Alright! I've been working like a mad fiend in my google doc to get this done, and here it is.
X Legion, The Pact of the Lance
“You take more flies with honey than vinegar, Hogg.” Hogg snorted. “And what’s a fly’s pelt worth, young master?” he said.”
― David Drake, With the Lightnings
X Legion, The Pact of the Lance
“You take more flies with honey than vinegar, Hogg.” Hogg snorted. “And what’s a fly’s pelt worth, young master?” he said.”
― David Drake, With the Lightnings
Primarch
Arnulf Wode
Lancer Primus
The Boss
The Old Man
Gender: Male
Homeworld: Salient Tertius (Civilized World)
Salient Tertius is a arid, desert planet of vast, sandy plains and large oceans of glittering blue water separating the continents, of which there are six. Salient Tertius is the only planet in its system that supports life of any kind.
Before Imperial Compliance, Salient was ruled by great merchant houses who regularly dueled their private armies against each other in the vast desert wastes in highly orchestrated, highly glamorized military actions that were as much advertising as warfare. Much of these ‘glory wars’ were conducted by armored fighting vehicles, and the men and women that crewed them were called Lancers, a callback to the armored knights of old Terran lore.
After compliance, the surviving merchant houses now turn their mercantile expertise outward, using their energy and vast monetary reserves of the old house wars to help fund the Great Crusade, as well as trading expeditions to other Imperial worlds, as well as sanctioned Xeno territories.
Appearance: Arnulf gives the impression of being squat and solid. Short for a primarch, at just above nine feet in height, the demigod exudes a domineering, commanding presence, full of confidence and bravado. His face is craggy and gaunt, covered with scars and pock-mark wounds from past conflicts.
His musculature is, of course for one of his stature, defined, but no artistry was present when he was geneforged. He is bulky, with wide shoulders, big biceps and forearms, and a barrel chest propped on legs that seem to be two stout trunks.
At peace, he wears a no-frills service uniform resembling something from Imperial Army issue, though of course the decorations on it are Astartes, and the tailoring is far finer than anything procured from an Auxilia storehouse.
In wartime, on foot, he wears the bare-metal powered plate of the Pact, adjusted for his size and stature, sporting a powerful DAoT void shield generator that can shrug off firepower far in excess of its diminutive size. Cruelly dismissive of melee combat, Arnulf’s favorite weapon is an oversized autocannon that fires discarding sabot shells, a lost relic of a weapon capable of toppling whole city blocks with a sustained burst of fire. Although he carries a power blade, a cruel, heavy, single-edged cleaver of a sword, he rarely uses it, preferring to obliterate his opponents from range.
More often, though, he rides in the cupola of his personal superheavy tank, a curious vehicle consisting of a Baneblade-pattern hull mated to a Fellblade turret.
Personality: Arnulff is decidedly choleric, his temper constantly flaring at life’s every inconvenience. However, he is very genuine, possessed of surprising honesty and insight, which wins him respect in Imperial courts despite his combative nature. The other primarchs have come to value his lack of subterfuge, even if they find him grating to be around for too long. Arnulf values the company of his brothers and sisters who are willing to listen to him, good or bad, viewing his own behavior as a, in his words, ‘grox-shit filter.’
Arnulf himself has an attachment to people, weapons, and equipment that have survived the crucible of combat, often eschewing things or people that haven’t ‘seen the sharp end’.
His attitude towards humanity is that of a firm shepherd. His interpretation of the Astarte’s role in human affairs is an aloof, but decisive protector, letting humans be humans while the Space Marines do the fighting, interfering in human affairs only when they would be self-destructive. His pride in himself and his legion can make him seem dismissive of baseline humanity, but in truth Wode desires wholeheartedly the day when Humanity reigns over the stars and his host can rest.
Psyker Grade: Thoroughly Kappa. It is something of a running joke that Wode’s grating personality is caused by lack of a soul, but in truth he merely possesses no psychic potential.
Skills: Wode is much like other primarchs, a physical powerhouse coupled to a lightning-fast mind and indomitable charisma. Outside of these gifts, though, he is startlingly mundane, with no psychic powers, nor is he even really as gifted at single combat as the rest of his siblings, his own philosophy of combat relying on meeting the enemy with force so overwhelming that the vagaries of tactics and fighting forms become irrelevant.
