Editing Warhammer 60K: Age of Dusk (Continued) (section)

==Section 48: Braiva’s Best and The Battle of A Thousand Emperors==


<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="100%">[The actions and exploits of Braiva’s Best in their war with Ahriman and his pawns have been organised into approximately chronological phases. When it comes to interstellar distances and the temperamental nature of warp travel, assigning precise dates has been problematic, thus I have elected to omit them here. These events occurred, for the purposes of this account, approximately concurrently with the Biel-Tan siege.]

'''Phase One: Recruitment'''

At some point, during the protracted and incessant wars within the Dominion of Change, the Disciples of Ceylan, the most detestable font of zealotry and spiteful terrorism in the region, began to bolster their numbers. They did this through recruitment, from the disgruntled and the desperate populations of the various worlds of the Dominion, who constantly vied with one another for the Imperial crown of the Theologian Union (''an empire in name only, thanks to the machinations of Ahriman'').<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

The Disciples found plenty of true believers, and even more ex-mercenaries and rogue psychopaths looking for a cause to kill in the name of. The increase in spontaneous warp storms across the entire Dominion merely fanned the flames of superstition and fear. Many preached that this was a sign from the Emperor of the Wasteland; the Death God was displeased that the people no longer followed their one true anointed emperor, Atebore Ceylan, the last of his Dynasty. Too many folks worshiped the ''Five-Headed False God of the Macharians'', or the ''Feathered Serpents of the Rubricae Sorcerers''.

Those deemed worthy of becoming one of the Disciples of Ceylan were voluntarily kidnapped, sedated and smuggled to the secret lair of the Disciples. This was an underground base on an undisclosed planet within the Dominion of Change, so as to protect Atebore from harm; even his footsoldiers could not know exactly where he was located.

Initiates were brought before Ceylan himself, and his decayed court. The throne room he had taken for his court had once been a temple to the Emperor, but dust and age had bleached it into sickly greys and the stench of must and dried blood coated every cobwebbed pew and featureless Saintly statue. Atebore himself seemed a decrepit ruin of a man; all dirty fingernails and soiled robes, with a dull iron crown resting upon a tangled mess of bedraggled white locks that framed an odious, sneering face.

The last aspiring Disciple had their hood removed by Linguil, Atebore’s most trusted Lieutenant, to reveal a hard faced woman beneath. She called herself Ell, and her obviously muscular form was barely concealed beneath the sackcloth every aspirant was required to wear before Ceylan.

Ceylan demanded of her oaths of fealty. The woman, even bound and kneeling before Ceylan, simply smiled.

“I will fight with you, or rather, I will fight with the men you hide behind, but I have a few demands of my own.”

Linguil struck her for her insolence, drawing blood with every furious blow. Nevertheless, Ell continued. “My associates have need of your intelligence network and your extensive web of contacts across the Dominion of Change. They will work with you, but my master cannot abide the evil doctrine you espouse, personified in that mummified lecher posing over there in his tinfoil crown.”

Linguil lashed her with a scourge taken from the wall, until her sackcloth was stained red. To the surprise and grudging admiration of many of the zealots, she did not scream, but rather grunted each time she was struck.

“You expect us to forsake our faith, our Emperor, just so we get an alliance with your mercenary brethren? You are a vain and foolish woman!” one Disciple crowed.

“Yes, and we are not mercenaries. We are space marines,” she spat gorily, one of her teeth falling away amidst the blood. The laughter of the assembled court drowned out the faint bleeping of the false tooth as it sat in the crimson pool.

“Delusional child! There are no female Astartes. You die with a pathetic joke on your lips,” Ceylan chuckled. 

Linguil drew his hellpistol, and pressed it to her head. “We decline your offer, faithless bitch. Now will you convert to the Emperor of the Wasteland, so that your soul may face oblivion upon your death, instead of the eternal torment of the harrowing vultures of the Ruinous Powers?”

She responded in a simple manner; twisting in her restraints with the coiling speed of a cobra, she clamped Linguil’s pistol-wrist between her teeth, and ripped away the tendons there with a wrench of her jaw. She broke from her restraints moments later, hauling the suddenly hand-deprived Linguil into the path of the startled gunfire of Ceylan’s guards. As Linguil was dissolved into a red mist by the heavy weapons, Ell leapt into cover, screaming something in high gothic. Only Ceylan, a Gothic scholar, understood the words.

