#space vermin

[primestartes]

[ratchaptermaster]

First Contact pt. 2

The Imperial Guard rushed along, following the pict-sight of a Stormtrooper among his squad. "Go, Go, Go!" Their sergeant ordered under the thundrous bombardments and the global-loud rings of nightmarish bells. Looking up, something crashed through an executive building, the top exploding and crashing a great portion down with bodies of torn and still living flying end-over-end to their deaths. "Drop pod!" Someone warned, eyes falling on the oddity.  

A ruinous Deathstorm opening its limbs like a deflowering beast with a green-hued hiss. From it, a full twelve-manned squad lumbered out. Astartes with rusting red armour, glaring green lenses with oddly-shaped helmets and flicking tails at their ends. The way they stood were almost...inhuman. Their hands lifting bolters and growling chainswords. Then their supposed sergeant stepped out, the last thing the pict had difficulty catching with crackling inference. Beady red eyes glowing and the skin around its bolts in its skull flexed before a screaming command put everyone in sight to the thunderous execution of boltfire.

<<SWITCHING PICT-SIGHT. SGT. DARIUS HOFFMAN. 132nd JEWELDUST REGIMENT>>

"Fire!" The Sergeant commanded in a rising panic. His chainsword pointed from behind a full rank of guards with the assistance of Tarantula turret emplacement. It was hard to tell what they were fighting, but lasgunfire was returning on them and odd cracks of green electricity. Something fling overhead and the loud explosion of volatile concoctions caused the screaming deaths of soldiers at the sergeant's side. "By the Emperor! What are these damned trait-"

The earth tremored under their feet. The street crumbling, taking one of the tarantulas and part of the barricade under the hollowed earth. Darius tried to avoid falling in until he and the vict saw something beyond the scrambling horde of squeaking, furious...creatures. One larger than the others, twice so, screamed out something in some twisted form of high gothic. A chimera was lifted another more larger than that before hurling the tank through the air, crushing the second tarantula and the rupturing explosion fully throwing Darius clear off his feet. Tumbling down ruinous rocks and earth to reveal the sewer was torn open and worse by these invaders.

Few of the guards trying to fight off the red eyes in the darkness. Their mannish shapes revealed as their lasguns fired back, killing the guard before rushing into the light.

Ratmen! Hideous, frothing, murderous ratmen! In the uniform of the Imperial Guard, what was once their honourable attire twisted into a new allegiance. So many of them. The sergeant fired, round after round of his laspistol. Hacked one with the churning blade, the loud scream howling into his face before one scaly hand grabbed his weapon again. Another twisted and pulled his pistol-armed limb, dozens more pulling him into the cackling face of one of these verminous traitors. Glowing red eyes gleaming and gnawy teeth smiling before lunging for his feast!

<<CHANGING PICTS>>

<<SENTRY TOWER 442-CC-4B>>

A mob of these things were running the streets. The buildings. Even some standing on stolen chimeras, callously running their brothers too stupid to get out of their way while tearing parts out of the sacred warcrafts like some dismissed machine. If only the Adeptus Mechanicus behold this now. As if to answer this, a robed ratman in a gas mask and outfitted like one rose from a chimera. Shot a scavenger with a plasma pistol before wordlessly commanding them before pointing to something off screen. Then a scaled hand grasped at the camera, ripping it into a sniffing nose and eye. Its dark pupil dilating before the pict crackled dead.

<<CHANGING PICTS>>

<<FAST FORWARDING>>

The Lord Governor's last bastion was under assault. The doors beaten over and over by something terrible, twisting inward before it explodes by a melta-level projectile. A massive rat of...only logic can conclude to be a Chaos Spawn taken by mechanicus servitor-fate. Fists replaced by twisting constructs of crackling crystals and metallic claws, mechanical servos connecting with melta cannons blasting at the firing ranks of stormtroopers behind their shields. 

The battle was short...

