The colony on Vestan Prime predates the Great Crusade. Indeed, had the planet evaded discovery until the Age of Strife began, the newly humbled and ignorant mankind could never have attempted to build the seemingly endless interlocking spiral-towered cathedrals of Carella’s Maze, a multi-hued labyrinth of chapels, spires and cloisters constructed across the floor of Vestan Prime’s planet-wide ocean, its serene corridors dimly lit by whatever wan sunlight penetrates the depths. Azure fish would stare through bafflingly intricate pressure-resistant stain-glass, casting doleful glances at the confessors, missionaries, preachers and Imperial cultists that swept aside the strange, orange-gowned monks that inhabited the Maze ten thousand years earlier. There are more holy relics on Vestan Prime than in any three other local systems, but the defence fleet had been pared down to aid in the Crusade, and the traitor forces succeeded in making planet fall. Within minutes of splashdown the attacks had gouged their way inside the Maze with diamond-toothed daemon engines, and were mercilessly hacking down the horrified holy men.

The resulting terrified distress call was received by the Intractable, and Rekasson saw his chance to fully blood his chapter for the first time in the theatre of war he had chosen. Almost immediately, the Kraken fleet ripped its way into the Warp, their course set for Vestan Prime.

It was their first and last action as a united chapter.

The Space Squids Part 4: Three Chaplains II

When last we spoke, you learned of the history of Krinngrim, the recruiting ground of the Emperor’s Shields, back when the Shields still lived to require recruitment. When the Krakens of Greyjoy rose from the ashes of that proud chapter, Rekassson had assumed they would return to Kringrimm for their initiates.

The Apostles of Minthras had other plans. Not content with the almost total destruction of the Shields at Raxos, the Apostles’ battle barge Salted Wounds (formerly Terra‘s Hope) and her escorts entered the Krinngrim system and, easily evading the defences mustered by the Chapter serfs still present in the Oronoi fortress monastery, detonated virus torpedoes in the planet’s upper atmosphere. The resulting rampage of genetically modified pathogens failed to annihilate the Krinngrimi, but the planet’s population was reduced to less than 7% of its previous size (the indigenous flora and fauna proved too alien to be affected), and was no longer capable of providing recruits in sufficient quantities for the Krakens to consider.

Instead, the nascent Chapter turned to Four Feathers, in the Greyjoy subsector, for warriors with which to build their strength. Four Feathers is a world of almost 90% ocean. What little landmass there is, beyond a few scattered archipelagos, can all be found in the same hemisphere; four small continents, each roughly the shape of a bird’s feather, hence the world’s name. On three of these continents, each high in the Northern hemisphere, Imperial colonists live simple lives, herding groxes or farming the land. On the equatorial continent of Cauda, however, the situation is very different.

When the first colony vessels tore their way into reality above Four Feathers, attempts were made to settle each of the four continents. On the other three continents, the newcomers found wide grasslands and gently sloping foothills; still, deep lakes; and expansive deciduous forests. On Cauda, the interlopers discovered exactly two things; fungus, and rain.

The rain was mainly annoying. The fungus, by and large, was deadly.

The colonists found themselves under attack from every conceivable direction. Toadstools the size of skyscrapers rained down acidic spores. Jet-black mushrooms as big as tanks exploded on contact, releasing their own clouds of spores, that if inhaled would hollow out a man in days. Creeping moulds, attracted to the warmth of human flesh, covered men as they slept, pouring into their lungs and sprouting from the corpses that resulted. Hallucinogenic fungi burst from gaps in rockcrete floors, driving colonists to madness, or created pits in the mushroom forests, into which the foolhardy would fall, to be digested only fractionally faster than they starved.

Not one of the original colonising party escaped alive, although they were successful in voxing their fellows, warning them never to approach Cauda. For several years, this directive was obeyed, but ultimately Cauda suffered the same fate as any stretch of land totally unsuitable for human habitation: it became a penal colony.