“Behead the serpent!”

On cue, the walls of the temple exploded inwards, and six dozen space marines burst into the hall, and massacred the lead Disciples, sparing only those who threw aside their guns instantly. Though the lussorians were not Astartes, they were narcotically and genetically enhanced brutes in power armour, with boltguns every bit as lethal as the Angels of Deaths’. Semantics meant less than nothing in those few minutes of carnage.

Their leader, a giant in Tiger-striped armour, removed his helm. “Vulkan’s balls that felt good! We’ve been after you rats for years,” captain Farl, commander of the Lussorian space marines and seventh hero of Macharia, exclaimed with a belligerent snort. 

As Ell retrieved her tracking device from a pool of her own bloody vomit, another Narc-warrior arrived with her armour, while the cowering Atebore Ceylan was dragged before Farl, who draped himself over the would-be emperor’s throne like a man reclining upon his couch.

“I will not be captured like this...” ceylan muttered quietly, his voice quivering as he beheld the blood-drenched space marine.

“I agree,” Farl nodded, before he slowly closed his gauntlet around Ceylan’s throat. He fixed Atebore with a desolate stare as he slowly strangled the old man to death, before finally tearing out his larynx.

Ell, or rather Sergeant Ellios, his second in command, led squads into the bowels of the temple to hunt down the survivors, while Farl informed the prisoners that the terrorist network of Ceylan was ended. There would be no more suicide bombings of non-military targets. There would be no more zealous madness and mayhem unleashed upon the innocent, who had had no say in the evil Ahriman had perpetrated. They were now to be part of Braiva’s army; they would use their positions embedded in all the worlds of the Dominion, and guide the hand of the Macharian forces as they made their war upon Ahriman.

Once this was done, Farl made sure to raid Ceylan’s vintage amasec cellars, and his men and women celebrated their victory well that night.

###

Meanwhile, Braiva had sent out his other generals to procure allies for the war. Braiva knew his ragtag fleet and their Macharian native contingents were nowhere near enough to overcome Ahriman’s Cabal. Any attempts to ally with worlds within the Dominion failed, for each was ruled by selfish idiots who had each been crowned Emperor of the Theologian Union; none of them could see that Ahriman had deceived them into impotence and division.

Finding few allies within, Temestor Braiva was forced to look without, to the two largest empires that bordered the Dominion; the Kingly Estates of Praetoria, and the blood drenched Lychen Empire.

Faruk the Pitiless, captain of the Vashiri and sixth hero of Macharia, was sent with an honour guard to treat with his cannibalistic kinfolk. Meanwhile, the more regal and courtly nature of the Kingdom of Praetoria required the diplomacy of Duc de Aronelles, the leader of the warrior princes of Chevanti and fifth hero of Macharia.

Temestor’s orders were to try and persuade these two empires to bring their fleets adn armies to bear in the coming fight against Ahriman. If they did manage to do so, they had secondary orders, which pertained to the coming conflict, which they were forbidden from discussing with anyone other than Braiva and the rulers of these allied forces themselves. These orders were known only as ''The Second Procession''

When Faruk entered Lychen space, he was not greeted by welcoming parties of dignitaries or ambassadors. His vessel was met by a fleet of serrated, dagger-like cruisers, grand cruisers and various escorts as similarly fierce and barbaric in aspect. His ship was boarded, and Faruk and his Vashiri were taken to the commander of this dread fleet. Like all Lychen, this commander was a brutal haemovore death cultist, his hulking form modified by surgeries and flensing blood rites to be a thing of violence; a living instrument of slaughter. The commander, Galrut, didn’t care whom Faruk represented, he was just another killer. But Faruk and his men were natives of this violent and fearsomely independent empire, and knew he could make his voice heard. Faruk was allowed to undertake the pilgrimage of maiming; the only way a mere citizen of the Lychen Empire could treat with the Lychen’s Lord of Knives, the highest authority in the carnivorous culture of Lychen.