If anything sets him apart, it is his determination, and his ability to inspire his men to fight with all they’ve got, to squeeze every last ounce of potential from the seemingly outmatched, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. It remains to be seen if this charisma extends to his siblings however.
Wargear:
Return to Sender: A massive superheavy tank, the Return was a Baneblade-pattern tank passed down from generation to generation from the Great Merchant House of Salubria, the house Wode served, and eventually led, in the Salient Unification War. Destroyed by an ammunition explosion when the Emperor came to reclaim his lost son, the vehicle was restored as a condition of the pact that bound Wode and his gene-sons to Imperial Service. It has been extensively modified and upgraded, now surpassing the capability of even the mighty Fellblade class of tank in service with the Legiones Astartes, the turret of which has been retrofitted to the Baneblade’s hull in place of the standard one.
Last Argument: Wode’s personal autocannon, a large weapon that resembles a tank gun more than a carried small arm. It fires a discarding sabot shell made of superdense alloy that carries incredible kinetic force, capable of punching through most protective means with enough sustained fire.
Castellum O Fortuna: Wode’s armor is upsized Mk 3 Astartes plate, stripped of paint to show the bare ceramite and adamantium of its construction. Embedded within it is a relic void shield generator, that, when activated, provides a bubble of energy protection that is intensely powerful. When broken, the shield dissipates in a violent release of energy that can knock squads of armored Astartes off their feet.
Biography:
Arnulf Wode was separated from the Emperor much like his brothers and sisters, the stasis pod containing him eventually landing on the civilized world of Salient Tertius, a world ruled by an oligarchy of opulent merchant houses who had taken to controlling their populations through predatory and exploitative means. Wode was found in the desert by fighting men of the Great Merchant House of Salubria, and taken in to be raised amongst the regiment’s camp followers.
Wode grew up quickly, like all of his siblings, and learned the trade of soldiering from his surrogate family. He enlisted in the Salubria Merchant Army alongside a friend of his, Saul Imogen, the two of them serving in the same tank as a loader and radio operator respectively. Wode rose through the ranks quickly, eventually getting his own tank, then platoon, then company, and finally command of the Merchant Army itself.
Having become jaded and cynical at the spectacle of glamorized, advertised warfare that the Salient merchant houses indulged in like bloodsports, Wode enacted a conspiracy he had been planning, turning several key members in the Salubrian merchant houses and killing the rest who opposed his bid for control. The Salubrian Merchant Army became the Salubrian Unification Front, and Wode used them to wage a war for planetary unification and end the degrading practice of war for sport.
It was at a pivotal point in this war that the Emperor came to claim his lost son. Just as Wode was preparing to break the Southern houses in a surprise night raid, the Emperor unleashed his own tanks of the Lightnings legion, Wode’s lost gene-sons. The Imperials easily destroyed the incompetent merchant army. Wode, however, unwilling to treat with what he saw as off-world meddling, engaged the Imperial forces in a titanic tank battle.
Wode lost, and the SUF was defeated by the Imperial task force, but at great cost. Wode’s underequipped, undergunned rebel army inflicted hideous losses on the attacking Imperials, with some SUF vehicles becoming multiple aces in a single night.
With Wode’s defeat, the Emperor offered a truce, and then service in his Imperium. Wode accepted, naming terms that the Emperor accepted unconditionally. This agreement was named the Pact of the Lance, which Wode’s legion named itself after, replacing their original name of Lightnings.
The Pact was as follows:
1. The Salient Unification War would be finished as the Pact’s first action.
2. The surviving men and women of the Salubrian Unification Front would receive a pardon, as well as the option to continue service in the Imperial military.
3. Wode’s personal tank, the Return to Sender, would be repaired.
4. The Astartes of the Pact of the Lance would inherit the Right of Conquest, a common clause in Salient army contracts that allowed soldiers to keep plunder from the battlefield for their personal gain.
In return for these stipulations, Wode was to be bound to the service of the Emperor for life, carrying out the Grim Crusade for as long as it was necessary.
First Meeting
It had been a hard run. Wode stood in the cupola of the Return to Sender, his Baneblade super heavy tank and checked a handheld auspex again. The little device was wirelessly hooked up to the real auspex display in his command throne inside the vehicle, allowing him to check his contacts even when he stood as he was now, with his head up out of the hatch. As he expected, there was no evidence of their opponents in the Southern merchant houses just yet, but, if his intel was right, they’d be running into them soon.