For thirty years the most objectionable scum from the three temperate continents were dispatched to Cauda to live out their days surrounded by carnivorous fungi, forced to decide between a lifetime within the stockade, or a brief, agonising death outside. But just as no stretch of worthless and remote land can avoid having a prison built atop it, no remote prison can avoid a revolution indefinitely. At best, they can hope to put down that revolution as quickly and bloodlessly as possible (the former being vastly more important than the latter, of course), but when the moment came, the authorities of the various prisons that collectively had become known as the “Gulag Peninsula” (located as they were on a narrow stretch of land jutting out from western Cauda into the Soothing Sea) failed to rise to the challenge. The story of Tanhoi's Rebellion (named after the political prisoner and former PDF Colonel whose tactical genius turned a series of riots into a full-blown military campaign) would be worth several posts in itself, but for now suffice to say that within a year of the initial food riot at Fort Jade, the entire series of detention facilities had fallen into rebel hands.

As is so often the case, however, winning the war proved to be the beginning of Tanhoi's problems, not the end. The rebels might have defeated those troops stationed on Cauda by the other continents, but there was no question that attempting to take the fight to their enemies would have been suicide; their numbers were small, and their access to transport smaller still. That same scarcity of vehicles capable of leaving Cauda also made the proposition of mass evacuation untenable. Eventually, Tanhoi decided on a strategy of fortifying his landing pads, and what few ports had survived the fungi and the fighting, in order to prevent retributive attacks from the other continents, and used what few spacecraft he had to contact nearby systems, letting them know Four Feathers has a new state, independent from its fellows but still unswervingly loyal to the Emperor. This last move was particularly shrewd, a rebellion on the level of Cauda's would not be likely to attract the attention of the Adeptus Astartes, but Tanhoi's act of diplomacy effectively removed the threat forever. It also allowed limited trade to develop between Cauda and the neighbouring systems, allowing much-needed building materials to reach the Gulag Penisula, in exhange for powerful acids useful for industry, and for dangerous fungi desired by idiot noblemen.

In the three millenia since Tanhoi first raised his flag over Fort Jade (now Cauda's capital), the descendants of the former convicts have fought for survival against the deadly fungi that surround them, scratching out a living on this death world-within-a-world. As with all such places, existence is often brutish, painful, and short, but the Caudans take a fierce pride in their ability to maintain civilisation in conditions that would destroy their neighbours within days. The Caudans still live in the former detention blocks to this day, building them ever higher to escape from the canopy of acid toadstools, and using flamer teams to clear encroaching mold on a daily basis. Life within these huge rockcrete towers is relatively safe, but sealing themselves off within them entirely would doom the Caudans to a slow death by starvation. Large convoys of loader vehicles must be regularly dispatched to acquire barely-edible mushrooms from scattered processing plants deep in the fungus jungles. It is these voyages that claim the most lives, and their extreme danger means that participation on each is determined by lottery. This has been the way of the Caudans ever since the days of Tanhoi; indeed he himself eventually met his fate on such a journey, his body crushed by the tendrils of a redlace madcap from which he was trying to extricate his vehicle.

No Caudan is considered pas their childhood until they have survived ten convoys. After their thirtieth convoy, they become full Caudan citizens. Another thirty, and they are deemed to have done their duty, and are no longer required to enter the lottery. Not one citizen has taken advantage of this rule for more than three hundred years. On Cauda, you run the convoys until you die, one way or another; it is a simple point of pride.

The comparatively small population of Cauda makes their organisation into the large, unwieldy regiments of the Imperial Guard impossible, but their extreme hardiness and dedication makes them ideal recruits for the Adeptus Astartes (the sudden change of Four Feather's tithe grade to Adeptus Non deeply pleased the other continents, finally bringing planetary reconciliation). From a facility built upon a small island in the Soothing Sea, Kraken serfs assess the local population for likely recruits, helping to bring the Space Squids up to operational strength as quickly as possible.

