Armageddon. The name of that hellish excuse for a solar system will make any guardsman with a lick of sense shudder. Well my friends, I have a story to tell about Armageddon. Specifically, that men of men, our dear Commissar Yarrick.
It was the first war of Armageddon, in the infamous Hades Hive. That damned greenskin Ugulhard had been pressing us bad, wave after wave of the big, dumb, green brutes had been smashing up against the cathedral my company and Yarrick himself had been holed up in. The Commissar had lost his arm to a stray shot from a big shoota earlier in the day, and just about everyone else had a hole in them somewhere.
Then, just as things were at their bleakest, the man himself strides up to the front line , orders a ceasefire, and then promptly yells into the voxspeaker he had been carrying with him: “WARLORD UGULHARD IS A BLOODY STUPID EXCUSE FOR AN ORK AND THAT A LOUSY GRETCHIN COULD BEAT HIM IN A SQUIG EATING MATCH!”
For a moment, there was nothing but shocked silence as the Orks stopped dead in their tracks and stared dumbly at Yarrick. The quiet was broken by the loudest voice I had ever heard roaring “WOT SON OF A STINKIN’ GROT LICKIN’ ‘ARF BRAINED FRAGGIN’ GIT SED DAT!?”. Orks began flying through the air and the largest Nob I had ever seen emerged from the masses towards the edge of the mob. Without batting an eyelid, Yarrick pointed to the poor guardsman on his left and said plainly, “He did.” Ugulhard let out a deafening cry of “WAAAGH!” rushed up to the unfortunate sap and began strangling him with his huge hands. The Commissar, still completely calm, unsheathed his chainsword and neatly lopped off the preoccupied Warlord’s head. The rest of the Orks were dumbfounded for a moment more, then turned around and wandered out of the Hive, mumbling things like “..dat’s one ‘ard ‘umie…”, and “..never loiked dat git Ugulhard anywayz..”
After the battle, I started hearing a story from people outside my company about how Yarrick had faced down Ugulhard one on one, losing his arm but cutting off the Warlord’s head and fighting off the rest of the Orks alone using his own Power Klaw. I wouldn’t be surprised if Yarrick himself was the one who started that rumor.
Here comes something about Eldrad:
So, Eldrad Ulthran is a dick. It seems shocking to hear and I know he is the guiding light of our people, but in all honestly, he’s a total dick.
I know this because I served with him. You see, I am a Warlock. You can imagine my excitement when I was first assigned to his retinue. I took no heed to the fact his last set of Warlocks supposedly died in “a most ironic manner”. I was young back then, only 19 000, and naive.
As soon as I met Eldrad in person he gave me my first order: “find a howling banshee exarch, and a witch blade for yourself, we are going to Setrus Prime (as the monkeigh called it).” He actually said the parenthesis by leaning forward and placing a hand beside his mouth to direct his voice to me alone. He is kind of a douche that way, we were in the room alone.
Anyway, Eldrad, the banshee exarch and I sortie to the planet’s surface. I project some illusionary cover to shield our hiding spot and the exarch and I await more orders. Before us a great battle is being waged between a force of the monkeigh Space Marines and our fallen brethren, the Dark Eldar. About 20 minutes into the battle Eldrad points to a pebble by his foot and says “Move this small stone to where I am pointing now.” He points to an innocuous patch of ground. Dumbfounded but trusting, I do as he says.
No sooner had I reached cover did a Space Marine bike roar past me, straight over the pebble. The mighty treads of the bike’s wheels fling the pebble up into an empty stretch of air. It hangs there for a moment, then a Dark Eldar reaver rushes into it, the pebble sucked into its jet intake. The reaver sputters then bursts into flames, accelerating rapidly, right into a Talos. The Talos was not of regular design, not that any ever are. This one was a mass of spinning blades with a screaming humanoid in its center, the body of which was too mutilated to even identify its race.
I might mention at this point that Eldrad has not turned to look at the ensuing chaos, instead he is staring in the direction of myself and our howling banshee companion.
When the reaver hit the talos, all hell broke loose as the twirling saws of the unsavory machine broke free like angry daemons being exorcised. I saw one blade, bouncing and racing directly towards us at ludicrous speeds. And I am an Eldar, I know speed. I brace my witch blade for the impact readying myself to take the blow, to save the farseer in my protection. The blades hit and both the saw and the witch blade veer off directly towards the banshee exarch. Both blades merely graze her, just deep enough to cut the restraints that hold her costume on. As her armour falls away exposing her breasts, I realize why Eldrad was staring at her. He giggles, then orders a full retreat.
What a dick.
So Eldrad is a huge dick, but I think I have proven that by now. What I haven’t told you is that he is, without a doubt, the greatest psyker in the universe.
I never saw this more exemplified than when we went to deal with a splinter fleet of Hive Fleet Leviathan. The first thing Eldrad did was use his massive reservoir of power to redirect the entire hive fleet 0.3 degrees off course. At first we had no idea why, but he assured us there was a reason. 134 years later we encountered the swarm again, and now we saw his plan, the fleet was heading straight into a desolate backwater planet. Using yet more of his might, Eldrad hid the entire planet from the fleet’s sight. This caused the entire hive fleet to crash square into the planet’s surface. He then called for me and the rest of his retinue to sortie down to the planet, we had a mission.
Once on the surface the bleeding husks of charred hive ships loomed over us like cold organic volcanoes. And then in a clearing, we found our quarry, a mighty hive tyrant, its psychic eminence clouding my own mind like a thick whispering fog. Eldrad was not taken aback in the slightest, he stepped forward, unarmed, right into the clutches of the hive tyrant. He then began to emulate the hive tyrant’s psychic powers, only at a much higher magnitude. He had made himself into a synapse creature of immense power. So much so he brow beat the mighty tyranid into submission. He then turned to us, tyranid leader in tow, and said, we are returning, we have what we came for.
Although impressed by Eldrad’s mastery of the mind, we all could not stop pondering his master plan. Why would he need such a mighty beast? It was not till the next morning that I knew. Pasted throughout the ENTIRE CRAFTWORLD were pictures of the titanic monstrosity and its ….. titanic monstrosity resting on my face as I slept. I never even knew tyranids had genitalia.
What a dick.