<<FAST FORWARD>>

 The Spawn lays dead with crackling flesh and bits of itself everywhere as the elite of the planet's soldiers fighting against something off-screen. Then a massive figure appeared from the crackling response of a teleporter. A Terminator, swatting one half with a crackling powerfist and carved the other half with the burning blade of a daemon sword. A soldier crawling himself, trying to escape before the horned attacker grabbed - and crushed - a leg. As if insignificant to the short attention it allowed, the Terminator traitor threw the soldier into the camera.

<<FAST FORWARD>>

The Lord Governor was staring at the chaos through picts, flicking between them until it halts outside of his office. Just in time to explode into a sudden mist of gore by a peppering of holes through his door that cut through the layers of metal between the two room. 

[ratchaptermaster]

I Wish

I could draw Vun being a merry ratman in his artificer terminator, jovially cackling in his unquestionable lack of sanity while firing thunderous rounds after rounds of warpstone-tipped bolts from his clenched powerfist, The Emperor’s Fist. In his other hand, the green fellfires of his double-cursed hellsword burning in utter hate. The two reflectingly off those beady red eyes of infernally favoured madness. Rending scores of his enemies down like a tally from some child’s murderous game while war blazed around him as if this hell of bloodshed was just for him.  Too bad, you reader...

will get to enjoy this!

“HAHAHAHAH!” 

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Those were the sounds of the clicking, releasing, and popping of a thousand blessed bolter-rounds feeding and vomited from the blasphemous weapon forged from the hellpits of his God-Emperor’s majesty long before. Given onto him. 

HIM! The Great Horned Rat-Emperor’s first and favoured of Champions, the Herald of the Vermintide, the Material Master of His Verminous Empire! 

This weapon clad onto his fist, feeding its belt into the spinning triplet-barrels under its crackling bulb-inserted armour-cover from the cultivated Warp-hole from his armour’s exhaust stocks, polluting the air with gaseous conversation of the Emperor’s favour and the close rot of the Stinky-One who find some amusement and patronage of their great crusade.

This weapon, The Emperor’s Fist, delivered onto the Fish-Things and their slave-thralls a gloriously bloody death that brought the Chapter-Master of the Verminus Astra nothing but cackling joy. They dare not come close, their fear-musk was ripe but utterly devoured by the battle-musk that Vun Cinderreaver, greatest rat, bestowed onto the battlefield.

His Terminator escort of Red Guard, the retinue of the First Company Veterans from another life ago, lumbered forward the moment their Unquestionably Bloody Lord snapped his arm back and clicked the weapon in its distinctive way.

At their legs, the flood of savage Rat-Guard who serve the Monastery as their constantly scurrying eyes, ears, and chattering chewing teeth charged with hateful squeaks and mimicries to their former lives’ howls in glory to the Imperium and the God-Emperor upon his gilt throne.

Now, they screamed for Vun and their Horned Emperor on his Throne made of Warpstone. 

The Tau’s staging ground was becoming overrun. Never did they expect this...unnatural counterattack. Not by Humans in such mad savagery, as if they have snacked onto a small hive and revealed the entirety was a forest of raving creatures. 

Their Commander almost buckled under the scampering weight of these things, flinging some off and stomping on another under mech-boot. Head swivelling for his bodyguards. Two were taken under, one closer of battle and blood, trying to fend off an odd thing. It looked like the Humans’ militia leaders. Fire warping into the air, its belching weapon caught and crushed under a pressurizing claw. The ruptures popping and exploding through the crisis armor’s equipped limb, blasting it messily off with a thyroid-ripping scream.

Lord Commissar Bleak cackled as he flung the arm at one of the bug-things from mid-flight before shot three more with his plasma pistol. “For the Emperor-God!” In his outcry, a blast shot and flung the rat-leader into the scuttering flood.

“Damn you, things!” The Alien cried out, “You will all-!” 