At first, there was no sign of any problem. The initiates proved genetically suitable for implantation, and the number who died in agony from organ rejection was judged within acceptable bounds. As the ranks of the 10th Company (a rather incongruous name at that point, of course) began to swell, however, Chaplains Tolosson and Orfirsson noted their recruits were proving unreceptive to their teachings. To the Caudans, the world was nothing but chaos and change. Spending their lives fighting fungus that could crawl across leagues a day, or blow in on storm winds to kill men in moments, building their towers ever higher, and engaging the twin lotteries of first being selected for the convoys and then surviving them intact, had left the people of Four Feather's most brutal continent convinced that stasis and inflexibility were impossible and foolish, respectively. For them, the Emperor did not sculpt, he destroyed, and rebuilt what he had swept aside in new and better ways, over and over and over again. To leave something the same forever, to carve its shape once and leave it for the ages, was to invite defeat.

In the first year of the chapter's existence, as Rekasson hid away from his fellows, considering his vision for the future of his warriors, Tolosson and Orfirsson browbeat their new recruits into accepting at least some of their version of the Imperial Creed, continuing the traditions of the Krinngrimi followed over hundreds of years. There was never complete acceptance, but the initiates, and later full-blown battle brothers, from Four Feathers allowed the two chaplains to lead them in their devotions, and to see to their spiritual well-being, which seemed enough. Given the near-total destruction of the Emperor's Shields, however, it was deemed critical to build up the Astartes equivalent of an officer's corps as quickly as possible. So it was that within five years each of the fledgling Companies (some of which could field no more than two full squads at this point) of the Krakens of Greyjoy had its own Captain. The first new Chaplain, chosen from the ranks of the Krakens to attend the needs of the Third Company (Tolosson and Orfirsson taking the First and Second, respectively) was named Noro Tegatchi, and it was with his first forays into life in the Reclusiam aboard the Intractible that the story of the Three Chaplains really began.

The Space Squids Part 3: Three Chaplains I

“The Scales Of The Emperor Protect Us!”
“His Venom Blind Our Foes!”

Battle-prayer of the Steel Cobras Legion (declared Excommunicate Traitoris)

Consider almost any conceivable method of worship or image of masculine divinity, and the chances are exceptionally high that either one of the millions of cultures and societies of the Imperium currently pays homage to the Emperor in such a manner, or that such was once the case, before an outraged Inquisition declared the variation heretical and swept it aside in a wave of purifying flame.

As endlessly varied as the encouraged (and tolerated) declensions of the Church of the Emperor are amongst the Imperial citizenry in general, the Chaplains of the Adeptus Astartes frequently extol their Battle Brothers to worship images of the Emperor far stranger. A combination of tradition, a respect for the separation of powers, and (most importantly by some distance) the sheer insanity of declaring war on an entire Chapter absent any other alternative (even declaring the Steel Cobras heretical has meant nothing more than unsuccessfully attempting to quarantine their system) means that there are a number of Space Marine forces that espouse beliefs and practice rituals that could condemn whole words to Exterminatus.

Even within this ludicrously large range of doctrine and zealotry, however, the Krakens of Greyjoy stand out. Not for any specific outlying idea or method (though every Chapter has its idiosyncrasies), but because of the unique complications brought about by the Three Chaplains.

These records have already touched upon the destruction of the Emperor’ Shields fleet at Raxos, and of the solitary Thunderhawk that survived the massacre. Included amongst the handful of survivors were two Chaplains, Tolosson and Orfirsson, all that remained to teach the new recruits from Four Feathers the ways of venerating the Emperor through prayer and through battle.

Before that tale can be told, however, we must consider the histories of two worlds. The first is Krinngrim, the homeworld of the Emperor’s Shields. Krinngrim is one of the most beautiful worlds in the Imperium. Wide expanses of pale crystal plains terminate at ranges of sapphire mountains. Deep valleys cut from jewels score the landscape, their shining walls reflecting each other to infinity. Inquisitor Hermans once remarked “Could the High Lords but sell Krinngrim, they could buy themselves afford a second Imperium.”

