#gamma journal

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Journals 3/11-3/12

2.435.141.M42

Chaplain Mesha

Blood Angels Reclusiam

For those who fall

For those who remain

Fear is not an emotion an astartes admits to experiencing lightly. Yet, hearing the confession of two scouts today upon their first contact with tyranids, I remembered why I chose the reclusiam in the first place. Fear comes easily when every emotion is heightenend, and having battle brothers confess it rather than hesitate on the field should it take hold again is a solace I can grant.

Having served as long as I have, my fear is deadened, or replaced by the gnawing doubt that I would fail my brothers. I refuse the doubt, just as I refuse the Rage or the Thirst when I feel it begin to overtake me. Let me fall on the battlefield in full glory, not because I hesitated when a brother had need of me.

I refuse that fate.

2.856.081.M42

Clearance level Scarlet

Inquisitor Anais Damasin

Ordo Hereticus

To know Heresy is to fight against it

The Warp changes everything it touches. Flesh, minds, even faith. When the daemonic fire took my eye, it left it scarred but still seeing. Were it not for the use the new sight provides, I would have had the damn thing removed immediately. The extra sight, the ability to see lies, is invaluable in my work.

The Warp also scarred my face, as Inquisitor Thrane pointed out this morning. I caught the veiled insult. He bears honorable scars - blades, bullets, claws. He thinks himself pure. How bold to declare himself thus while looking down upon someone who stared into the Warp’s flaming maw and did not blink.

Inquisitor Thrane is my senior in age and rank. He thinks himself also senior in experience. I know there is a difference between rooting out indiosyncratic cults on barely populated worlds and dragging yourself through an underhive looking for a mutated cult leader.

I know Thrane has blinked.

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Journal 3/10/26

Prompt: What resists changing?

5.645.128.M42

Vauk-Ro

Carcharodons Astra

Mind the Teeth

Hunting: Traitor Naval Commander Viktor Arrix

If I had a tally for every time Akhlut told me to quit playing with my prey, my left vambrace might start to match my right. He talks of the chapter’s traditions, of the honor in the hunt. I tell him that honor is found in the mark that doesn’t run when he hears the clicking.

I like the chase better, herding marks into corners, bleeding them just to let them run. They leave such a nice trail. Akhlut says I act too much like our rumored traitor heritage. I tell him we are both predators of the dark. I’m still loyal. I just like to watch them squirm.

Viktor intrigues me. He’s a brazen traitor, turned his ship’s guns on his fellows in a pitched battle with the Black Legion’s fleet. Apparently, now he has a pet traitor Astartes that holds his leash. Or maybe it’s the other way around. He’s got stones, I’ll give him that.

Maybe he won’t run.

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Journal 3/9/26

Prompt: Describe being caught between two selves

4.463.084.M42

Tadese, Dragon-Scaled

Salamanders 5th Company

Heavy Support for Nocturne

For the Chapter. For those we protect

A Salamander is both an open hand and a fist. Compassion to the Imperium’s citizens and no mercy to its enemies. To contain that duality alongside the promise of death as a reward is... daunting. What can my hands protect if they are buried in one of Nocturne’s holy halls?

I choose to ignore that wording. Death can wait. MY hands still have work to do. Mostly protecting Kofi. Death will have to wait. I’d hate to disappoint his sister.

To fight and die in His name... why can’t it just be ‘to fight’? Dying is a side-effect of that and sure the Emperor prefers his hands capable. The Emperor also thought that Nocturne was a suitable place to raise an army. Not that he was wrong! It produces hardy stock and being fire resistant is useful on the battlefield. But low population density and high volcanic activity do not a prime recruitment world wait.

Death is not a reward. Duty until the end.

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Journal 3/8/26

Prompt: What are you fighting to become?

4th sun of the 4th astral moon, year 1

Kvasir de Givreaux

Ishgardian Temple Healer

For Those who still walk

The work has been grueling. Burns, impalements, claw wounds, crushing injuries from dragon jaws. I haven’t had time to sleep, let alone write. Guiscard came to relieve me this afternoon and I slept for five hours in a chair. My back is skilling me. Guiscard left me tea semi-recently, it’s still warm.

While my duty is here, to Ishgard and her people, I want to see the rest of the world. The opening of Ishgard has brought merchants and mercenaries both, and I have seen other Viera, others like me,I want to answer the questions still haunting my bloodline, who were my parents, where was I from. Questions like that. My adoptive parents are my blood as far as my heart is concerned, by they are Elezen, and I am not.