The point of this run had been to make a cross-country assault across the desert sands, hitting the enemy elements just as the morning suns rose over the horizon. It turns out at their current pace they’d get there a little earlier, which was just fine to the men of the Salient Unification Front, Arnulf Wode’s personal army.
“All task force elements, this is Sally 1.” Wode spoke into his throat mic. “Close your intervals by 300 meters and increase pace by five klicks. We’re getting into the AO.”
It was planned, like always, to be the kind of attack that had become the trademark of Wode’s rebels - to smash into the enemy, breakthrough to their rear, and then slug it out while the other bastards were still figuring out what was going on. It was a strategy that worked, relying on the superior training and aggression of the SUF. They didn’t have the best tanks - most were locally produced copies of STC designs, save for the very best of Wode’s host, which had been passed down for generations within the Salubrian Great House that they had supplanted. They didn’t have the best firepower - most of his tank army didn’t even have full on-the-move gyro stabilization. They were outnumbered in nearly every conflict they fought.
What they did have, and what the other merchant houses would never understand; with their armies of hirelings, more loyal to the credit than to their cause, was the will to do the job, no matter how unpleasant.
Salient Tertius, the ball of rock they all lived on, was unused to the concept of total war. Conflict was ritualized, glamorized, and so shot full of ancient regulations it was as meaningless as parade drill. Men died on the sands, blood trickling into the dunes to be sucked up by the landscape and the houses grew fat on it, harvesting their population in demeaning displays of opulence. Wode was tired of it. His men were tired of it, and damn it, they were going to do something about it.
Tonight would be the biggest something. This night raid would break the southern houses, Wode thought, it would break their confidence. With luck, the inter-factional squabbling as a result of their trouncing in the southern scrubland would do the rest of the work for them, but, they had to be shown the error of their resistance in the first place. Salient would be united, and tonight that unification would be forged.
“Sally 1, this is Sally 1-2.” A voice crackled into the earpiece of Wode’s tanker helmet.
“Go ahead Saul.” Saul Imogen was Wode’s XO, a steadfast, friendly man who had been at Wode’s side ever since they were privates in the old Salubrian Merchant Army.
“I’m picking up Auspex contacts but… well. I’ll patch the feed to your console.” Saul sounded uneasy.
Wode descended into his Baneblade’s command throne, bringing up the main viewscreen. Saul’s gun camera feed was grainy, indistinct, but Wode could pick out silhouettes of tanks. Burning silhouettes of tanks.
Something had, in the time it took them to get from their FOB to the Southern army positions, wiped out said army, completely. It was a level of destruction that even the SUF hadn't yet achieved in their bloody little war. From Wode's count, every tank that their contact in the southern houses had said would be here, was here, and it was knocked out.
Wode raised his hand to key his throat mic, but his earpiece exploded with chatter. He checked his auspex monitor again, keying it up on his command throne’s view plotters. The long range scans were thick with radar contacts, all of them five or so klicks out, and so densely packed they almost appeared to be a solid line. Not the worst thing, but the new contacts were behind his tanks. He jacked the hydraulic lift on his command seat up, putting his head and shoulders above the hatch rim to the tanks cupola, then put a pair of high-vis binoculars to his eyes.
There. He could see the dust being kicked up by… Stars above, hundreds of tanks. He zoomed in a little more. Hundreds of tanks, and none of them were the inferior copies of the SUF. Ranks and ranks of Predator tanks, all of them so new he couldn’t make out even a rust trail. This was bad. He knew without question that this had been the force that had destroyed the Southern Houses army, and had made an oblique run across the desert to outflank anything that would come to investigate the destruction they had caused.
But who were they? The Southern houses had no political schisms that Wode knew of, and no merchant houses possessed so much pristine, new-model armor. Offworlders? Possible, he supposed, but from where?
“Radio discipline people!” Wode barked, his voice drowning out the panicked confusion on the radio. “All Sally units proceed to the ridgeline a klick to the north. Go hull down, and set up sightlines in a reverse slope.”
A chorus of assents was heard from the tank units. Immediately, the armor began to move, including Wode’s Baneblade, which ground and rumbled under him like a giant predatory cat.