With the beauty, however, come danger. The fiercest sandstorm of ruined Tallarn is but a gentle shower compared to a Krinngrim Shardwind. Tiny pieces of razor-sharp crystal are blown to hurricane speeds as they travel across the smooth land. Indeed, this is the very method by which the plains are levelled and the valleys cut, but a force that can polish diamond will cut a man into particles before he can take in enough breath to scream. A tank, if it can find shelter, and is particularly-well armoured, could perhaps last just long enough to vox for help. Maybe.

Worse than the Shardwind, though, is the Glitter Rain. A Shardwind is highly visible, the swirling tower of particles reflects enough light to be visible at great distance, and the sound it makes audible from almost as far. Glitter Rain begins high in the atmosphere, and the first sign of the tiny jewel fragments falling is the occasional spark of light in the surrounding air, before they begin to bite. If the Shardwind is certain, immediate destruction, then the Glitter Rain is maddening agony. A person can survive a Rain for an hour or so, longer if they have been caught short before and have enough scar tissue to delay their deaths, but with a third of that time what staggers into the caves the Krinngrimmi use for shelter will no longer be easy to identify. Much longer, and the natives are liable to put their unfortunate comrade to death, for the sake of easing their pain.

As dangerous as the surface is, the inhabitants of Krinngrim cannot stay underground forever. Once, generations ago, the caverns were home to many native species; and perhaps that is where life began on the world, but the colonists consumed those scattered ecosystems long ago. Now, nothing moves in the caves except for humans, and whatever surface life wanders in, searching for tender flesh.

Out on the Diamond Plains what life there is unfolds from giant, almost indestructible shells, foraging for food in-between Shardwinds, laying rock-hard eggs in deep pools of gem-dust, or inside other creatures using long, spear-sharp ovipositors. Most of these creatures are good to eat, but difficult to kill, given their impenetrable shells, and their possession of a vicious temperament borne of a constant life of borderline starvation.

The combination of insanely dangerous weather and rampaging fauna makes life on Krinngrim exceptionally difficult, which in turn makes the tribes of the Krinngrimmi ideal candidates for Space Marine recruits. The Emperor’ Shields used the planet as a recruitment ground since their initial Founding, building their fortress monastery on the nearby moon of Orinoi. As so often happens, the beliefs of the culture from with initiates were chosen bled into the teachings of the Chapter’s Chaplains. To the Krinngrimmi, and hence ultimately the Emperor’s Shields, the Emperor was a master sculptor. Whilst mortal man might carve the decorations on a domicile, the Emperor carved the Imperium. Where others would sculpt a statue, the Emperor manipulates the very realm of space itself. The legends of the Krinngrimmi state the Emperor himself carved their planet, for no other reason than to prove the task did not lie beyond him, and because he found it beautiful, and for the tribesmen of the Diamond Plains, beauty is always the same thing as the threat of destruction.

Naturally, when Tolosson and Orfirsson began to preach to the first recruits from Four Feathers, they told them of the Emperor’s skill with the chisel, how he carved the world on which the last survivors of the Emperor’s Shields had been born, how he had created the Imperium as the greatest work of art in the galaxy, and how he brought the gift of beautiful death to his enemies, so as to carve their bones into the shapes that pleased him most.

It was a creed unrecognisable to those from Four Feathers, and not one accepted easily. The Chaplains had preached for centuries, though, and the recruits had received sufficient mental conditioning for the transition to be made essentially smoothly. For a time, it seemed as though the Krakens of Greyjoy would be differentiable from the Emperor's Shields only by the colour of their armour.

Then, a brother marine born of Four Feathers became the first Chaplain to join the ranks of the Space Squids since the Battle of Raxos, and everything changed.

His tale, though, and that of the strange world of Four Feathers, must wait for some other time.

The Space Squids Part 2: The Twenty-Third Founding

Creating a new Space Marine Chapter is not an easy thing. Strangely, perhaps the simplest stage is the agonisingly long and difficult process of compiling the gene seeds necessary for such an endeavour. Whilst each Astartes Chapter is obligated to regularly send genetic samples to the Adeptus Mechanicus, in part for this very purpose, the Space Marines are proud and aloof, and above all independent in the way that only they can afford to be. Even when they deign to pay their tithes, each seed must be exhaustively studied to ensure it is free of mutation or other taint, a process which the material itself does not invariably (or even often) survive intact. Finally (though least problematically), the genetic stockpiles must be sorted by Primarch.

