Tales of the Rancid Blade: Part Three: Captured

Succubus Ylanoo was breathing heavily. Standing in a field. Her upper torso rising and falling with each breath. Short stubby grasses surrounded her on the gentle slope. A line of blood and button sized drops were scattered on her burnt orange amour. The blood continued onto the flesh of her exposed shoulder. The blood of grots was everywhere. It covered the ground and amongst it lay the chucks and forms of the rag covered bodies of small green goblins. She held her whip Agoniser to one side catching her breath. It writhed of its own accord. Her gladiators stood nearby in similar states of recovery. The sheer volume was almost overwhelming. Every time she had drawn her whip it had felled scores of them and still there were more. During the fight she had seen Dylathu literally picking them up and cleaving them apart with his Hydra Knives. None of the elves had fallen but they had been taxed.

What trickery was this? She asked herself. She had fought vile orks before but this fight was beneath her. The grots offered no resistance beyond their sheer volume. She looked up to see her raider being pelted with small slugs, it jerked about in the air, the impacts not really damaging it. Then a massive shell hit the front scoop of the raider lifting the gunner from his position and pulverizing the craft. Two of the gunner’s limbs came free of his body as the impact carried him. The flaming wreck of the Raider hit the ground before the gunner’s body did. She turned toward the direction the shot had come from and saw another mammoth swarm of these insignificant grots. They were close. Shells started hitting her brethren. Her rage at being forced to fight these pathetic adversaries was almost equalized with being caught in the open. It was all that sustained her.

One of her sparing partners, Accolade Gumath was hit in the jaw by a slug and his head came apart. Another wych fell, a shell hitting his chest armor, searing through it, and clearing a massive cavity in his back. Ylanoo loosed a cracked armor plate from her leg and ran toward the grots. It fell away like so may of her peers. This fight was punishment for her disloyalty. Her lord had become displeased with her. He had sent her to fight the foe that was most beneath her. Having her kill these was his way of punishing her. When the wyches finally hit the grots there were only three of the gladiators left. Ylanoo’s Agonzier flew into the ranks of raging grots splitting one clear in half. It seemed like there were hundreds of them. One seemed to almost fly out of the crowd and hit her in the head. He hung on. Another leapt up fastening himself to her wrist with a bite. Ylanoo pulled them off but they came back faster than they could be removed.

She saw the nets fly overhead and glanced to see her last peer pulled to the ground. A long rusty knife slid into the side of his neck, the goblin grinning. The net pulled her to the ground, her shoulder striking the dense earth. The mob closed in. She screamed not in pain but in anguish. The ultimate punishment had been metered out upon her. She was a captive to the lowest, a prisoner of the weakest, a plaything of the playthings. As they holstered her bound form up over them she pined for that rusty blade.

Tales of the Rancid Blade: Part Two: The Curved Courtyards of Commoragh

Small white up-lights along walls did little to influence the black granite floors bathed in red. Long passageways lined with pillars lead to open air chambers. Statues of the kin of old still stood in the curved courtyards of Commoragh. They stood with cloths or hoods thrown over their stone faces. The statues’ blasphemers had been unable to look upon the faces of their old cousins and were too afraid to pull the statues to the ground. Granite stairways led to rooms long empty and pillars supported the high ceilings. Each day slaves quietly scrubbed the floors to a high polished shine. Through arched windows along a passageway the bruise colored Commorragh sky could be seen.

Lady Hosphel walked these passageways confident in her almost supreme power. As she walked long heeled boots clicked on the stone floors and small pendants about her hips rattled together. A long purple robe hung about her shoulders to the floor. It was tied at the waist. She carried herself as one who holds the knowledge that none could best her in martial combat. Her mind had been excoriated of fear and muted to the horrors she had seen. In fact she had come to love those horrors that she had faced.

She entered a small open air court yard. It was octagonal in shape with no apparent exits. Beyond the simple arch where she had entered the wall sections were dull and unpolished. In some places the black stone seemed rotten, blotchy and crumbing. It was as if this small garden had been abandoned even by the slaves. It was in direct contrast to the perfectly manicured walls in the previous passageways. A burnt tree stood in the middle of the small court yard. It was about twice her height but seemed also to cower from her confident form. The tree had once grown from an opening in the ground but now its charred remains simply twisted up like an old skeletal hand protruding from a sleeve.

Statues stood where each of the wall sections met. They were raised on dais’ and looked down on the tree in the middle of the garden. These Eldar forms were from the old times when this was the city of all Eldar. Those old ancestors had their mouths and eyes bound with red cloth.

Hosphel stopped before the tree. She reached for one of the trinkets that hung about her waist and lifted it. It looked much like a small coin. She rubbed it between her forefinger and thumb and as she did she watched the covered eyes of the old ancestors to be assured they were not looking. In an instant the tree was transformed. Its branches re-knitting themselves as if a spasmodic force were shaking the tree and forcing it against its will to remake itself. As it formed into a gate before her, like a rusty gate into an old lonely garden, she recalled millennia ago when she would never have had to force this gate. It had been always open. As she stepped through the gate she recalled that once all the places these gates had led to had been bright and warm. She had never concerned herself about what lay beyond. Her dress whipped about her, blown by a strong warm wind as she stepped from the old garden into a chamber far below the surface of the city that few knew. As the wind settled the fabric of her dress she felt her flesh chill at the prospect of what lay before her and though she enjoyed the sensation her once mighty confidence was gone.