He keyed his mic again. “All Vivian units. Disembark your transports and set up your rocket teams amongst the wreckage of the Southern house tanks. Do not fire until enemy armor elements are in range. Transports, turn your engines off, but keep running on battery.”
Vivian was the callsign to their mechanized infantry complement. They began to move as well, a motley collection of tracked and wheeled transports that interspersed themselves amongst the wreckage of their vanquished enemy. He keyed his mic one more time.
“This is gonna be a tough one, Lancers. We have to assume their auspex is as good as ours, so they know we’re here, and we’re not going to outmaneuver them. We hold this ridge, and we punish them for every meter they move. If we can break their center, then maybe we can break out and pincer them, but for now, we hold what we got.”
Another battery of assents followed, the men calmer now that they had orders. There was work to be done now, and by God, they would be the ones to do it. It was only a few minutes to get the task force to get into position, and by then, the enemy armor was in range of the SUF’s longest range guns. Still, Wode held his men to silence. The longer they waited, the less time the enemy had to accurately range them.
More minutes passed, then more. The approaching line of armor began to flash, autocannons peppering the ridgeline that Wode occupied. If they were in range, then it was time.
“All Sally elements, open fire! Roll ‘em!” Wode shouted, then the world crashed to chaos as his Baneblade fired off a giant, rocket propelled shell. The rest of his armor fired as well, as close to unison as could be achieved.
It was a wall of shot, and almost all of it impacted the enemy line, kicking up great gouts of dust and smoke and fire. Wode’s own shell from his tank had passed, through-and-through, an enemy Predator tank and detonated the ammunition, popping the turret off the hull like a tiddlywink. More of the enemy lay shattered and broken, but they kept coming. No first volley, effective even as that one was, would deter a competent enemy, and a defending force never had it that easy.
His own line was getting it now - Wode whipped his head to the left and saw two tanks that were pouring black smoke, holes present in the gun mantlets where lucky shots had penetrated and achieved a kill. Crewmen were bailing out of the stricken armor, dragging their comrades who were unlucky enough to be harmed during the destruction of their vehicles.
Another volley. Another reaper’s harvest. Wode wondered, in a small part of his mind not occupied by this fight, what would happen to this tank graveyard. Would it be cleaned up? Would these tanks be recovered? Or would it stand here, bodies and all, until the sands reclaimed it?
Well. That was someone else’s problem. The enemy gunline was getting more and more ragged as it got closer. Now the enemy could properly take aim and shoot, scoring consistent kills against Wode’s armor. His inferior tanks, copies, monkey models, of the armor attacking them now folded like paper when hit with enemy munitions, but, they held, a battered string of turrets protruding from a ridge pockmarked with shell-holes.
“Vivian elements…” Wode shouted. “Hit ‘em!”
The infantry spoke up now. Largely ignored by the attackers, they unleashed a blistering volley of anti-armor rockets into the sides of the tanks that had begun to pass by them. Destruction became butchery. Dug in as they were amongst their transports and the destroyed Southern Houses tanks, the infantry could shoot and displace as they pleased, disappearing into the gunsmoke as the disciplined missile teams scythed down the approaching vehicles.
Kill counts for the SUF were climbing into the obscene, nine kills, ten kills per tank, but the enemy kept coming. They had the numbers. They had the support, but every SUF loss was irreplaceable, whereas these off-worlders kept coming, giving as good as they got. The infantry reaped a heavy toll, but soon, the enemy’s own mechanized elements displaced into the tank graveyard Wode’s men were fighting from. They were giants, covered head to toe in powered plate, wielding obscenely oversized guns and chainsaw… swords? Wode had never imagined such a brutal, cruel weapon, but here these offworlders were, butchering his men with them as easily as a man might shave.
He ground his teeth, his eyes transfixed with anger. Were they just gonna sit here and take it, then? His mind worked at a frenetic pace, arriving at two options. They could could sit and slug it out some more, but that advantage was going away. The enemy was about to take the graveyard between them, and he wasn’t confident he could win a static shooting war. The enemy had already reaped a butcher’s bill from advancing and shooting - allowing them to sit and use their no doubt superior gunnery computers was a losing gamble to his mind.
That left offense. Fight them in the confusion of the graveyard. Use the SUF’s training and verve to keep the enemy on the backfoot. Get up and actually fight the damn war. A grimace turned into a feral grin. He might save his infantry too, who, despite the effectiveness of their position and the necessity of their sacrifice, he couldn’t help but feel he’d left them out to dry.