Faruk was allowed to select the greatest amongst his group to act as ‘ambassador’. Faruk chose Farciar the Red, his banner bearer and adopted son, to be his ambassador and champion, for already in his young life, farciar had distinguished himself as the most lethal and effective of Faruk’s host. The pilgrimage of maiming required that the selected ambassador would face champions from each layer of Lychen bureaucracy and duel them, each time getting closer to the higher stations and offices of the haemovore metropolis. Farciar fought the champions in barbed fighting pits, atop plinths, across command bridges and in specially organised rings. Though these bouts were never to the death, they were not bloodless; Farciar paid his way for the next duel by sending bodyparts severed from his bested opponents, to the next Lychen office. Sometimes it was an ear, sometimes a finger, oftimes he needed to only send them a clutch of broken teeth from his adversary.

Slowly but surely, the Vashiri were allowed to penetrate the inner sanctum of the very highest nobility of the empire, hopping from space station to space station. Each time, the stations seemed to grow larger, and the populations of Lychen watching the bouts grew into baying crowds of hostile locals. If farciar slipped up even once, the fiery headed, ritually scarred youth and all his father’s cohorts would be cast back tot he edge of Lychen space.

But he endured and eventually, they reached the red world itself; the crowned seat of the Lord of Knives himself.

The gates of the palace were thrown open, and the small gathering of Vashiri entered, watched by the heavily armoured Carnus Praetorians, the personal guard of the Lord himself. The Vashiri bore the flesh banner, as was tradition, but also flew the golden flag of Macharia, and the five-headed lion atop a golden eagle; symbol of the Imperium Pentus. It was a bold statement. Farciar and Faruk walked at the head of the group, the elder man a hulking barbarian, clad in skins and with a shaggy beard threaded with pagan totems and fetishes. Farciar was slighter and shorter, and his chest was bare, save for the ritual scars and the dark red gore that dried in the grooves the scars left in his flesh. Instead of his banner, he bore two hook-bladed machetes, left uncleaned ever since the pilgrimage had begun. His teeth of adamantine glittered in his jaws as he smiled a shark’s smile towards the throne ahead.

Before them, the great throne room of the Lord of Knives dwarfed their party, and at the far end loomed a titantic throne, composed entirely of skulls, carved and sculpted to fit together seamlessly, before being coated in bronze. From behind this throne rose an Aquila of exquisite gold, illuminated by the flickering light of a dozen burning braziers.

Upon the throne sat Jurassek, the five hundredth Lord of the Daggers of Haemos. Jurassek was a giant clad in ornate carapace and mail, with a hundred daggers sheathed in great belts banding his barrel chest. His lower jaw had been removed and been raplaced with the bionic relic maw of saint Vashan, a clear sign of Jurassek’s majesty. When Farciar setted forwards, his jaws opened like a bear trap being set, and the Lord of the Lychen laughed, the sound volcanic. 

“You bring me a boy. Your message is entrusted to a youngling, barely even blooded in battle?” His voice was a hideous thing, like the clashing of rocks.

Faruk stepped forwards, uncowed. “The entreaty we bring is so righteous, a mere boy bested all those who sought to impede it! Hear the offer we bring from Temestor Braiva, the Liberator of Macharia, and from the Five Primarchs, the sons and almighty champions of the Blood Emperor! You must join your power with ours, so that united we may slay the false god, and drape his flayed skin as a banner above his broken holdfast!”

“Speak out of turn again, General Faruk, and i shall eat your lungs!” Jurassek boomed, jaws crashing together discordantly as he yelled. Faruk closed his mouth, but continued to glare at the giant.

Farciar did not wait. He broke from the group, and charged the throne alone. The Carnus Guard drew their axes, but Jurassek waved them off as he stood to meet the boy’s blades, his own serrated sword sailing from its scabbard to deflect the machetes easily.

Jurrasek laughed as they clashed again, dueling beneath the red sky of Lychen, to a hall of corpse-silent butchers.

As faruk and Farciar fought for not only a new ally, but also their lives, Duc de Aronelles, a contingent of Chevantai and a regiment of Gamma-Meson Psykguard were sent under a banner of parlay to the Praetorian Kingdom. Upon reaching the agreed neutral territory between Praetorian and Thousand-Empire space, Aronelles’s small fleet was met by the 2nd Royal Fleet of Praetoria.