A fist crashed and forced the mech to make a ungainly tumble. Repulsors spitting and trying to lift, the Commander facing Vun. Long enough for his sword to slash across the chassis. The fires of the Red-One’s daemons with the ruinous blessing of the Warbringer cutting through armour as simple as...flesh! 

“You dare come to Vun’s system, attack what is mine-mine!?” The Chapter-Master questioned, “You will die-die!” The great rat, almost three times the size of any rat here, lunged with a savage cry. His burning sword swinging one way and arched another, the Commander trying to evade but in the closed spaces of the command center was not an expected fighting ground. His mass lifting in attempt to burst through the environmental-sealed ceiling. 

“Down-down!” Vun commanded, flicking his sword and the Red-Guard unleashed barrages of combi-bolter fire. The crisis suit’s armour rebuked a good number of the explosive rounds, energy shield flickering and returning fire of plasma managed to puncture through one of the Terminators.  The Chapter-Master looked almost bored before a drone flew by his face and another swooped for him, blasting its rounds at his him. It beated against his Iron Halo’s protection and even scuffed his pauldron, almost seemed to hit before erratically redirecting itself by some unknowing force.

Catching the second drone in his power fist, the Chapter Master glared at the refusing  commander before crushing the drone until its repulsor was useless. “Now-now!” 

With a hard throw, the crushed metal slammed into one of the crisis armor’s anti-grav emitters. Smoke billowed with the explosion, watching the commander spinning around and around in attempt to regain control.  Close enough for the Emperor’s Fist to snatch a leg before bodily-crashing the suit down into the war table with a snarl.

The courses of discharges popped, crackled and rolled through the alien armor.  The spasms provoking an amusement through the rats. However, Vun did not care. His boot lifted and slammed into the chassis,  pushing it deeper into the table more than he was actually crushing it. 

That annoyed the Chapter Master vividly.

Clickclick.

“Die. Die.” 

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat! 

[ratchaptermaster]

Chapter Master!

“Awake!” 

The massive rat in his nest of claimed treasures rolled, grumbling with a flick of his bladed tail.

“Chapter Master, More Preened and Finest of Rats. Wake-wake!” The plague-ridden chaplain squeaked at him, keeping a good distance while prodding at the horned head peaking with annoyed twitches of his nose.

“Rrnn...”

There is no waking, Cinderreaver. If this wasn’t important, he wouldn’t even dare. However, this is important!

Underneath his dirty tarbard, the Master of Things pulled out a astartes-fist of Warpstone. The trinklet warpstuff crystallized into its precious appearance while the souls trapped cried out. Scratches at its delicious...beautiful...only for- no, no! Duty first! - surface. It causes movement.

“Wake-wake.” The Master of Things coos, then drops the warpstone. In a sudden burst of movement, a muscular arm thrust and caught it into its clawed fist. The muscles flexed and bulged, flesh almost devouring the ports for power armour before Vun peeked out with glowing red eyes. “What-what!? You drop warpstone? Is it Rite-Tribute already-now?” He questioned, blinking and flicker his tongue on the scratched surface. The tiny dust bringing a drug-addict’s pleasure through his addled brain.

“No-no! Most Deserving of Masters under only the Horned Emperor,” The Chaplain annoyed, skitter-leaping - ever odd to see when clad in full power armour - towards the visionary port before punching the corrupted servitor-eye. It blinked a couple times and opened to reveal the problem.

Outside of the grounded monastery, resting on their moon as it orbited the great Rat hiveworld, Skavblight, was a flotilla of tau ships attacking what is his! Vun stared a moment and absentmindedly dropped the warpstone from his mouth. Instead, replaced by a roaring boom of command-squeaks and gibbering of fit and rage that sent his slave-rats and pet-rats scattering like...rats!

“KILL-KILL! CLOSE-QUARTERS! TERMINATORS BOARD-BOARD! FLEET ATTACK-RAID! I WANT THEM DEAD-DEAD! GET VUN HIS ARMOR NOW-NOW!” 

