Nur'Xal
Angron’s First; flagship of the united Nur’Xal fleet
The freshly anointed Grand-Warmaster Sif sat in her personal quarters contemplating the events of the past months. Her first trial at the hands of the sorcerers of Magus was perhaps her most trying of all. Granted, the next trial she faced had been that of Mortarion and while grand alchemist Medi did attempt to kill Sif by presenting her with a nigh impossible trial, she had still prevailed and attained an immunity to all know diseases and afflictions in the process. Unlike the grand sorcerer however, Medi had the sense to bow down to the new warmaster of Mortarion and accept her leadership of Mortarion’s chosen. He even fixed her eye that had been badly damaged after the test of Magus. After that, it was clear she would certainly become Grand-Warmaster of all the Nur’Xal and so Grand Princess Alanna offered only a mostly ceremonial test involving some minor esthetical surgery and the fighting of twenty of Fulgrim’s most elite champions, Alanna chief among them, though with the caveat that she not kill or permanently harm any of them. Luckily, none of the Fulgrim elite were able to stand against a biotic who could move across the field like mist and appear behind them at a whim.
Finally, Sif downed another glass of a stiff drink and immediately threw the empty vessel away to shatter on the floor.
“What is it love? Was the drink not pleasing enough?” Alanna’s voice now sounded from Sif’s bed. She had stayed with the now Grand-Warmaster as her regular bed companion and perhaps even a lover of sorts. A political ploy to stay as close to the true power as possible of course but Sif couldn’t argue that Alanna was the most skilled of all Nur’Xal when it came to the art of pleasure as well as the cracking of a whip, a trait Sif could only admire.
“No… it’s just that I can’t get drunk anymore after the procedures of the trial of Mortarion…” she sighed now.
“There are other pleasures available too you know… why don’t you come back to bed?” Alanna now asked, lying herself down atop the sheets in such a manner that would have driven anyone else mad with desire for her. Sif however, didn’t even look her way. She was too focussed.
“Your people’s fleets… when will they be ready?”
“Three days… you’ll have all of Fulgrim’s battlegroups at your disposal just as I promised…” Alanna sighed in response, unhappy that Sif didn’t come play with her.
“Good… they’ll join up with the rest of my warbands and those of the other gods. We’ll have the greatest armada any Nur’Xal has ever witnessed… and we’ll bring it all to bear on the birdmen…” Sif looked up at a Seraphian skull she had displayed above her door.
“... We’ll overwhelm them and then their bug friends are next, then the little men who think are giants and then the four eyes.”
“No shortage of enemies it seems…” Alanna now chuckled.
Sif now finally got up, sparking some biotic energy from her fingertips just for fun.
“Plenty for all of us… and when we’re done… the whole galaxy will know the truth… Our truth…”
Alanna just propped herself up now and gestured Sif to come over. The grand-warmaster then jumped her because nothing could incite more lust in her then the simple thought of the ultimate conquest and the idea of spreading the one true faith across the entire galaxy.
The settlement of Stargrove, Seraphian homeworld.
Raid-leader Gran pulled his blade from the corpse of a Seraphian militiaman and sighed.
“Such paltry resistance…” he grumbled just as a mortarion agent came by to inspect the fallen enemy’s corpse.
“Don’t you mean ‘poultry’ resistance?” the agent now grinned but Gran just grunted in response, unamused.
“A nice clean thrust through the heart… hmm… but what’s this…” the agent continued to examine the remains.
“He is clutching a grenade… hmm… was he willing to take his own life with that of his enemy? Hmm… he hehe… that would have been a trick most ‘fowl’…”
Gran got pretty angry now.
“One more stupid bird joke out of you and I’ll smash your ugly face in!” he bellowed.
“Oh, apologies, I meant no offence. I merely tried to…” the mortarion agent didn’t get a chance to finish before he was punched in the face so hard it knocked him on his ass.
“Thaff waffn’t a bffird jofffk!” he protested, clutching his painful jaw.