The praetorian fleet was a wonder to behold; hundreds of capital ships built according to the Old Imperial style. Many of the vessels were veterans of the infamous Regicide centuries of M42, built with the aid of the refugee Gothic Fleet which came to Praetoria in those troubled times. The two vessels leading the fleet were even older still. There was the venerable battlecruiser StormChild, that every Pentus child recognized as one of the few vessels of the mythical Frateris fleet which survived the storm of the Emperor’s wrath, after its then captain refused to attack Sebastian Thor. StormChild had a plain grey hull, divorced of any finery, which only marked it out as more distinctive amidst the great gold and crimson fleet of Praetorian. War’s Spite was a near-unique Battleship, with great rows of pectoral and dorsal weapon batteries fixed into colossal turrets, with starboard and port flanks festooned with launchers and torpedo tubes. This was the flagship of Admiral Wellslay, and it was covered in statues and cathedrals depicting its many deeds in battle.

Aronelles’ fleet was led into the heart of the Praetorian Kingdom; a stellar realm grown rich and powerful in its non-committal policies. The Chevantai princes knew all the social niceties and protocol as they met with the great and sprawling aristocracy; they made sure to never snub or be perceived as belittling a noble family, no matter how lesser and money-grubbing they might truthfully be.

The Prince Regent threw a grant banquet in honour of the dignitaries of Macharius. Whole regiments of Praetorian Guards, in their blood red parade uniforms, marched past the lavish apartments set out for the delegation, alongside tank brigades and the diverse and colourful colony world troopers Praetoria had access to.

The ceremonies and prententious meetings continued, but it became clear to Aronelles that the Praetorians were avoiding presenting the Macharian contingent to the King himself. The Gamma-Meson Psykguard discreetly organised a secret meeting with the Royal Gentlemen, the secret service of Praetoria. There, they leaved of King Harold III’s profound madness. The King had ordered the home fleet, and all its armies to remain within their own realms, to protect him from ghosts, and in his delirium he continued to give out conflicting orders to his fleets, which saw them travelling from world to world within their Empire, searching for terrorist who didn’t exist, and bringing back artefacts that were essentially refuse the King was convinced was valuable beyond all reckoning.

Duce de Aronelles tried to gain a meeting with the king, but his Son denied them. It seemed likely that the praetorian grand fleet would never aid them.

His last hope was a final desperate parlay with Admiral Wellsey, the High Commander of the Praetorian Royal Fleets. He alone seemed immune to the entitled nonsense of the nobles and sycophants of the court. He alone might listen to reason, and join the Heroes of Macharia in the Liberation of the Dominion of Change, and the end of Lord Ahriman, the would-be god...

As the Chevantai parlayed, back on Macharia, General Temestor Braiva received an odd message from his son Obediah, onboard Tyme’s Absolution. The battlebarge had intercepted a bulk freighter heading towards Macharia. The ship’s only cargo; a skeletal humanoid wrought in metal, a bedraggled human man with a killer’s smile, and a female with eyes and hair an impossibly lustrous gold.

She spoke with supreme confidence that took Obediah’s soldiers by surprise.

“Get me to the Black Cube, men of Vulkan, and I will destroy Ahriman Godhead.”

'''Phase Two: The Battle of A Thousand Emperors'''

Temestor Braiva could not wait for Duce De Aronelles and Faruk to return from their missions. Upon receiving the mysterious trio of figures onboard his flagship, he knew that he had to strike at Ahriman, and soon. He could not afford to slowly conquer the thousand Theologian empires of the Dominion of Change, as he had originally intended.

In consultation with the golden woman Crolomere, Braiva (who by now was nearing the limit of rejuvenative surgery’s effectiveness) decided he had to enact his invasion plan early, if he was to ever see the defeat of his foes before his death.

The remnants of Braiva’s Best, including Farl’s Space marines, Roderus’s veterans, Obediah’s Varseen Troopers and Darbane’s Plasma Commandoes, joined with the Macharian navy and set out with all the fleet assets they could muster. Temestor sat upon his command dais, plugged into his life support systems at all times now. At his right hand was his ever loyal son, while to his left, Crolomere watched his viewscreen with concealed anxiety.

They launched their first surprise attack on one of the petty emperors’ planets, striking at their cities and launching an attack upon their fleet in dock. The fearsome first strike was devastating, but it did not finish off the forces of this planet. Braiva’s fleet, to the surprise of this emperor, fled before his vengeful fleet. Enraged, yet secretly pleased by this demonstration of his superiority, this emperor sent his forces after Braiva; their orders were to kill the uppity pretender to his rightful throne.

