# First Blood



## GrimzagGorwazza (Aug 5, 2010)

Please note this is a story which i wrote to capture a sequence of events during one of our games apocalypse games, it's kinda a narrative baattle report but doesn't really cover the scope of the battlefield. Just the point of view from a single guardsman. For reference sake i was playing the Chaos forces in this game against 4 seperate commanders. 2 space marine's an imperial guardsman and a tau force. 


Jamishan lay still in the ruins of an abandoned Imperial command centre. The rest of the platoon was laid out to his left amongst the devastated buildings and he was still having trouble believing what was happening around him. He had been called up to bear arms a little over a week ago when the space marines had arrived spouting stories of imminent chaos invasion. The old planetary defence force of Crinsar V had not trained or fought as an active military outfit since they had been instated nearly eleven years prior. Sure there had been minor actions against the green skins who still resided in the darker elements of the old industrial sector but nothing of this magnitude. Ahead of him to his right he could see the flickering forms of xeno stealth warriors, next to them two massive space marine dreadnaughts awaited their orders, one bore the famous red and black insignia of the Blood angels’ chapter and the other wore the more subdued markings of a chapter he was told were named “The Doom Wings”. Past the dreadnaughts the doom wings commanders stood flanked by a squad of space marine scouts, of which he could occasionally make out the looks of contempt the scouts gave their alien allies.

On his other side the battle lines stretched away into the distance, the various squads of the pdf were aligned closest to him, Cadians, Catachans, Grenasians; all battered remainders of regiments too damaged to be rebuilt and left to guard this planet and retire. Marines and Tau forces were spread out further along, covering the flank with armoured support; part of him wished they would send a few more of those marines his way just to ease his nerves. Jamishan took out his water-flask and swilled some of the dust from his mouth before spitting it out. Even now he could see the Lord Commissar Brinhard talking to the squad sergeants as well as commander Fultingo. From here he could clearly see the commissars’ mouth forming the words “for the emperor”. Each of the sergeants nodded and saluted as the lord commissar moved off to talk to the towering form of the blood angels commander, Jamishan didn’t know the name of the space marine, he didn’t intend to be having any one on one conversation with the warrior for it to be worth learning. If he could simply focus on staying below the super warrior’s notice until this war was over he would be satisfied. Commander Fultingo dismissed the sergeants back to their squads and turned to face the rest of the men.

“OK ladies, you’ve all been through the drills you’ve all seen the plans for the action we’ve formulated here and you all know what we’re up against. Accept maybe you Private Dormin....hell I bet that if I told you to close your eyes right now you would have forgotten what colour hat I’m wearing within ten seconds.” There was a brief chorus of laughter as the guardsmen relaxed into the comradeship which had seen them through during the Crinsar V pacification that had gutted so many of their regiments. Fultingo knew each of them, he took pride in having learned the name and history of every man under his command, even those who had been left him as fill ins from other regiments. He had earned the respect of every man present with his actions and forged this rag tag group into a viable fighting force. 

“Firstly I know that this place isn’t anything like the brochures reckoned it would be but then they never are. Second I figure I owe it to you boys to let you know what you’re fighting for. Now you know these Traitor marines are up to no good, that’s why our own blessed warriors have decided to take a stand and give them a good thrashing. But none of you yet know the severity of the badness these “Doom Serpents” are wanting to visit upon us. Our intelligence reports say that they got wind of our little secret, these traitor boys know the truth and they’ve come here to take it from us. That’s right they’ve come all this way because they heard Sergeant Trenton was good in the sack. ” The laughter this time was much louder as Trenton’s Cadian squad jostled and prodded their commanding officer who simply grinned and nodded.

“Hell, who really cares what these panty wearing, jelly armed, mutant loving freaks are after? Whatever it is we aint sellin’ any and I aim to send ‘em packin’. Who’s with me?”

Now the noise reached fever pitch as each guardsman raised their voice to chant, in an intensity that had even the marines looking over at the scattered guard formation. “PDF.....PDF......PDF....PDF”
The commander held up a hand for silence and waited for the hubbub to calm down.

“That’s what I figured, Crinsar Defence Force. Make me proud to be your commander. All Sergeants to their squads, arm up and prepare for enemy contact, eyes sharp people.”
With that he turned back to his command squad and found his position on the battlefield. Waiting for the enemy to make their move and disturb the termites nest.