“All Sally elements!” He roared. “Advance! Meet them in the wrecks! We’ll take them out one by one!”
A cheer sounded. This was it - he could push them back here, and his men knew it too. They surged forward, tanks cresting over the slope and running pell mell into the fracas. His Baneblade simply plowed through the berm, showering him and his vehicle in fine, powdery sand that made it look like they’d crashed through a bakery.
What happened next was a slideshow of butchery, a little slice of Gehenna. Tanks exchanged fire point blank, often killing eachother in the exchange. Men and armored offworlders were torn apart by grenades and gunfire, splattering blood and viscera in great gouts. Wherever Wode’s command tank fired, something died. The smoke and dust and grit was so thick, targets were silhouettes at best, mentions at worst. Coordination broke down. Vehicles broke down, and men perished, but the offworlders kept coming, kept fighting, kept battering them.
Wode’s tank pushed through the nightmarish vision of death that their battlefield had become, the Sender parting the fog of war the desperate brawl had created. As his vision cleared, his stomach sank. His auspex chimed as it registered more enemy contacts. Another wave. How could there be another?
He pushed his binoculars to his face. They were coming from the same direction as before, but this time, it wasn’t predators. No, it was superheavies, like his, of a model he was unfamiliar with, backed up by odd, box-shaped vehicles that sported no turrets but were far larger than anything he had but the Sender. He reached up to his throat mic to shout… something. Wode didn’t even know, and he never had the opportunity to find out.
The offworld supertanks spoke, and Wode’s contribution ended. He was flung from his cupola as at least three separate impacts shattered his vehicle’s pockmarked, rent armor and detonated the ammunition. He landed face down in the sand, and his eyes closed, his brain desperately thinking of what to do even as unconsciousness took him.
__________
When he awoke, it was with the grimy, bloodied faces of his surviving men peering down at him. He could see Saul’s gaunt features, creased with worry. Other men and women were crowded in with them, all of them jockeying for position to see what had happened. They were crammed into some kind of tent, presumably a holding tent for the captured, and now defeated, SUF.
“Boss, hey.” Saul said, his voice hoarse with thirst. “You gotta get up, man. The… offworlders, they’ve been coming by here, and they, well. They’ve been asking for you. Can you walk?”
Wode grunted, raising himself up onto his elbows. He looked down at his feet, which were bare. He was wearing… almost nothing really. The explosion that had popped him from his ruined Baneblade like a champagne cork had blown off all his clothes, but left him miraculously intact. Even his cuts and bruises, taken earlier that day, had closed up and faded. It’d always been like that, some far off part of his brain had said, he’d never been sick, and even grievous injuries had just gone away, whether or not the medical attention given to them was competent.
“I think so, Saul.” Wode said eventually. He took Saul’s hand, though it wasn’t much help to the far, far larger man, and stood, brushing grit from his naked body.
“Y’want somethin’ to wear, Arnie?” Saul said, chuckling. “You’re naked and you look like shit.”
Wode grinned. “Yea? You got an XXXL uniform laying around I don’t know about? All my kit’s gone with the Sender.”
Saul grimaced, looking like he’d been punched. “Aw, man. The Sender. I can’t hardly believe that.”
“Me neither, Saul.” He sighed. “Well. If they trounced us that badly, then I suppose they can deal with having to see what I was given when I was born. You’ll come with?”
“Sure boss. We’ve been through this much. I was there at the start, and I can be there at the end. Least I can do for the SUF. For… you.”
“For all of us.” Wode echoed.
They exited the tent, two ragged prisoners. They were picked up immediately by a waiting detachment of the armored giants that had butchered Wode’s men. Oddly enough, the warriors formed a guard of some sort around Wode, escorting them across the miserable SUF camp the way they might escort an honored dignitary. Arnulf was taller than these men by a head or two, but they dwarfed Saul, who was only five and a half feet tall. The warriors said nothing audible while they walked, but Wode could hear the clicks of vox pushes keying and unkeying inside the helmets.
“Awful gracious of them.” Saul said, fidgeting with a watch on his wrist as they marched. “With how they were attacking us, I was expecting a bullet in the head when I called the surrender.”
Wode nodded. “It was you who packed it in, then?”