Braiva fled into the territory of another emperor, and there his battle-worn fleet bombarded the startled Imperator of this world, destroying his flagship as the emperor watched impotently from his palace. This aroused the demented fury of this pretender too, who ordered his whole navy to destroy Braiva, ignoring the serpentine council of the Thousand Sons sorcerer living in his palace. Once again, in the face of a fleet of similar size to Braiva’s own, he chose to flee, sacrificing some of his escorts to allow his main force to escape the system.

The battle of the thousand emperors began as a sprawling hit and run campaign, with Braiva’s Best slipping through his enemy’s nets after dealing them superficial yet humiliating blows.

Word began to spread amongst the Thousand Planetary Emperors; one of their number, the Macharian Emperor, had lost his mind. His battered fleet was lost in their territory, and surrounded. Hungry for a propaganda win, the emperors each sent fleets hunting Braiva. Each of them wanted their armadas to be the ones who destroyed Temestor once and for all. They reasoned that defeating him would prove to their rivals that they were the sole inheritor of the Theologian Union’s Imperial mantle, and Ceylan’s heir.

To an outside observer, Braiva’s actions were those of a madman; he now had thousands of ragtag fleets baying for his blood, and his fleet wasn’t even at full strength. The emperors launched their entire naval might against him, and eventually they would catch up with him.

Braiva was forced to refuel his fleet in the dead system of Galaiph. It was here, at last, that the emperors’ fleets reached him. His fleet closed about Tyme’s Absolution, as staggeringly huge numbers of vessels warped into the system, filling the sensor banks like angry stormfronts. This mass of ships were not allied in any way, Braiva could tell by the hateful chatter between them, and the fact more than a few escorts of the enemy were firing upon each other, even as they closed the colossal celestial distance to reach Braiva’s own forces.

All was quiet on the bridge of the Absolution, as Braiva closed his eyes, muttering to himself; perhaps prayer, or perhaps a reiteration of his own plan. The crew set to work quietly, organising their ships into spherical attack formations to ward off the approaching enemies. Braiva’s ships were more advanced, but the disparate Theologian forces had a tremendous numbers advantage.

Battleships and cruisers swarmed around each other, unleashing endless cavalcades of ordinance and lance fire. Across the system, Braiva’s fleet continued to lead his frustrated foes on a merry chase, but they were still losing vessels, to attrition and the sheer desperation of the emperors’ forces to eliminate their enemies in their own imperator’s name. The rival Imperila factions fought each other as much as Braiva’s fleet. The climax of the Battle of a Thousand Emperor’s was a confusing mess of intersecting naval duels and bewildered flight sof fighters and bombers, attacking the nearest enemy vessels, regardless of which faction they belonged to.

Darbane’s Ryzan-catachan Commandoes performed dozens of boarding sorties, Farl and Ell stormed the bridges of capital ship after capital ship, while Roderus found his veterans defending the Macharian vessels from all manner of outlandish private imperial guard forces, mercenaries and paramilitary opportunists, fighting for masters they could nto even remember the names of.

A Storm Trooper regiment of Emperor Johan Ward’s People’s Imperium of Theologia managed to breach the defences of Tyme’s Absolution, where Crolomere’s man Kage and the machine-creature Jaxx joined the Tempered Edge Veterans of Roderus in brutal fighting through the ship’s narrow confines. Kage was once a Lieutenant and his training reasserted itself as he led fire teams in flanking manoeuvres against the exotic, silver-scaled soldiers trying to assassinate Braiva. Meanwhile, the Iron Man Jaxx decimated the enemy with terrifying speed and mathematical precision; he was an automated killer, with a truly industrial capacity for dispatching foes in the most expedient and efficient manner.

But even once the last storm trooper gurgled his last breath, the danger was not over. The enemy was everywhere, filling the system with their insane military belligerence. There would be no escape this time.

Fortunately, Braiva had never intended to flee this battle. For almost a month, the fleets dueled themselves to a brutal stalemate.

