Fist of Demetrius

Warhammer 40,000

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Document 1

Exhibit 509-H. Extract from transcript from xenos artefact recovered on Procrastes 4. Warning – this translation is heretical and spiritually contaminated. Access partially de-restricted as part of ongoing investigation into possible beatification of Lord High Commander Solar Macharius and related trial of former High Inquisitor Heironymous Drake for heresy and treason against the Imperium.

These records will be interpolated with the testimony of former sergeant Leo Lemuel (missing, presumed deceased) to provide a partial narrative of the Procrastes campaign and the events surrounding it.

Prologue

Prologue

I bathe in the sound of their screams. Their pain renews me. The scent of their fear fills me with joy. Such pitiful things they are. I had hoped, against my better judgement, for the smallest of challenges, something to drive away ennui for this brief moment of eternity, but what I got were mewling animals, barely fit to sully my blades with their blood.

I stand here, surveying the field of battle from atop a mountain of corpses. I would think it a waste of valuable slaves, save for the fact that there are plenty more humans where these came from. They breed like vermin, filling the universe that was once ours with their squalling progeny. It is good to teach them their place once again.

One of the humans raises its crude weapon and points it at me. The creature is so slow. I spring to one side and the las-bolt strikes the corpse on which I had stood. Flesh sears. A stomach bloated with charnel gases explodes.

It matters not to me. I am nowhere near any more.

I see fear written on the human’s clay-made, brute features.