Tales of the Rancid Blade: Part One: The Rancid Blade

The Grand Archon Actev Nu of the Kabal of the Rancid Blade reclined on a solid backless Romanesque sofa aloft one of the many balconies of his mighty citadel. The view below of the Dark City’s towers was so familiar to him. Crimson, sultry, cruel. Behind him appeared the high mistress of the Archon’s gladiatorial court Lady Drachite Hosphel. She was dressed in the long orange robes of the Archon’s chamber rather than her combat attire.
“Why do you not prepare for the hunt?” the old Archon asked his eyes not moving from the skyline. “My arena grows silent”.
“My gladiators and wyches ready themselves as we speak” she spoke quietly also looking out to the red of the sky. “I need the shadow for my protection”.
“Do you not trust your own skills?” The Archon asked “Do you fear pain or combat?” He turned to face her, leaning on his elbow.
“No. I seek to gather the most tools and adversaries for your arena and do not concern myself with my own prowess” She replied. “I seek the most diabolical foes for thee, the best prepared and inconceivable enemies, and the most appropriate nemesis”. He slowly sat up on his sofa shifting his feet to the granite floor and looked up at her for signs of betrayal. She squatted down before him on the balls of her bare feet looking into his old eyes with no more vice in her heart than what he saw and knew was there. “Take all you desire, all the lances and reavers, all the raiders and all the keys to all the gates. Make your cult as ferocious as those you seek”. She grinned revealing etched teeth beyond cold red lips. The Archon grinned also reaching to a silver tray at his side and taking from it a large piece of blue stained cheese. He placed it between his lips.

Tales of the Rancid Blade: Prolouge: The Sunward Side of Mordia

The sunward side of Mordia is a twisted fractured tumult of blasted rock and glass. Desolate and lonesome, it stands in contrast to the night strewn side of the planet with its hives of congested humanity. The hive cities cling parasitically to the forever night side of Mordia.

There is a pilgrimage from the sweltering nighttime side of Mordia to the sun scrutinized side. It is told that Confessor Sylax made this walk once, as an accolade, a sandal footed novice. Long before he wore the mantel of Arch Confessor and long before the siege of Haruum. It was at Haruum where he led the newly formed 27th Mordian Regiment to victory. For fifteen years he led them against the vast alien horde and prevailed. He renamed the regiment the “Hammers” and they swore fidelity to him for all time. It is said Colonel Steib, the leader of the 27th, can withstand the horrible wounds wrought on him only because Sylax wishes it.

Preachers, zealots, evangelicals, pilgrims all have walked the eight year trek through the hive grottos and residential cylos, down across the Grand Gateway of Night, into the twilight shanty towns that surround the hives for hundreds of miles. Two years walking the Trail of the Desperate through the hive shanties fighting off underhive scum and brutal gangers. As the pilgrim walks he walks farther and farther from the protective watch of the Iron Guard and the calculations of the Tetrarchs of Mordia. Sylax walked these ways, sometimes in shadows and sometimes holding the light of the Imperium high above his head as a torch. He walked using the darkness when it suited him and revealing the light when he sensed fear among his foes.

The ‘sunrise’ of Mordia is one in which the farther one walks toward the sun the higher it rises in the sky. The point at which the pilgrim first sees Mordia’s stationary sun peaking above the horizon is called the Balance of Mordia. The ground in the place where one first spies the sun is strewn with the dead and their possessions. It is cursed. Shacks sit, many empty and dust strewn, where pilgrims have stopped on their journey often never to leave. Whispers tell that decades after Sylax first passed this way on his pilgrimage, he chose this place to parley with the cursed Eldar. He shared drink with the devil and his mistresses. Wretched fools who saw the horrible handshake were driven mad by Sylax’s scheming. Shrines have been erected to the mighty balance of day and night that this place represents. As one proceeds one finds the humidity of the night receding to reveal Mordia’s true character: the nearby sun’s hell blasted fury.

Pilgrims who have made it this far, when the sun is full above the horizon, are called the Wayward. The trail becomes vague marked only by the cracked bones of the fallen, the broken shoes, discarded objects, the skulls of twelve thousand years. Pilgrims have made this trek since before Horus made his foul pilgrimage to the halls of Terra so long ago. Pilgrims pick their way through badlands of razor rocks and blunt glass, of salt fields and sand dunes. They walk past the face of the Morall Mountains, and the Horn itself. As they walk for days the sun rises slowly, never setting, only as they move does the sun seem to slide toward the highpoint of the sky. There is a place, marked only by a sand torn imperial icon where Sylax’s last follower fell. Though the sun is high in the sky Pilgrims who make it this far know they still have a year to travel before they reach solace.

That place where the sun is at its most highest the pilgrimage comes to an end. It is called Mission Del Mordia. When most reach this spot they see only the lonely image of a shanty town. Many structures have fallen and others are scattered about the landscape encircling a small icon to the Emperor. To have traveled for so long and to find only ruin have driven men to die of madness. However, it is told that those of faith who see this desolation and still have faith in the Emperor find something beyond the shacks. They find an oasis in the desert. For those still faithful an old Mission stands along with a vineyard and a lake tended by cloistered sisters. The Order of the Cloistered Madam tends the grapes and bathes those that make it to the Mission and still have faith.

Though Arch Confessor Sylax has made peace with the Archons of Commoragh and holds sway over a vast Imperial Guard Legion and has hundreds of minions tending to his vile plans throughout the Imperium he still finds this garden when he visits, he gains sustenance from the wines of The Cloistered Madam, and is tended in by the sisters because he has faith in the Emperor of Man.