A Bullgryn and Chaos Spawn battle it out in the underhive beneath the Hive City of Alicante.

“The creatures of the Warp have but one trait with which you need concern yourself – their undying contempt for the Emperor. It is your task to quell the rebellion they preach, and the only sure way is to destroy them utterly.”—Inqjuisitor Qualtak Shoran

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Hive City: Alicante
     Planet: Dozaria
Underhive Level B-43, SW Quadrant
Section 51E, Subsection 2G.

6 262 743.M41

In the darkness

The air was humid and smelled of rust and mold spore, not surprising given the drizzle of condensation that fell upon Maug Ra from the broken pipes on the ceiling above.

This was a long-abandoned section of the Underhive, more than 200 meters below the levels where the most wretched of citizens lived. Down here was the realm of the mutant, the vermin, and the shadowy predators of nightmares.

Maug Ra was not daunted by the dangers that waited in the shadows. He had a score of good men with him, all fanatically loyal to The Sourge, the holy tabernacle that served the Lord of Decay.

They were a force that could  handle themselves. And they were on a quest. Word had come from Voloh Gudag, champion of the oppressed, that a great secret could be found down in these debts. Ancient data banks held long-lost passages of The Tome of Heretical Works, a tome  that held the key to releasing a champion of Nurgle, the greater daemon Kossogtha, from his psychic imprisonment.

It was foretold that this champion would overthrow of the Imperium and offer true freedom to the human race. It was a dream that Maug Ra had long treasured. And now he had a part to play in changing the history of mankind.

Objective ahead

As they enter the chamber where the cultists sought their prize, Inquisitorial agent Gallus commanded an impressive force of Arbites Enforcers and a Bullgryn.

Supported by a dozen Arbites Enforcers and a Bullgryn auxiliary trooper, Konrad Gallas, an agent of the Ordo Hereticus, felt the full weight of responsibility resting on his shoulders.

A Chaos cult was seeking heretical information that could summon a greater daemon into the Materium. It was a threat that could not be ignored.

Gallas wished that Inquisitor Vaarak was present to lead the mission. It wasn’t that Gallas felt unqualified. He was an experienced acolyte, recently promoted after years of missions of subterfuge and violence.

His unease was simply a feeling. Gallas felt an undercurrent of powerful forces at work, and he had a premonition that what happened in the next hour could have immense ramifications for the future.

A chirp sounded in his earpiece.

“Objective ahead. Signs of movement in the shadows. Possible hostile force present.”

Gallas pulled the laspistol from its holster.

“This is Gallas. Deploy for combat, Pattern Alpha-3. Repeat Alpha-3. No warning. No challenge. When targets appear, shoot to kill.”

First Blood

A shotgun blast warned Maug Ra that his men were not alone. To his right, he saw one of his fellow cultists thrown backward, his chest a bloody ruin.

“Attack! Attack!” Maug Ra screamed. “We must find the prize!”

The cult leader scrambled forward, using a rusty generator housing to shield himself from the plasma beams and bolter shells that suddenly erupted. The flashes of gunfire lit up the room, and Maug Ra could see that he was in a large chamber filled with power conduits and banks of empty cogitator seats.

In front of him, he spotted a data uplink station—a likely place to begin his search for the data he needed. He signaled to one of his men to follow. The rest of his men knew how to fight. He would leave the battle to them.

Seeking high ground

His Enforcers were spreading out through the chamber, maintaining a steady rate of fire as their tactical training had taught them. Gallas knew he could rely on the Arbites captain to oversee the fighting, and he quickly scanned the room to determine how best to complete his mission.

There! A ladder rose, leading to a command platform towering six meters over the empty cogitator stations. That was the center of the complex—and the most likely place to find the answers he needed.

He tapped the shoulder of the Arbites sergeant assigned to assist him and pointed. “That’s where we’re going.”

The sergeant frowned. “The position isn’t yet secured, sir. We may take fire.”

“That’s why your Bullgryn has a slab shield,” Gallas said, rising and running forward.

The inquisitorial agent’s actions caught the sergeant by surprise, but he was too experienced to be caught flat-footed. The sergeant turned to the three-meter-tall Bullgryn standing nearby, staring stupidly at the sergeant in anticipation of orders.

“Well, don’t stand there. Go after the Inquisitor. Obey him. Keep him alive.”

The giant abhuman looked hurt at the sergeant’s sharp tone, but he nodded his head stupidly and began to move. “Me protect. Me keep alive.”

Outnumbered and doomed, an Enforcer still does his duty as he gives battle to cultists and a dangerous psyker.

Reckless abandon

The cultists also had recognized the importance of the command platform, and four men raced forward to a ladder and began climbing upwards.

Enemy fire was intense. The cultists had clashed with Enforcers many times in the past and, although they could not see them clearly in the dark shadows around them, the unique sound of their high-quality shotguns and boltguns clearly differentiated them from the lowe- quality weapons of a hive gang or mutant tribe.

The first cultist up the ladder reached the halfway point before a bolt round struck him, and he slumped and fell away. He fell to the side, not atop those below, and the rest of his comrades ignored his descending corpse as they hurried upwards. The second cultists made it to the platform, as did the third.

The fourth was was not so lucky. A hideous scream sounded below him, and the cultist looked down to spot a mutated horror scrambling up toward him.

The cultists called the beast a “spawn,” a man-turned-monster after too much exposure to the powers of the Warp. The creature had grown multiple appendages of insane variety: tentacles,, multi-fingered arms with 10-centimeter claws, and meter-long spikes of bone.

The transformation had driven the once-man insane. Yet it usually knew the difference between friend and foe. But, in the heat of battle, all the creature understood was the urge to kill, and as the spawn climbed the ladder, the cultist had but a moment to panic before a tentacle reached up, grabbed his ankle, and pulled him off the ladder and tossed him into the shadows below.

Hate the Psyker

As Gallas climbed his ladder, a bitter battle was under way to his left. On a raised dias stood another data input station, and Enforcers and cultists were engaged in a point-blank gun battle.

A cultist’s head vaporized as an Enforcer put a bolter shell into it, then the officer himself fell as a lasgun bolt seared his shoulder. He slid down into cover and struggled to extract a medi-pak from a waist pouch.

Two cultists raced forward, with combat blades drawn. One fell as their target, a hulking giant of an Enforcer, fired his shotgun into the cultist’s chest. But then he was forced to raise the shotgun as an improvised club as the other cultist stabbed with his combat blade.

The two exchanged blows, as the Enforce could not reload his gun as the cultist swung his blade again and again at the big man.

Then suddenly, the Enforcer convulsed, and the cultist took a step back in shock. The massive law-enforcement officer was thrashing as if held by an invisible foe, and blood began to leak out of his eyes and ears.

A sickly presence made itself felt, and the cultist turned, then dropped to one knee and lowered his head. He bowed to the one known as Thaetos, a disciple of Nurgle and empowered with foul sorcery by the Warp.

The psyker was floating, his bare and blistered feet dangling mere inches above the plasteel floor. As he floated closer, his rotting teeth formed into a smile, the Enforcer began to convulse more forcefully—then simply exploded in a cloud of misty blood and gore.

Click here to read the conclusion of this battle.

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The Corvus Cluster is a Warhammer 40K blog documenting our gaming adventures in the fantastical sci-fi universe of Games Workshop.