In the distance dust clouds came closer and closer; visible even over the constant dusty gales which stole across this part of the planet. Battle would soon be joined in earnest and Jamishan checked the ammo clip on his lasgun before pulling his camo net over himself again to mask him in the ruins. Ahead the Tau stealth team and doom wing scouts pulled forwards, moving off to find a target. The dusty shadows of armoured figures loomed from the darkness and the grumble of tank engines could be heard over the wind. Time for action. There was a brief moment of calm before all hell broke loose, lascannons blasted in at the loyalist lines from further back, solid shot and plasma fire burned the air nearby, the killing and dying had started.

From the ruins ahead of him a vast band of malformed outcasts streamed onto the field. Some bore their mutations proudly, flailing tentacles and polished horns marking them as creatures touched by the darkness, others bore little or no marks, covering their minor mutations with cloak and cowl so that they might almost pass as human. Most sat somewhere in between and for a moment the guardsman had trouble dragging his eyes from a beautiful scantily clad woman who danced across the battlefield with a snake entwined around her body and down her delicate arm. For a moment he just stared, only the fact that her eyes glowed a cold purple colour stilled his desire and snapped him back to reality. The mutants were firing and closing fast on the stealth team, singing a hymn which caught in his ears and seemed to make it more difficult to hear the other sounds of the battle. Whilst he lay watching one mutant was crippled when a makeshift grenade launcher he was carrying detonated as he pulled the trigger, knocking a colleague next to him down as shrapnel peppered his legs. The storm of fire whipping at the aliens was stupendous and even with these crude poorly maintained weapons being fired; Jamishan saw one of the stealth team crumple to the ground with a shattered kneecap before the onrushing tide of mutation crashed into them in combat. 

The Aliens held out against odds which had to have them outnumbered six to one, numerous attacks bounced from their armour whilst their slow attacks and the sheer weight of numbers stacked against them meant there seemed to be a kind of stalemate in effect. Behind his position, a rallying call went up and the Praetorian Guard led by Lord Commissar Brinhard broke cover and charged at the enemy lines, it would have been a truly inspiring charge had it not been for the foolhardiness of the move. Commander Fultingo shouted a long line of curses at the advancing Commissar as the bright red uniforms of the praetorians started to cross no man’s land. In a couple of second he issued the orders for the rest of the platoon to move forwards in support leading this second charge himself. Jamishan looked over at his sergeant who nodded and rose to his feet from the rubble. 
“Up and at ‘em lads, it’s time to kill some mutants, if that little lot are still on this flank when our boys try to withdraw then they’ll get caught between the mutants and traitor marines out there.” 

With that, Sergeant Combs drew his combat knife and charged in towards the ongoing battle with the mutants and Tau. Jamishan spared a glance at the rest of the platoon before following suit.

For a few glorious moments time stood still as the guard advanced on the chaos lines. Men ran, firing and roaring out challenges to enemy who were still just grey shadows in a greyer landscape, the reply was as brutal as it was short, a staccato of fire ripped out from the ruins, pitching men from their feet, bursting heads and searing straight through armour and bone. The trademark “rark...thump” of bolter rounds was counterpointed by the hissing of bright plasma rounds splashing over targets and “rattattatta” of autocanon fire from the flank. Men died in droves, praetorians were blasted apart alongside Catachans and when the charge finally hit home it was painfully short lived. The Commissar Lord didn’t even finish his challenge before a massive armoured figure cloaked in the power of the warp stepped forwards and battered him unconscious with a single swing of his staff. The remaining praetorians were enveloped in the armoured press and the only condolence that Jamishan felt was that the red uniforms were still visible fighting in amongst the massive armoured killing machines. 

He looked away to find that he was in the fight. Up ahead of him the rest of the squad were using their hunting knifes to good effect, stabbing and parrying the various weapons which came at them. The private charged in, keeping his blade held underhand in his weaker left whilst he pointed his rifle into the press of bodies past his companions and squeezed off a succession of shots at no particular target, Then he was right in on top of them, letting go of the lasgun and instead hammering his free fist into the nose of the spear wielding goat man in front of him. For a while the creature was stunned and took a tumbling step back, it didn’t stumble far, the combat blade ripping up and through the arteries of its neck. Beside him another stealth suit was pulled down, pure weight of numbers dragging the unfortunate pilot down even as he killed more of their number. The guardsmen didn’t remain completely unmolested. Kreeger took a shotgun blast, a hooded man running into him and pressing the close range weapon upwards between their two bodies. His faceless form fell backwards, knocking Bernie who immediately was pounced on by an insect faced woman which vomited acid over his prone form. Jamishan killed another, a skeletally thin man wearing ancient steel plate armour, the stab up under his armpit sliced into his heart but the blade came out dry and rasped as if it had cut through dried parchment instead of skin. For a short moment Jamishan stepped back and let one of the other squad members take the front line, looking back out at the rest of the platoon. His heart lurched and his hope sank.

