IX – The Fourteenth Legion
The Emperor gives you one of his own ships for the journey to the Cenotaph system, some sleek and murderous predator of the galactic depths. You pay little attention to the specifics, content to leave the details to the ship's captain, for the prospect of your upcoming command rightly occupies virtually all your attention. You've absorbed and internalised every strategic and tactical text written by an Imperial commander or considered worth referencing for the last thousand years or so, but that just grants you the baseline. You need to understand your command in specific, the character and demeanour of your sons of the Fourteenth Legion, and for that there is one source you have come to rely on above all others.
"The Unspeakable King was a pre-Imperial warlord of some considerable notoriety," Lackland Thorn says when you consult him, tapping at a data-slate as he consolidates the information you asked for. The ship likely has some manner of briefing room or auditorium for such things, but your quarters serve well enough, and this way none of the Unbroken are in peril of getting lost on the way. "The warlord clans of Old Albia were among his most notable supporters, alongside more mythical agents like the Hollow Ones and a veritable menagerie of creatures plucked from darkest fable. Truth be told the lack of verifiable detail has long been a personal irritation of mine, for it makes it damnably hard to sift the truth out of the embellishment of generations."
Terra had its Overlords too, it seems, though you cannot help but wonder at the sheer innocence of Lackland's imagination. You have seen some of the stories circulating about Old Earth and the horrors of the unification wars, monsters and daemons to match anything you faced upon Barbarus, yet it seems that Thorn's neatly ordered world has no place for anything of the kind.
"Through military might and brutal terror tactics, the King rose from a backwater warlord to hold most of Terra in his grasp," the remembrancer continues, falling readily into the storyteller's cadence as he paints a picture from detail and digression, "so feared was he, so pervasive and omnipresent his reputation, that to this day the Dusk Raiders paint their right arms red in symbolic reference to his merciless and bloody grasp."
"They honour an Overlord?" Caipha interjects, incredulous and aghast, slamming a fist against the wall. You think he means to continue, but the groan of metal buckling under his fist distracts him long enough for Typhon to interject.
"They choose to acknowledge their heritage," your oldest friend and comrade says in a quiet voice, his gaze far away, "no matter how dark, no matter the pain it brings to them or others. There is something honourable in that."
There is silence in the room for a moment, thick and awkward, all present aware of Typhon's mixed blood and none quite willing to engage with or deny the conflicted perspective he espouses. After a heartbeat or two, Lackland clears his throat and continues.
"I mention the King solely for the context he provides to the Albian Clans, who both served him loyally for a century, and also overthrew him and drove all his dark spawn and extended dynasty to extinction over generations," he explains, brushing aside the dark legends of forgotten days in favour of the soldiers and societies of now, "Such deeds won them respect and admiration across Terra, but also a considerable degree of fear and distance. They were content to dwell apart from the rest of mankind for a time, but when the Emperor arose, they saw in him another tyrant like the one they had so recently deposed, and stood against him without reservation."
Thorn isn't quite so clumsy as to highlight the parallels, but you hear them all the same and know they can only be deliberate. Warriors of a cruel overlord, who turned on him and overthrew him only to retreat into a life of near isolation… the parallels are uncanny, and if the strategic reports are to be trusted they have even adopted a heavy infantry tradition you find disconcertingly familiar. How much of that can truly be coincidence? Logic tells you it must be, for you were separated by half a galaxy and there are as many differences as similarities, and yet you wonder.
"Tyrant?" Skorvall grunts, a fierce grin on a face that not even your father could make beautiful, "Dangerous word."
"I merely call upon quotations and first-hand accounts, as is the historian's duty," Thorn replies with a thoroughly academic sniff, "In any case, while the Albians were far from the only polity to stand against the Emperor in the Unification Wars, they were by far one of the most tenacious. Indeed, it is considered a point of pride in their culture to this day that they were never defeated, having fought the Emperor and his legions to a stalemate and forced him to offer terms. That he was willing to do so, going before them as diplomat and emissary instead of conquering warlord, assuaged many of their concerns, and in the end they became one of the most zealous supporters of the cause of Unity."
"Hah! They sound like my kind of bastard," Mhorgax snorts, perched like a particularly ungainly fowl on a chair much too small for him, "Good on them for bloodying the golden man's nose. Good on the man for taking them in, at that. Recognises quality, he does."
"It is a tendency one sees repeated over and again across the history of our young Imperium," Lhorgath muses quietly, choosing to study a piece of abstract art on the wall that you gave up trying to understand hours ago, "the Emperor defeats his foes in battle, then makes allies and subjects of them through fealty and partnership. There are practical benefits to robbing a formidable enemy of an entire generation of their sons, but I wonder more at the principles behind it."
"I'm afraid I find myself woefully unqualified to comment on such topics," Lackland says, a touch hurried, "In any case, the Fourteenth Legion was founded on primarily Albian stock, and has by this stage amassed a battle record some eight decades long, rich in stalwart courage and unflinching dedication. They have ever proven honourable partners at the negotiation table, and the first to the defence of any imperial vassal or innocent foreigner. Strategically their loadout is well rounded and adaptable, though they have displayed a doctrinal fondness for heavy assaults and close-range engagements in the past, making battles a test of personal quality and trusting in their sheer resilience to carry them through."
"Tell us of their weaknesses," Vioss chimes in, squatting with his back to the wall, seemingly still uncomfortable with how high off the floor he remains, "their flaws."
"Sir, I must protest," Thorn says stiffly, "I am not in the habit of slandering the Imperium's noble warriors, nor of tainting your perception before you have had a chance to make a judgement yourself."