Then, like a great rippling wave of doubt and inaction, the enemy fleets disengaged, ceasing their attacks before retreating to the edge of the system. It took three days before all enemy fleets disengaged and formed these defensive formations. Crolomere was baffled. Had Braiva’s bravery provoked them to spare his forces? Had some psychic secret weapon subdued the enemies? Braiva’s dry lips cracked with a smile.

“Nothing so honorable as that my dear. I believe these fine fellows have been receiving messages from their home-worlds. Likely each message is quite similar. ‘Our emperor is captured. You are ordered to surrender in his majesties name’ or some such.”

“But how?”

Temestor Braiva explained that the Second Procession had performed its role.

Faruk and Aronelles had been successful in gathering allies, and had followed their secret orders to the letter. On Braiva’s orders, they had spread out to the thousand empires. With ultimate orbital superiority, each planet was forced to surrender, and their emperors were captured, their orbital docks destroyed and their militaries humbled.

In less than a month, the Lychen and Praetorian fleets had bested the near-defenseless fleets of the thousand emperors and essentially conquered their worlds. Once word reached the fleets at Galaiph, they realized that they had been defeated. Their emperors had been outmaneuvered and there was little they could do now to stop it.

Braiva’s victory was finally cemented when the barbed dagger-shaped ships of the Lychen navy translated into the system, led by Emperor Jurrasek’s monstrous flagship Meglodon. This fleet was followed soon after by the far larger Praetorian 1st and 2nd Fleets, led by Wellsley aboard War’s Spite. One by one, the opposing fleets surrendered, and swore fealty to Temestor Braiva and to the Imperium Pentus.

United in an armada of colossal scale, Temestor finally had a force large enough to assail Ahriman himself. After weeks of treaty signing and resupply in a neighboring system, the gargantuan force plotted a course for the planet where Ahriman chose to situate his Black Cube; Tallarn.

During the warp transit, Crolomere hid herself in a warded part of Tyme’s Absolution, where the pet monstrous pets of the ship’s original Fire beast owners had been stored. In this dank hole, Crolomere pleaded with her long-dead father for protection. She had never believed in His divinity, but she was afraid and prayed anyway. Not for herself, for she was immortal, but for all the mortals she had led into Ahriman’s den; all the men and women who would die, just to give her a chance to end Ahriman and thwart his plan to ascend to not only daemonhood, but godhood. She feared for Kage, who slept by her side. But mostly, she feared for the helpless, mortal soul which she could feel growing inside her.

Braiva remained on the bridge during the warp transit, for he was too frail to make a journey anywhere else onboard. Such a vast movement of ships through the immaterium was always going to attract the attention of daemons, and the Gellar fields glowed white hot with the number of daemonspawn battering against them. But this commotion attracted another fell sentience.

An apparition of a tall, perfect giant burst into life on the bridge, bypassing the Gellar fields through sheer willpower. The vision of anatomical perfection was wreathed in blue and yellow flames that danced across its ethereal flesh. The guards on the bridge opened fire on the entity, but the unreal thing ignored the weapons, which passed through it like daggers through smoke. Slowly, the naked giant strolled towards Temestor Braiva, who unsteadily rose to his feet to meet this enemy, uncowed by this projection.

“For a mortal, you are intriguingly troublesome. Your ruse to defeat my deception was worthy of a child of Tzeentch itself. Truly you are mighty; perhaps the mightiest human warlord this region of the galaxy has seen in an age,” the apparition explained with cold clarity, its voice effortlessly powerful. “Yet, in the end, the mightiest human troubles me as much as the mightiest insect. For, you are, in the end, all too human, Liberator of Macharia. All too mortal. And mortals do well to avoid arousing the ire of their god.”

The voice was unmistakably that of Ahzek Ahriman. 

“We will kill this god,” Braiva hissed, drawing his sidearm, emptying his las-mag into the ethereal Ahriman to no avail.

Casually, almost gently, the ghostly form of Ahriman reached into Braiva’s chest, and stopped his heart. Temestor Braiva sighed once, and fell. 

“Throne,” gasped Braiva, and then he was gone.

As Braiva’s horrified bodyguards rushed to his side, the Gellar field finally banished the evil specter from the ship.

Though Temestor had perished, his son took up his father’s mantle, and when they finally translated into the Tallarn System, an armada alloyed together by hate prepared to face the full fury of an unborn god and his abominations.
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