I have questioned everything for too long. Perhaps knowing that my parents were running from, what they were trying to protect me from, might bring me closure. There is something to be said about founding an identity over something other than the years of bloodshed with the dragons.

I hope my past contains less blood.

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Journal 3/8/2026

Prompt: What did change take from you?

9.650.183.M42

Jawbone

Blackshield

Deathwatch Killteam Crucible

Offensive Sigma-XI, Tau disruption

The thing about range advantage is that it needs to be dealt with immediately. The thing about Tau is that they always have range advantage. The thing about closing that gap with the Tau is that, at somepoint, they expect you to stop taking bullets like they hurt and don’t feel like aggressive hailstones and that you should really have fallen over dead or dying by now. The nails took my pain. It didn’t return with their severance.

Eleven ‘significant’ wounds from that engagement. That’s what Avros called them. Significant. Clinical. Precise. Other apothecaries usually use the term ‘critical’ or ‘severe’. I prefer Avros’ terminology.

A Son Of Medusa would better understand the deadened nerves. He is... better than the apothecary in my warband. Not that I can clearly remember him... or the warband for that matter. 

Everything is covered in red haze.

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Journal 3/6/26

Prompt: Describe the you 'before'

20 preestu, 2828 AI

Kildeer

Aedyran Envoy to the Living Lands

Paradis, Grinning Balarok

An righ a-mhain

My side still hurts. Apparently that’s normal after you take an arrow in it. A poisoned arrow. With expensive poison. I’m important now. That’s... complicated.

Who would have guessed that the son of a spice merchant and a seamstress would be adopted by the Aedyran emperor himself and sent to such exotic locales to die in creative ways? To be fair, this is my first assassination attempt. Stelgaers don’t really have a mind for politics. Spiders don’t either. And brigands usually only wnat my coinpuse. Assassins are... also complicated. The wide-eyed semstress’ son didn’t know what the word ‘assassin’ meant. Now... well now I’ve been shot, had a near death experience, and I have a new friend who refuses to button his vest. Not that that’s a problem, it’s warm in Dawnshore. But it’s something to consider. Sure, consider Kai’s chest right next to almost dying. That’s logical. That’s normal. That’s the wide-eyed seamstress’ son.

He does have a nice chest...

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Journal 3/5/26

Prompt: what transformation hurt the most

5.335.063.M42

Clearance Level Cyan

Inquisitor Xavier Aerex, Official Records

Of His Most Holy Ordo Xenos

Location: Atavar, governor’s palace

As I sit in Governess Albelea’s gardens, watching the shattered moon rise over Atavar, I find myself thinking on the price of daring to ask questions in the Imperium. Painful questions. Questions of legitimacy, of duty. Questions that had me branded amongst the radicals and ostracized amongst my peers. Of course, Governess Albelea is blissfully unaware of Inquisition politics, Emperor bless her, and the rosette grants me the authority to leverage her resources, politely, regardless of the red stain of ‘radical’ upon my ledger.

It does sting though, amongst who should be my allies. The questioning, the posturing, the condemning. But it would be so terribly easy to bear the sword of righteous zealotry and become a butcher, to put aside the inquisivity that makes me so capable.

I prefer to take the harder road anyhow.

[greetingsadventurer]

journal 3/4/26

Prompt: When did you realize you couldn't go back?

8.763.196.M42

Lysander Apelles, Emperor’s Children

Lieutenant, Maestro of The rendered

I sing

He does not hear

I’ve known that Fel hunts for something I can never give him for a long time now. I simply haven’t accepted that I can’t find a fitting replacement for his obsession. His is the only attention I desire, I crave. I have had the attenitons of other champions, other creations of Slaanesh and none satisfy. I know this is intentional. I would not have it another way.

The pursuit is just as much thrill as the touch or the notice. The ‘what if’, the ‘maybe’, the thrill of ‘almost’. Part of me wants to keep the chase forever. The other part is throttling its partner with a chain. That part, the all-consuming all-possessing drive for attention, for his attention, to be his obsession, longs for more.

Alas, his obsessions is with the past, not with the present. He recognizes me as a tool but not as an experience, not as something he could claim. He chooses not to.

I could be his dearest fascination.