In the end of it, the Master of Things were thrown through the door, who bounces and scutters on all fours to get it done with a bigger, daemonic shadow where his should be as he cackled in eagerness.

[ratchaptermaster]

Vermes Astra: The First Contact

"From a world damned by indifference and madness, They came. Like ancient ships drifting from a howling sea, what the people thought were saviors - They came out in swarms. Squeaking, hateful, spiteful things gnawing for their dark master. Red-eyed. Parodies of what they were. What their Empire was under the layers of righteousness and a dead king's light. Vermin traveling through the stars..." From the tearing fabrics of the Warp, a ship lunged itself from its thrashing waters of howling souls. A great monastery, ancient and weaponized into a thing of dark majesty. Her belly studding of great, pulsating crystals. Souls crawling, slowly petrifying until they too joined into the formations. The sinuous green a dark heralding for this Battle Barge of the Adeptus Astartes. Drifting through the stars towards a planet protected by a small fleet. 

<<IDENTIFICATION RITES INITIATED:::PROCESSING...PROCESSING...IDENTIFICATION OF BATTLE BARGE:: THE WRETCHED HEROORIGIN CHAPTER -- ULTRAMARINES:: CURRENT CHAPTER -- LAST REGISTERED:: IMPERIAL REGENTSLAST REPORT: [[READACTED]] INQUISITIONAL RECORDING... - Hailing was attempted. Several minutes. One connection, only the sound of scratching and distorted attempts of speech. The Wretched Hero continued its approach. The fleet starting to make a defensive vector in its coming coordinates. One more attempt. Successful. 

<<THIS IS CAPTAIN ADONIS OF HOUSE AKKADANUS, COMMANDING OFFICER OF THE GARMAA SYSTEM'S DEFENSE FLEET. PLEASE HAIL YOUR IDENTIFICATION AND PURPOSE OF YOUR GLORIOUS APPEARANCE.>>

<<PRAISE TO THE EMPEROR. PRECIOUS MANTHINGS, WE COME. WE SEE-UNDERSTAND NOW. PRAISE FOR WE OF THE FORSAKEN REMEMBER. KNEEL AND PREPARE. WE TAKE-TAKE. RESIST...AND THE ANGELS OF THE RAT WILL CONSUME-KILL.>>

There was a moment of confusion among the defense fleet, unable to properly comprehend and register this returning message. A fatal pause that awoken the Hero's barely contained savagery. So fast and unprovoked, she unleashed a full battery's butchery upon the leading Cruiser. Hammering through void shield and hull like a wild beast, her death didn't even make a sound in the stratosphere until minutes after. Her murderer pushing through her tearing corpse as a lion to an insignificant bird. 

The closest of the formations were near, slammed by lances of unnatural projectiles and beating ammunition that tore them from the midsections and out. Panicking machine spirits trying to communicate with the Battle Barge, but she paid no heed. She said her peace and now only ruination. As ships turned to prepare righteous vengeance upon this traitorous ship. 

A strike cruiser pulled into realspace. Then another. And another! And another! Four strike cruisers followed by a swarm of Imperial Naval ships. All holding similar bodies covered of those strange crystalline rocks like a nautical ship covered in barnacles.  Yet one, amongst them, was utterly covered in these 'warp-barnacles'. They all came for the planet, firing and devouring the fleet while their herald pierced the stratosphere.

<<CHANGING PICTS>> <<CAPITAL CITY ARORA::13:10:44...>>

The celestial gong of bells rang heavy and slow as the shadow of the Hero appeared from the heavens. So great and powerful, it drove a mixture of irrational fear and stricken awe to the faithful. Citizens stared and running, screaming and praising at the appearance of an Astartes ship of such mythical occurrence. The Adeptus Arbites attempted to rein and restore order, but soon lights of air-to-ground batteries rained upon lesser cities. Almost hiding the swarming black of transport detaching from the Battle Barge's belly like a beast vomiting its former meal. 

<<CHANGING PICT...FAST FORWARD...>>