Saul nodded. “Yea. I… I couldn’t, y’know? I couldn’t wrangle them like you can. Everyone was so scattered, panicked…”
Wode smiled, gently. “Saul, if I hadn’t been blown out of my britches, I’d’ve done the same, I think. If you’d stayed and fought til the last, I would’ve dragged you out of your grave and killed you again.”
Saul laughed. “Glad I saved myself that.”
They approached a pre-fab building that had been erected quickly, but with great skill in the hours after the battle. Strung along it were banners from an outfit Wode had never heard of, the Lightnings, and a golden, eagle standard pole with an ensign hanging from it so brilliant, so stark that he couldn’t help but gawp at it. Depicted on it was a twin-headed eagle, an…
Aquila. The word struck into his head like a hammer striking a gong. Where did he hear of that word before? Had he seen this image in his past? Maybe. He couldn’t place it, but something in his soul knew it, knew it as sure as he knew his own name.
The escort reached the building and stopped, forming a procession that led to the door. These men wore armor of an ochre yellow, with a sigil on one shoulderpad of a black lightning bolt gripped in a mailed fist. They snapped to attention with a bang of steel on steel that made Saul jump. Wode merely clenched his jaw, and, with as much poise as he could muster, he walked, Saul in tow. The giants each snapped to parade rest as Wode passed, and as he got to the doors, the last two men on each side opened them.
Inside was a lavish room, a round table that sat a living god burnished in gold armor. Faceless sentinels stood at the wall behind him, similarly adorned, wielding great spears with brutal, chopping blades and integrated guns of some sort. As Wode entered, his eyes began to water, so struck was he by the brilliance of the man before him. Watering soon became tears. Something welled up within him that never had before. He realized, Wode realized, that he had missed the man before him. As his soul had recognized the aquila, it recognized this man, it had loved this man, like…
A father.
“My son.” The giant said, his voice sonorous, deep, cooling the welling emotions in Arnulf like a cool stream of water on a hot day. “My son… returned to me.”
Wode was struck dumb by this. Son? Was this man his father? “I… You have me at a disadvantage…” Wode choked the words out, his voice small and somewhere far away.
“I understand. There is much you must come to know.” The giant spread one hand, encased in a bladed, gold talon. “You and your men fought well. Fought exactly as I had made you. I have come…”
The god in front of Wode smiled. “You could say I have come to… enlist you. I have need of you, lost child of Mankind. Of… me.”
Wode and Saul sat. If this god in armor was affecting Wode so severely, Saul was worse. He simply weeped, sobbing openly at the sight in front of him. Arnulf put his massive hand on Saul’s shoulder, squeezing it gently.
“You got a strange way of asking for help, y’know that?” Wode said. His voice had waver in it, but something in him firmed up. “These men were my friends and comrades, and you’ve butchered them.”
The god dipped his head. “You speak the truth, despite the risks. I could be finished with you here, you know?”
“You could do that.” Wode admitted. “But you didn’t have to meet with me if that was your goal from the start.”
“And you didn’t have to fire first.” The god’s tone was patient. “Intentions, actions, and consequence all form great patterns that we, of men, cannot truly discern when we make the choices that we do. Despite what we have done to one another, we sit here now, no?”
Wode nodded. “Speak, then… Father. It’d be a waste not to, if I’m getting your reasoning.”
“Just so. I have… I did, rather, create you for a great purpose. This war you’ve started on this planet. Why did you start it?”
Wode shrugged. “I felt I had to. The way the people here were being treated disgusted me. I wanted to wipe it clean. I wanted... I suppose I wanted to see the beasts that run this rock extinct so that something more… more dignified could take its place. As to what, I mean…”
He laughed, a small, soft thing. “I didn’t think that far.”
The god nodded, as if this was the answer he’d expected. “I made you exactly for what you described. I wanted a conqueror. A leader. What spurred you to action here, on Salient, happens every day, every hour, across this galaxy, in far greater numbers, in far worse circumstances. I share your feelings. I suspect the way I felt somehow implanted onto you when I forged you. You have siblings much like you, siblings who were created to lead my vast legions across the stars, all reflections of me. These men with me were made in your image, from the same stock.”
“The giants?” Wode asked. “The butchers?”
“The Astartes.” The god corrected. “The Space Marines. And… your gene-sons.”
Wode was silent, for a time. The god regarded him with paternal interest, leaning forward in his seat.