"Do it anyway," Vioss chuckles bleakly, shaking his head, "Everyone has them. Their little foibles, their weaknesses, their quirks and inconsistencies. You can't judge a man by his strengths alone. It is where he is lacking that defines him. That's where the roots of his failures lie."
"He's right," you say, interjecting before Thorn can protest again. It is surprising to you that you need to do so, but then perhaps it should not be. Lackland is no son of Barbarus, after all. He has never known your frailty, your weakness. Even you, blessed and inhuman as you are, knew a life of limitations and setbacks for most of your existence. If it were not so, you might have slain your wretched keeper in the first days you could grasp a weapon.
"Very well," Thorn sighs, shaking his head, "If the Dusk Raiders have any weakness, it is this – they do not retreat. Faced with unequal foes and unfavourable circumstances, they are wont to nail their colours to the mast and fight on regardless. Such relentless determination has won several stunning victories where others predicted only defeat, many of them worthy of song and story, but it has also ensured that the Legion's attrition rate is among the very highest in the Imperium."
"You call that a flaw?" Morghax laughs roughly, "That's what war is, little man."
"I might be tempted," Typhon points out, shaking his head, "To stand fast in the face of superior foes is commendable… but if the limitation is material, born of failed equipment and improper tools, can you really commend someone who marches on regardless?"
You wonder if that get that tendency from you. Not once have you ever acknowledged a true and lasting defeat, only ever limitations that prevent you from seizing victory on this single day, but what might come if you were denied even that excuse? If your tools failed and your body gave out, if nothing save your will remained… would you press on regardless? Would you win, in such circumstance, or simply condemn yourself to an idiot's grave?
You suppose you'll find out. You've yet to meet your match, but it is out there somewhere, and one day you will cross paths at last. On that day, you will at last know the true measure of your worth.
-/-
Cenotaph is a dead world, barren beyond all hope and history of life, yet once glance at the surface tells you why the appellation was chosen. Across its bleak surface stand a thousand towering graves, artificial mountains of quarried stone shaped and guided by tools colossal in their scope, each commemorating in a dozen different tongues the lives and deaths of an entire civilisation that none who look upon the stone will ever get to meet. The files you access give you no idea who originally raised them, though there are enough variations in style and substance that consensus holds multiple custodians have claimed built upon the world across uncounted ages, but the Dusk Raiders needed no firm answers to see the worth of the tradition and continue it in their turn.
You wonder, silently, if the Unspeakable King and the cultural he brought occupy one of those freshly raised pillars, or if the Legion is considered among its ranks to be some living continuation. You are not likely to ask, all else considered, but the thought haunts you in quiet moments as you prepare for your descent.
It is in the shadow of one of those cyclopean monuments that your Legion has assembled, and in a chariot of rumbling iron and hissing steam you descend through the storm-wracked skies to meet them. You say nothing, hear nothing, existing in total silence and solitude that not even your Unbroken can pierce, until at last the shuttle rings with the dull thump of landing and the hatch grinds open. Plumes of coolant fill the air as you emerge, wreathing your arms and coiling around your legs as you descend the ramp and set foot upon the surface, and when your footsteps ring on metal you realise that a great podium has been raised with the landing pad attached. From here you can see out unto the bleak horizon, the rugged slopes of distant mountains lit by streaks of emerald lightning that pierce the blackened clouds, but it is what lies close at hand that draws your interest.
The Fourteenth Legion stands in perfect order, great squares of posthuman warriors stood at parade rest from here unto the mid horizon, hundreds of thousands of red-handed killers watching you in reverent silence. You mark the moment they realise who and what you are, motionless soldiers still somehow bristling with electric anticipation, and as the clouds part and the grey-and-red of your adopted heraldry becomes clear you fancy you hear a quarter million hearts skip a beat.
The Legion's command staff await you atop the podium, visually all but indistinct from the soldiers under their command. You approach at a steady walk, and as you do one among their number removes his helm, revealing a surprisingly ragged mop of dirty blond hair and a narrow face currently frozen in professional dispassion.
"I am Rikard Zhar, Legion Master of the Fourteenth Legion," he says to you with careful formality, his accent audibly strangled into the shape of something respectable.
"I am Mortarion," you reply, your first words to this man or the legion listening, and you need nothing more. He shivers slightly, as if in the grips of some dream or waking nightmare, then offers you the closed fist salute that so many on Terra were so very fond of.
"Then, by command of the Emperor and in accordance with our tradition, I hereby formally surrender command of the Fourteenth," he says, and you cannot tell if that is relief or pain in his voice. Perhaps some measure of both. "Hail, Mortarion. Hail, Primarch."
One hundred thousand fists raise at that command, a rippling tidal motion that spreads out from your feet to the far horizon. A legion's count slam against armoured chests, a drumroll equal to any thunder, and in rolling chorus the voice of the storm speaks as one.
"
Hail! Hail! Hail, Mortarion!"
You let it wash over you like the tide, wondering at the depth of feeling in your heart. There is awe there, satisfaction, a tinge of fear. Never before have you been so celebrated. You will need to act appropriately, and seize some manner of honour to match the regard they show you. All else would be folly.
"Would you… care to address the men, sire?" Zhar says cautiously, clearly still trying to take your measure.
What do you say?
[ ] No.
- [ ] Refuse to Elaborate.
- [ ] Elaborate. (Write in)
[ ] Yes.
- [ ] What do you say? (Write in, 100 words max. Mortarion is not a verbose man.)
