++Facility X1938YP5, Denton III++
++3.635.879.M39++
“Brother Fares,” voxed Brother Venris of the Deathwatch. “Xenos flyer overhead. Fifty six degrees north-northwest.” He aimed his bolter out of one of the half-ruined bunker’s firing slits, and, with the split second precision only an Astartes could manage, fired three shots in quick succession. Three bolts exploded inside three of the nearest metal xenos as Brother Venris ducked back to avoid the inevitable counter-fire from the Necrons.
“Acknowledged,” came the voice of the Black Templar, now Deathwatch Space Marine, Brother Fares. “Moving to intercept.”
Brother Venris rolled out the bunker’s rear exit while its face was pounded by shot after green shot from the oncoming Necrons. Using his old training as a Scout for Imperial Fists, he kept low and poked around the side of the rapidly-crumbling Imperial bunker just enough for his armor’s autosenses and his own to locate the attackers. He aimed and fired five more bolts at the enemy before hurriedly rolling into the cover of a hab-block. Space Marines feared nothing, but Necron weaponry had proven effective against even their power armor, and Brother Venris had no intention of dying without doing as much damage as possible.
Venris’ keen hearing picked up the sound of a rocket engine going off, followed shortly by explosion. “That will be Brother Fares.”
“Xenos flyer directly hit. Kill confirmed,” came his brother’s voice over the squad vox a moment later, confirming what Venris already knew. Brother Fares had always been an excellent shot with the missile launcher.
“Status?” a different voice enquired.
“Skitarii unit 0257 confirmed KIA. Xenos advance 38 meters beyond facility perimeter. Minimum two hundred hostiles. Vehicular ground support. Combat servitors dead. Menials dead,” Brother Venris duly sounded off for Brother Nixios of the Angels Sanguine Chapter, the Deathwatch Sergeant.
Brother Fares was next. “Combat servitors at one-half strength. Xenos advance 18 meters beyond facility perimeter. Estimate four hundred hostiles. Five enemy vehicles KIA. Menials dead.”
“Skitarii unit 0419 at one-third strength. Xenos 21 meters beyond facility perimeter and closing. Estimated one hundred and thirty hostiles, three vehicles. Several breaches in outer defenses. Menials evacuated,” replied Brother Havelock of the Salamanders.
“Skitarii unit 0135 confirmed KIA. Xenos have overrun the perimeter. Unknown distance. Estimate three hundred hostiles. Totally surrounded. Multiple armor punctures. Left arm missing. Estimate twenty-two seconds before death,” said Brother Jarr of the Iron Hands, his mechanical voice sounding surprisingly impassive at the subject of his own imminent demise.
Brother Venris winced even as he retreated a few meters back and hurled a grenade into a cluster of the metal xenos. “Two battle-brothers dead or soon to be. Grave losses.”
“Odds of successful withdrawal?” asked Brother-Sergeant Nixios.
“Zero percent,” replied Brother Jarr. “Attempting to detonate promethium stockpile.”
“Acknowledged. Emperor be with you, brother.”
“And with you, Sergeant.”
“Skitarri units 0439 and 0276 have engaged the enemy. Xenos 51 meters from facility perimeter and advancing. Minimum two hundred hostiles. No visible vehicular support,” the last member of the squad, Brother Atellus of the Ultramarines, chimed in.
“Reports acknowledged,” Sergeant Nixios curtly replied.
A loud, sharp bang resounded above even the remorseless advance of the Necron army, the crack of weaponry, and the screams of the dying. Brother Venris did not turn his head. His hearing was more than enough to tell him what had happened. “Emperor protect your soul, my brother,” he prayed silently.
“Perimeter defenses untenable. Withdraw to secondary battle line.” Sergeant Nixios voxed in a moment later.
“Acknowledged,” said Brother Havelock.
“Acknowledged,” came Brother Atellus’ voice.
Brother Fares was next. “Acknowledged.”
Brother Venris backed up further, much as it offended his pride. “Acknowledged,” he voxed sourly. The Deathwatch Astartes retreated, abandoning yet more ground to the relentless Necron advance.
++Lunar-class Cruiser Kyne’s Fury, Orbiting Denton III++
++3.637.879.M39++
Twilight took a few steps past the now-familiar double doors, folded her right leg across her chest, and bowed her head. “You summoned me, Lord Inquisitor?” she said, looking up at the old man behind the desk.
For once, Lord Inquisitor Rovini looked directly up from the tome he was studying and made eye contact with the lavender alicorn in front of him. His eyes, Twilight noted, were slightly bloodshot, and had bags underneath them. “Acolyte. Good. Your men are assembled, I trust?”
Twilight bit her lip and nodded. “They are, sir.” Her ears flicked repeatedly, and she pawed one hoof along the hard floor.
“That is good. You have confidence in them?”
Twilight chewed her lip for a moment before answering “I think I’ve done all I can in the time allotted, sir.”
“That is not an answer, Acolyte.”
“Sir?”
“As you have no doubt noticed,” Rovini gestured to his face, “I have been somewhat pressed for time recently. I therefore do not have any inclination to play word games with you. Are you confident in this team you have assembled or are you not?”