Scattered pockets of guardsmen were falling back from the front. Guardsmen fled in outright rout. He looked over at the command squad hoping he would see a different tale, only Fultingo and his own staff Commissar Rhin still stood in the line and as he watched a burst of burning promethium launched from the ruins ahead of them, several Cadians took the brunt of the flames, screaming and running in all directions as the flesh melted from their bodies. Fultingo and Rhin went down as the wave of flames hit them, disappearing under the superheated barrage and laying down amongst the burning bodies of their unit. The command squad was down. Despite his horror at what was happening in front of him Jamishan could not pull his eyes away. Of the Catachan squad which had advanced on the enemy, only private Dormin stood proud, he pulled the pin on a frag grenade and ran towards the nearest traitor marines. He never made it. His heroic last stand was put down when a screaming mass of mutation and muscle powered out of the sky and landed shod hooves first, on his shoulders. The man folded back double sickeningly and exploded as the full pressure of the daemon prince and the force of the grenade reached breaking point. For a few moments the whole field seemed to freeze as the monster met his eyes, blood still running down its distended jaw it grinned. The private felt his gourd rise and was rudely awakened to reality as a massive hand grabbed his ankle and pulled him from his feet. Whilst he took in the tiny little yellow creature that pressed a laspistol to his face and sneered through sharpened teeth he was dully aware of the boom of tank rounds firing in the distance. The world around him faded to white, an impossible force overtook his senses and he felt himself cast aside like a rag doll. Flying through a white landscape in silence he saw others caught in the light. Some whole, some not so much, some human, others tainted filth. When sound and colour came back to his world he was laying watching the monstrous prince roar in anger as a missile streaked down from the sky, he saw the tell tale blistering of melta weaponry bubble and melt portions of its wings and legs, forcing it to its knees. For a few moments whilst Jamishan got his legs under him and dragged himself back up to his feet he saw the stark relief of the daemon, another massive explosion like that which had hit himself and the mutants detonated behind the creature, setting off a chain reaction and throwing marines into the air, both loyalist and traitor alike. Massive men clan in heavy power armour were tossed around like so many brightly coloured petals in a sandstorm.

Slowly the monster started to rise but now the allied forces had seen that it could be hurt they were confident that it could be killed. Heavy weapons fire roared in at it and the “Rarkrarkrarkrarkrark” of heavy bolters was punctuated as their rounds detonated in quick succession over its skin. It let out one brief parting cry of rage before its form came apart at the seams, a cloud of dark blue smoke swirled where it had once stood, dissipating before the physical body touched the ground. 


Jamishan took stock of the situation around him, his entire squad was dead, and the alien stealth team were falling back in full retreat as were the last few surviving mutants. He stood alone in the ruins of what had once been his friends and colleagues, and felt the fatigue of battle wash over him. Combat still raged loud and harsh at a dozen different places down the line. But for him the fight was over, he sat down on the corpse of a naked winged woman and rested his head in his hands. The horrors of the last war haunted him even now and despite the eleven year hiatus the terror that he had felt then still thundered through his veins. This battle was only the beginning, there would be many more days like this to come and the brave, brave survivors of Crinsar would be whittled down to nothing. No one would remember their sacrifice, only the gallantry of the Marines would be heard in a hundred years or so. He was past his prime. Retirement had made him slower and weaker and he held no doubts that he would die in this war. Once more the blood of the faithful and that of the unclean would mingle in the dust of the former industrial world. Most than likely it would continue to flow for a decade or more and it was bitter tears that the private realised that his sons would almost certainly be tossed into the meat grinder when they came of age next year.


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## GrimzagGorwazza (Aug 5, 2010)

OMG it's Bumpenstiens monster!!!


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