“I should have been clearer then…. SHUT UP!!!” Gran howled. He was furious by now. Honour and glory were supposed to be his for taking this settlement but he felt robbed of both.
All the resistance that had been offered here was that of about a dozen militia who held up in the town hall. They managed to kill three of his band before being themselves overrun and slaughtered to the man.
In the end, after this very poor fight, all they had to show for it was about three hundred terrified birdman civilians who would have to be kept alive to act as hostages in order to prevent the bugs and the little people from bombing the crap out of them.
Gran sighed very loudly once more and stared up to the sky. Hopefully his sister was fighting a better battle.
Krall supership, Seraphian homeworld orbit
“Where are the reinforcements!?” One of the raiders called out to his newly appointed leader, the Warrior-Prime Agassa.
“They’re not coming! Stop whining!” she screamed back while she pulled her sword free from the skull of a Krall trooper.
Just as she did, yet another from her party was cut down by the Krall troops that kept pouring in from seemingly everywhere.
The attack on the supership initially went extremely well. Only two of the hundred pods sent out didn’t make it aboard and the main hanger in which the boarding party landed was secured without a single casualty. But as soon as the element of surprise faded, things started to go terribly wrong. As the Nur’Xal force split up into four sections, the Krall rallied their troops and began counterattacking.
The force that was supposed to hold down the hanger until reinforcements could arrive was overrun and slaughtered to the last.
The raid-leader’s team made it to their objective and secured one of the ship’s broadside batteries. They were just about to turn the guns on the Krall fleet when both they and the Krall troopers sent to recapture the system were atomised when a blast from a Kimo dreadnaught tore massive chunk off the ship.
With the raid leader dead, command of the mission fell to his second in command but he was killed in a massive explosion shortly after along with most of his team when the krall deliberately overloaded the powersystems of the point defence guns he was supposed to take.
That only left Agassa’s team and they never even made it to their objective since they were caught off guard when a Krall sniper put a bolt in their team leader’s head.
Now, with less than a dozen able bodied troops left, including a mortarion agent by the name of Magan whose biotics had proven extremely useful, Agassa’s group was facing almost certain death.
Even as the ship was falling apart around them, the Krall kept throwing troops at them as if they were the only threat.
“We have to get out of here! There are escape pods nearby!” Magan now called out to her just before snapping a Krall trooper in half with a powerful biotic charge.
“And run like cowards!? Never! We’ll achieve our objective or die in the attempt!” Agassa howled back before running another Krall through.
“Graaah! You Agron fanatics have only one concept of strength! Fools.. sometimes to know when to retreat is a sign of strength in itself! Live now, crack more skulls later!” he called back, putting up a barrier to shield him and two others from a Krall grenade.
Agassa didn’t want to hear it at first but another one of her charge fell before her eyes, leaving her with a measly pack of five troops and an agent.
“Fine! We’ll get the hell out of here and continue the fight on the ground!” she finally gave in and led the charge towards the escape pods.
Another of her group was taken out when three Krall jumped him and tore him apart with their claws. Agassa decapitated the Krall guard by the pods and ordered what remained of her troop inside. A straggler didn’t make it however when she was hit in the leg. Agassa already took out her sword again to go back for her but Magan used his biotics to pull her inside the pod and launched it without another word.
“I could have saved her!” Agassa roared furiously.
Magan just took a step back and let her rage before taking the helm of the pod.
“Blasted alien technology… vile machine…” he mumbled after quickly punching in some coordinates and letting the auto pilot do the rest. And so, While Agassa raged some more about the shame of defeat, the Krall pod fell to the planet’s surface, carrying just her, three angron warriors and Magan, the mortarion agent.
(in short, the Nur'Xal have united at last and are comming for the Seraphian homeworld in force. The troops that are already there have begun attacking villages and towns and taking hostages as preperation for that invasion. Their planned boarding of the Krall supership however has ended in disaster)