Twilight’s hoof pawed the ground some more. “My Lord… frankly speaking I think they have a long way to go before they meet my old squad’s standards. More than one is likely to die on whatever this assignment is, perhaps even all of them.”
“And?” The Lord Inquisitor’s face was utterly expressionless. “I am informed you killed two of them yourself for insubordination.”
Twilight swallowed. “Yes, sir.”
“Remember what I taught you, Acolyte: the mission comes first. Beyond that, well... our Imperium has a great many soldiers.”
“Of course, my Lord.” Twilight bowed her head in acknowledgement.
“So, have you confidence that you can achieve your objectives with this squad or no?”
“Pardon me, my Lord, but I don’t even know what my objectives are yet.”
Rovini blinked, then rubbed his eyes. “Ah, yes. Of course.” The Lord Inquisitor bent down and rummaged around in his desk for several moments before sitting back up with a worn-looking dataslate in hand. He extended his hand in offering, and Twilight floated the little machine over to her face. Rovini continued as she hurriedly read through and absorbed the briefing, using skills learned in Equestria and honed to perfection in the service of the Imperium. “This is not the original mission I had planned for you, but as is the nature of this line of work, unexpected events require our intervention.”
“Sir…” Twilight said, cautiously, as she finished taking in the document. “This is not something I’d expect to be assigned to such an untested formation…”
Rovini’s face hardened. “And I feel that your special talents will be most gainfully employed in this work. Kindly do me the favor of not questioning my judgment when I have not asked for it.”
Twilight bowed her head again. “Yes… Yes, of course, my Lord.” She looked up. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
Rovini’s eyes had already returned to the musty tome on his desk. “Yes. See that my next visitor is brought in.”
“Yes sir,” Twilight mumbled as she turned to leave, somehow feeling like an unwanted intruder already.
The Lord Inquisitor’s voice interrupted before she could leave the chamber. “Oh, and Acolyte?”
Twilight turned her head back. “Yes, Lord?”
Lord Inquisitor Rovini’s face softened a bare fraction. “Emperor be with you.”
“And with you,” Twilight intoned as she exited.
++Facility 2W6379BJ, Denton III++
Trazyn the Infinite stood motionlessly on the rocky, polluted soil of Denton III. To a lesser, organic being, his position would have been quite untenable. The air was laced with toxic fumes from the hive cities and the remains of Adeptus Mechanicus technology alike. His right foot was in a small puddle of mildly acidic slime, which ate away at the rock underneath at a glacial pace. The strong winds whipped at his metal frame, even managing to move his heavy blue scale cape slightly. But the undying necrodermis shell Trazyn’s mind had inhabited for more than 60 million years weathered the storm without ache or complaint.
Trazyn’s mind was elsewhere, wondering how best to arrange the prize he was soon to acquire with the ones he already had. A suitably dramatic pose during capture would of course aid the process, but subjects were so very rarely cooperative.
“I do the ungrateful fools of this galaxy a great kindness in preserving what few pieces of their histories have meaning for all eternity, and they call me thief, butcher, and fiend. Bah! Short-sighted mortal peons, all of them, unable to see past their brief, petty lives. If it weren’t for me they would crumble away and be forgotten in the dusts of time. They should be begging to be taken!” Trazyn mentally grumbled to himself for what might well have been the actual millionth time, more for lack of anything better to be doing as he waited for his chosen prey than any real belief that complaining about the universe’s unfairness to collectors like him would do anything to change it.
The skull-faced Immortals around him stared blankly, their faces just as expressionless as their master’s though their minds were no doubt less active. Outside of combat, the black-bodied, white-faced elite of Trazyn’s warriors had little in the way of sapience or anything worth saying. Still, they had been proper soldiers in the Time of Flesh, not mere civilians like the more common Necron Warriors, and as such had retained more of their old selves. Enough so that they could be trusted to actually take something their Overlord wanted alive in one piece. With the lesser Warriors, mindless vaporization of a desired artifact had been a reoccurring headache since the reawakening of Solemnance.
Hours passed idly as the ancient machines simply stood still and waited, like patient spiders awaiting the arrival of a juicy fly. And if there was one thing the Necrontyr could be said to excel at, it was patience. The sun, or what little could be seen of it through the murky planetary atmosphere, was beginning to set by the time that one of the metal aliens spoke.
“Sir,” came the voice of Tyrentekh, one of Trazyn’s Immortals. “Our scans are detecting Imperial craft on an approach vector for our position.”
“How many?” was Trazyn’s reply.
“One, sir.”
“Class?”
“Transport. The Imperials dub it Valkyrie.”
“Signal the Deathmarks,” Trazyn gestured authoritatively. “Assume designated positions and await my signal. And remember,” he looked Tyrentekh in the eye, more out of unconscious habit than any practical reason. “I want the lavender alicorn alive and intact at the end of this. Is that absolutely clear to you, commander?”
“Yes, my Overlord.”
Trazyn nodded. Another old habit from his days in a mortal body. “Good. Kill any others.”