These, however, are simply issues of time and of patience. Eventually sufficient gene-seed will be available for the creation of one thousand new Space Marine warriors. It is at this point that things become truly difficult.

It is not always true that savage martial prowess precludes discipline, but the inverse correlation is sufficiently high to be a genuine problem. Taking a thousand feral tribesmen or Deathworld survivors and turning them all into super-human killing machines is all very well, but the end result is not an army, it is a mob; a terrifyingly destructive mob that has only ever known killing, and is delighted to have suddenly become so much better at it.

Thus, the new recruits must be tempered, guided in the best way to do their duty, taught to see their fellows as brothers in arms, rather than rivals, meals or even, occasionally, clothing. Added to this problem is the fact that persuading the initiates to undergo the honour in the first place is next to impossible, unless other Space Marines are the ones doing the "persuading". The martial societies (to the extent to which the latter term is appropriate) that provide the best raw material also tend to resist having the concept of the Adeptus Astartes explained to them by Imperial Missionaries or clanking Tech Adepts.

The only solution is to attach a number of more experienced Space Marines to the nascent Chapter. This is not even remotely as easy as it sounds. There exist no force in the Imperium less willing to see themselves as part of a whole than an Astartes Chapter. A Catachan would mutter threats of violence were he forced to join a regiment of Drookians, a Battle Sister would likely refuse point-blank to change from one Order to another, no matter who issued the command. A Space Marine's response, however, is not one that bears thinking about. The history of the Imperium contains all too many references to Chapters allowing themselves to become extinct rather than retreat, or join with other Chapters. The colours of a marine's Chapter is a source of almost psychotic pride. It is fortunate indeed that Foundings are so rare an occurrence, for finding the necessary genetic material is child's play compared to locating enough Space Marines to form an Officer's Corps for a new Chapter. This was the dilemma faced during the Twenty-Fourth founding in M38.

In the case of the Krakens of Greyjoy salvation came from the remnants of the very Chapter they had been created to replace. The fleet-borne Emperor's Shields Chapter, already severely under-strength following Waaagh! Dedtoof, found themselves under attack from the Apostles Of Minthras Traitor Chapter whilst in the final stages of regrouping their fleet at Raxos. Only a single Thunderhawk Gunship, carrying thirty battle brothers, escaped the resulting conflagration, either through carelessness on the part of the Apostles, or perhaps as a deliberate humiliation.

Most of those Marines who survived wished to attempt to board and repair the nearest intact escort vessel and follow the Apostles' fleet to their base, before attempting to gain their revenge there. Brother-Captain Rekasson, however, who now held the sorrowful distinction of being the the Chapter's most senior officer, realised that such an action would be simple folly. If they were to gain their revenge, it could not be on such unfavourable terms. If he was to join his brothers in death, he had no intention of telling them that they were unavenged. When the Adeptus Mechanicus offered Rekasson and his band of warriors an entire Chapter, raised from the savage inhabitants of the world of Four Feathers, he realised that he would have his instrument of vengeance, and that the Apostle's days were numbered. Thus did Brother-Captain Rekasson of the Emperor's Shields become Chapter Master Rekasson of the Krakens of Greyjoy, and the long tale of the Space Squids begin.

Emperor's Shield Veteran Sergeant Gundersson, one of the thirty survivors of the Battle of Raxos.

Friday 40K Blogging: Space Squids

At long last my camera is back in action, and we can celebrate with the unveiling of the first two of my Space Squid marines.


Note how they stand guard over a tiny island in a tranquil ocean (which I probably should have hoovered first). Presumably the rest of the squad are still underwater, laying down some sub-aquatic smack.

Also, you'll notice I've decided to put my money where my mouth is and make the Krakens of Greyjoy a non-Caucasian chapter. It's nice to have some variety.

