« History of Cygnus Primaris: The wound in the fields of Cydor | Home | A Prince of Corruption »

History of Cygnus Primaris: The death of Glendenglade

Grendenglade was once a very simple place where a cursory glance was all that was needed to understand the place. Small simply built wooden cottages and shops and cobblestone roads nestled against the Sharkun Coastline.

It’s no longer such a simple place and one eye full is at the same time not enough to do it justice while being too much for the sane mind to endure.

Nearest to the coastline the simple boathouse is a ruin of splintered wood and cratered earth. Scores of rubbery pus slicked Nurglings whistle and sing while they do their awful duty. Gripping tightly to writhing entrails and maddeningly long flesh suckling worms the pull and haul with all the strength their tiny bodies can muster. Hundreds of them grunting and struggling while capricious individual rots lead the effort.

All the rancid cabling leads into the ruin of the boat house.

“Oh yes, pull my pretties pull! Careful now with your dear old grandfather?” an undulating and deeply despaired voice echoes from the wreck. With a few final tugs they pull free a bloated and ichor oozing giant cadaver who’s insides are the cabling and the worms. A cadaver that moves, that heaves in and out expelling necrotic gas, a cadaver that smiles and reveals a regiment of poorly ordered yellowed needle teeth.

“Ah yes there we go… careful my dears.” The dead thing croons. One team of Nurglings yanks to hard pulling free a massive patch of flesh and spilling gallons of innards onto the streets of Coastal Row. “I said careful!” the beneficent illusion of the beast briefly dispelled. With a sweep of its quivering decayed hand it destroys dozens of its little children, ground between its flesh and the street stone. The others in the crew panic releasing the quasi-living cables and flee. Jabor the Great Unclean One slips back into the deep crater of his own making howling revenge, bleeding from split open rents in his diseased skin and trying to lure back his work team with soothing promises of forgiveness. None are too quick to return to duty.

Staffton Square was once a center for commerce and trade. It was the busiest part of the simple settlement where all its citizens came to do business and seek entertainment. Many who walked these streets with regularity are stapled to the walls of the buildings beside their would be defenders of the Ordo Malleus with bones and debris. Scores of Daemonettes enact their cavalcade while taking turns dealing debauched pleasures and unspeakable tortures upon any of the still living.

“Come now broken one, you’ve done such work in the service of your Emperor with no reward for your efforts” Words of a tempting siren spoken from the lips of an angel. A woman dressed in the sheerest of black silks lays beside the sarcophagus of a holy Malleus Dreadnought that dueled with her earlier. Her long lengths of blond hair blow wildly in the breeze and mix with the dying embers of fire created by the works of Tzeentch’s Flamers. Beside her, slithering around the prone walker are her bodyguards, her pets, her lovers. Twin serpents both as large as the dreadnought, both with lavendar skinned bodies, tall reddish back fins and head like that of deep sea dwelling hippocampus. They flick their long barbed and honey coated tongues while watching their mistress, the Demon Princess Irulen.

She runs a pale skinned finger over the edge of the metal tomb anticipating the contents. “Centuries of service all in his name and for this, for a metal box with nothing to keep you company but cords, wires and fluids. You deserve so much more.”

Without a word or gesture her pets know what she wants. Their tongues probe and seek the surface of the tomb cutting and gouging as they move till finally they pry the lid and its desecrated Aquilla away. The Princess stares into a murky viscous pit with the cadaverous remains of a once proud warrior now only a ruin of flesh and shackles of technology. She reaches in and plucks up remains, little more then a torso neck and head. The mess of a man moans an unintelligible cry of either pleasure or pain at the first physical contact it has had in centuries. “Such pleasures, such pains, you’ve been deprived to long. I shall remind you of each and every one of them” She begins teasing a bit of his very soul from his body while contemplating all the wonders to reintroduce him to.

Bloodletters stand in a great circle hissing and screeching, baring fang and forked tongue alike while watching a quartet of surviving civilians duel poorly with hellblades, each promised the last man standing will live. Each one lied to. The hell forged blades cut effortless through bone and flesh leaving even the winner with a body no worth living with. Kulak stands atop the wreck of the Malleus Crusader, the Bloodthirster flicks his whip and points with his might axe toward another group of civilians yet to give tribute to the Skull God.

As they are led into the circle of fields and fed them same lies and handed the same hateful blades a strange snow begins to fall over them, a fluffy whitish gray furry snow, spores more then snow. The civilians do not even bother to look up but the demons do. Kulak’ wolf like lips curl into a hateful snarl as he watches the polyp like Flamers of Tzeentch bound overhead. The strange rubbery mushroom creatures point their many orifices down below and eject burning streams of chaos fire onto the civilians melting them down to runny steaming piles of every shifting detritus.

“How dare you defile the rites of battle with your debasement!” The Bloodthirster spreads his great wings and takes to their air to give chase after the ugly creatures. “Khorne cares not from where the blood flows!” A hoard of swift manta like entities joins the Flamers as they dart and bounce through the burning alleyways of Grendenglad taking great joy in mocking their pursuer. All the while the every shifting Pink and Blue horrors dance in the fires with their mix of absurd and morose behavior further taunting the Bloodthirster to fits of chaotic rage.

Grendenglade is not a place that can be summed up with one glance anymore. Soon the ebb of warp energy will fade and with it the Demons that murdered this town. All that will remain are burnt buildings, blood slicked streets and the mangled bodies of the Malleus forces that failed to save this village.