“It will be done, my lord.”
Trazyn gestured again, and Tyrentekh and other Immortals stoically assumed their planned formation around the ruined Mechanicus facility. The Overlord himself vanished in a flash of green light, reappearing much deeper inside, next to his temporary throne. Seating himself, he called up the tactical display and waited.
Minutes passed in empty silence as the predator awaited his unsuspecting prey. Finally, the video feed showed a Valkyrie touching down some distance from the site of the base. Its side doors opened to release passengers.
Trazyn could have sworn he felt his mouth watering. Which was ridiculous, considering that he had no mouth.
Trazyn signaled his Deathmark snipers. “Target the aircraft’s engines, and fire.”
Damn you trolldyn.
I imagine Ravini's voice as Tywin Lannister's.
so this necron is a librarian in a sense? thats neat.
4771497 Trazyn collects any artefact of anything he deems worthy, alive or not. And he has a nasty habit of stealing anything that won't be given willingly, and stealing anybody who doesn't want to be a part of the collection. His world of Solemnance is dedicated to storing these artefacts, that world is also heavily fortified, and the last time the inquisition tried to claim some of the Imperial relics stored there, Trazyn made the two imperial guard regiments sent to reclaim them part of his displays.
4771497
Trazyn the Infinite A candid description by 4chan's Traditional Games /tg/ board.
thats some neat lore, thanks for that guys!
To those who don't what skitarii are, they're the are the army of the Mechanicum and are like guardsmen, but cybernetically augmented.
We need Creed, stat.
4781043
In the 39th millennium, Creed hasn't been born yet.
4784426
Are you sure? He could just be very well hidden.
4784430
You caught me. He's just waiting for the best time for an Emperor-class Titan to step out of the Necrons' janitor closet.
4784476
Nah, that closet probably IS the Titan.
I'm really enjoying Of Xenos and War. Are you planning to continue it in the near future, or do you intend to concentrate on Together Forever?
4822537
At present my plan is to focus on Together Forever for the next week, maybe two, then get back to Xenos and War. Though, as per my little bio I write for fun and am generally inclined to indulge my creative whims whenever I feel a strong urge. So that's more of a guideline that an ironclad schedule.
4772017
Yeah, but that was because the Inquisition was curious. If they decide Trazyn is a threat rather than a faint annoyance, they will bring the banhammer down on his ass. He knows this. He knows he wouldn't have a chance in hell (though, he'd take quite a crap ton of stuff down with him, he knows the Imperium wouldn't care about that). I don't think Trazyn cares whether or not the Imperium kills him. He only cares about his insane (yet, freakishly understandable) hobby.
4847168 Actually, the first time that inquisitor showed up she was merely curious, the second time was to reclaim numerous artefacts she had seen in the planet during her previous visit, so she sent those Catachan regiments to fight and reclaim the artefacts, whereupon they where taken by Trazyn. He's more than a minor annoyance, and the Inquisition is more than just curious towards Trazyn, and he is more than just a minor annoyance. Trazyn controls a fully operational equivalent of a crown world, and very few of those exists in the galaxy (relatively speaking). While he isn't the biggest threat to the imperium by far, he is still very powerful and while the Imperium could overwhelm his world it would mean a diversion of significant resources form other fronts.
4847200 I know its a good drawing, that was just a joke.
liking the story.
... And here is an art from the talented NCMares, inspired by this good fic :
And magic is heresy
4847200
Eh, that's a bit far-fetched to say they would have ignored ponies just because they're non-hostile. 40k is the trope namer of "grimdark", and the sheer amount of grimderp in the setting is ludicrous. I've never played any games, but due to crossover fics and it coming up a lot on the internet, I've read up a lot on the setting. Now, an example from the article about the Tau. Three sentences in:
"Ok, we determined their technological level, now let's kill them all and take their planet."
Yeeeeeeaaaaah. Totally gonna spare them 'cause they're non-hostile.
Now, considering all the ponies are all magical, or "psykers", according to Imperials, they'd probably be all over exterminating as fast as possible for witchcraft and crap. If they came after the ponies released and befriended Discord, a being of Chaos, some kind of Daemon-prince-thing, and found out about it... well, they'd be ordering an Exterminatus on the planet faster than you could say "friendship is magic".
4867015
In all reality that would have been possible, especially considering the previous chink in the monolith armour. The Board game is a board game and, by necessity, constrained to a set of rules, rules which thanks to the dice can still be random, but are still not all encompassing of reality. There have been many Black library books where things that are impossible in the board game have happened, but they are still cannon. Real life has more variables than the board game can show.
Also a power sword is limited to the strength of the user, so it would have been strength three.
So you have stopped writing Of Xenos and War? I personally thought it was rather better than Together Forever.
4917312
No. I simply write as the inspiration to do so comes to me. I'm actually working on the next chapter of this fic now.
4771497
....well there is atleast ONE thing twillight and this necron have in common....
4772017
What happens to those that made apart of his collection?
8974399
Locked in time some say they’re unaware of the passing of it some say that they are all to aware of it.