The Space Squids

Usually whilst I'm on holiday I like to write as much as humanly possible (in fact, Commanding The Kingfisher was mainly written on a trip to Scotland way back in 2005). This time round, though, I spent most of my typing time either working on my thesis or proof-reading my first novel (more on that later in the month, hopefully), so the only thing new I managed was the first piece of background for my Space Marines chapter. I showed you their colour scheme a while ago, which has now been slightly re-jigged (photos of the first couple of models as soon as my camera returns).

"A battle-brother must welcome combat on any terrain. From swampland to savanna, desert to jungle, and from sea to sky to space. The enemies of the Emperor must know that there is no place to hide, merely a thousand alternatives as to where they will meet their end." - Roboute Gulliman, Codex Astartes.

"Once a year, regular as you like, them haughty Ultramarines arrive in orbit, dive into the sea, and start knocking the stuffing out of the local fellsharks. What's the use in that? I've fought in three dozen wars in this blighted subsector, faced off against howling Orks and shadowy Eldar, but not once in my years of service has a fish picked up a chainsword and gone for my throat." - Colonel Vertelli, Isokan 3rd.

The problem with becoming the perfect warrior is that there exists no reliable metric by which perfection can be measured. Success, certainly; that is defined in terms of casualties caused, engagements won, and, with luck, by not dying at the end of the day. Perfection is something different.

How does one define perfection? Does it require the mastery of a single discipline, or competence in multiple fields? A man is not an Eldar, Emperor be praised; we lack the near-immortality required to master each form of combat one after the other. Nor do we need fear casting our nets wide. The Eldar may know in their rotten souls that to choose from two options is to always choose the most pleasurable one, but the children of the Imperium are made of sterner stuff. For the superhuman warriors of the Adeptus Astartes, all that need be considered is how to dedicate each day to the pursuit of becoming a more proficient killer.

Still, though, choices must be made. The Codex Astartes is quite clear; the Space Marine must face his foe on a thousand different battlefields, and defeat him on every one of them. Such perfection lies beyond a human lifetime, even one enhanced by the arcane genetic techniques of a chapter's apothecaries. To excel at one kind of combat is to neglect all others, but to learn to fight on a hundred surfaces is to risk being beaten by one hundred different kinds of specialist.

The Codex Astartes teaches, almost above all else, that a chapter must be independent. The arrival of companies from other chapters in one's battlezone is either fortuitous, or a commentary on the seriousness of a current engagement, but that is all. Indeed, how could Guilliman's masterwork speak otherwise? After the darkness and destruction of the Horus Heresy, in which misplaced loyalty to the tainted Warmaster had dragged fully half the Space Marine legions into chaos and damnation, nothing was more important than promoting independence at the expense of tactical co-operation.

Roboute was a tactical and strategic genius, but he was not a prophet. In the centuries since the Second Founding, events have made clear the drawbacks to the Primarch's approach. The Age of Apostasy demonstrated the difficulty in dealing with Imperium-wide rebellion when no obvious authority existed, and the Badab Uprising proved that it was still entirely possible for multiple chapters to mutiny against the Imperium given the right circumstances.

Despite these incidents revealing problems with the approach in the Index Astartes, few chapters have attempted to strengthen ties with their fellows. As a general rule, any chapter arrogant and indiosyncratic enough to flout the Index is unlikely to welcome closer relations with their fellows.

Such was the situation in M.38 when the Krakens of Greyjoy were founded, named after the giant sea-creatures that inhabited the deep oceans of Greyjoy, a hive world deep in the Ultima Segmentum. Given the world of Four Feathers, in a neighbouring system to Greyjoy, from which to recruit, the Krakens never even began construction of a fortress monastery. Their first Chapter Master, Hector Rekasson, refused to allow his nascent army to engage in combat of any form for an entire year, trying the patience of several governors of nearby worlds and attracting the unwelcome interest of more than one Inquisitor. If this discontent troubled Rekasson, there was no sign. Perhaps he knew nothing of it, for those first twelve months in which the chapter were ostensibly operational, Rekasson was locked within his quarters on the chapter's only battle-barge, the Intractable, with naught within but a sanitation cubicle and a copy of the Codex Astartes.

Precisely one year from the maiden voyage of the Intractable, Rekasson emerged. He addressed the brothers of the Krakens of Greyjoy chapter in a fleet-wide broadcast. The Codex Astartes, he told them, was a book designed to limit the fallout of treachery. For those whose loyalty was unquestionable, the tome was to be honoured, not to be followed blindly. The future of the Imperium lay not in a thousand bickering tribes, but in a finely-honed million-strong army. While total integration of the loyalist chapters was impossible, it was time for each of the thousand armies of the Astartes to become part of a greater whole. And the Krakens would lead the way.

Beyond a small facility to deal with potential recruits to the Chapter's 10th Company, the Krakens built almost nothing on the surface of Four Feathers. Instead, they toured the Segmentum, taking every opportunity to fight underwater, and training in deep space in-between. Rekasson's dream was to lead the Imperium's greatest aquatic fighting force, a deeply specialised chapter that could sweep all before it deep in the sunless oceans of the galaxy. In this way he offered his answer to the dilemma of perfection. Let the Ultramarines or the Imperial Fists attempt to be all things to all men. The Krakens of Greyjoy would forgo ninety nine battles out of a hundred, if that last skirmish brought them glory.

Though none in the chapter would admit to it, there is some evidence to suggest that in their first 150 years of existence, the Krakens fought fewer engagements than any other chapter. What they were happy to discuss, however, was their massively high success rate. On the forge world of Folstoii, the Ork Warboss Slitjaw attempted to circumvent the overwhelming defences of the mighty spires by constructing fleets of submersibles with which to destroy the power-lines which snaked towards the sulphur fissures in the world's ocean floors. The Krakens annihilated every single enemy vessel within twenty-four hours of their arrival in-system. When the eel-like Z'Cex took up residence in the purple oceans of Karranac, terrorizing the peoples of that world's narrow archipelagos, Rekasson and two hundred of his battle brothers exterminated their deep-sea hives within the space of a month, a feat which astonished the White Panthers, who had been fighting to reclaim Karranac over a month.

Whilst many might be happy to make this choice of quality over quantity, however, it is not a decision that the war-torn Imperium can well afford. The enemies of man attack unceasingly from all directions. What good is the efficient destruction of one alien force if fifty more await their chance to strike? Aquatic combat was a rarity; the Z'Cex were a minor race when compared to the Tau, or even the Tarellians or the Hrud, and few other species were any happier fighting underwater than was humanity. It became increasingly plain that the idiosyncracies of the Krakens would not be tolerated indefinitely. Inquisitorial investigation was threatened, a process that might conceivably lead to excommunication.

Whether or not Rekasson would have backed down is something historians will never know. The stand-off between the Krakens and the larger authority of the Imperium was broken when Hive Fleet Kraken entered the Milky Way. The Tyranids were an enemy able and willing to adapt to any conceivable battlefield. Whilst one set of hideous biological constructs rampaged across the land, fin-tailed raveners and jet-propelled hydrogaunts filled the oceans, consuming all in their path. The skill-set of Rekasson's chapter went from being ludicrously specific to endlessly useful. It is claimed by some that the Krakens of Greyjoy fought more battles in the five years following the new Hive Fleet's appearance than they had in the rest of their history combined.

As such, their reputation began to change. Across the Eastern Fringe, the people of sea and shore offered up prayers for deliverance to Rekasson and his Chapter, even after the Chapter Master himself died on the unlit seabed of Shelah, atop the body of the largest Hive Tyrant ever witnessed. Word of mouth spread that only one force could save humanity from the pitiless horrors that lurked in the deep, waiting to strike.

Although still known officially as the Krakens of Greyjoy, by the early years of the 40th Millennium no-one on the Eastern Fringe was particularly keen to use that name. Instead, across the Fringe and beyond, the chapter had become known as the Space Squids.