“And you want me for this… what? Crusade?” Wode asked, finally coming around.
The giant nodded. “A crusade. A grim, crusade. I want to reunite the scattered remnants of our species. We’ve struck out amongst the stars, my son, and in our arrogance we have lost one another dabbling in forces, in technology we don’t understand and can never fully tame. I want you to help me wipe clean the predators, the… monsters, from the galaxy so that we can stand united once more. So that we can live free of fear, of degradation.”
Wode nodded, chewing on his lip in thought. “It sounds like you want a pact from me. An agreement.”
“If that’s what you wish to call it.”
“It is. Alright, dad.” Wode met the god’s gaze, his eyes burning at the man’s brilliance, but he stared anyways. “I join your crusade, and I lead my sons into battle. That’s what you want from me.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have terms too.” Wode said. “I’m convinced, but there’s loose ends here.”
“Name them. I’m sure we can fulfill what you request, within reason.”
Wode looked to Saul, who nodded. Both of them looked up at their God, their Emperor. Their father. He nodded to them.
What came next, was history.
Arnulf Wode
Lancer Primus
The Boss
The Old Man
Gender: Male
Homeworld: Salient Tertius (Civilized World)
Salient Tertius is a arid, desert planet of vast, sandy plains and large oceans of glittering blue water separating the continents, of which there are six. Salient Tertius is the only planet in its system that supports life of any kind.
Before Imperial Compliance, Salient was ruled by great merchant houses who regularly dueled their private armies against each other in the vast desert wastes in highly orchestrated, highly glamorized military actions that were as much advertising as warfare. Much of these ‘glory wars’ were conducted by armored fighting vehicles, and the men and women that crewed them were called Lancers, a callback to the armored knights of old Terran lore.
After compliance, the surviving merchant houses now turn their mercantile expertise outward, using their energy and vast monetary reserves of the old house wars to help fund the Great Crusade, as well as trading expeditions to other Imperial worlds, as well as sanctioned Xeno territories.
Appearance: Arnulf gives the impression of being squat and solid. Short for a primarch, at just above nine feet in height, the demigod exudes a domineering, commanding presence, full of confidence and bravado. His face is craggy and gaunt, covered with scars and pock-mark wounds from past conflicts.
His musculature is, of course for one of his stature, defined, but no artistry was present when he was geneforged. He is bulky, with wide shoulders, big biceps and forearms, and a barrel chest propped on legs that seem to be two stout trunks.
At peace, he wears a no-frills service uniform resembling something from Imperial Army issue, though of course the decorations on it are Astartes, and the tailoring is far finer than anything procured from an Auxilia storehouse.
In wartime, on foot, he wears the bare-metal powered plate of the Pact, adjusted for his size and stature, sporting a powerful DAoT void shield generator that can shrug off firepower far in excess of its diminutive size. Cruelly dismissive of melee combat, Arnulf’s favorite weapon is an oversized autocannon that fires discarding sabot shells, a lost relic of a weapon capable of toppling whole city blocks with a sustained burst of fire. Although he carries a power blade, a cruel, heavy, single-edged cleaver of a sword, he rarely uses it, preferring to obliterate his opponents from range.
More often, though, he rides in the cupola of his personal superheavy tank, a curious vehicle consisting of a Baneblade-pattern hull mated to a Fellblade turret.
Personality: Arnulff is decidedly choleric, his temper constantly flaring at life’s every inconvenience. However, he is very genuine, possessed of surprising honesty and insight, which wins him respect in Imperial courts despite his combative nature. The other primarchs have come to value his lack of subterfuge, even if they find him grating to be around for too long. Arnulf values the company of his brothers and sisters who are willing to listen to him, good or bad, viewing his own behavior as a, in his words, ‘grox-shit filter.’
Arnulf himself has an attachment to people, weapons, and equipment that have survived the crucible of combat, often eschewing things or people that haven’t ‘seen the sharp end’.
His attitude towards humanity is that of a firm shepherd. His interpretation of the Astarte’s role in human affairs is an aloof, but decisive protector, letting humans be humans while the Space Marines do the fighting, interfering in human affairs only when they would be self-destructive. His pride in himself and his legion can make him seem dismissive of baseline humanity, but in truth Wode desires wholeheartedly the day when Humanity reigns over the stars and his host can rest.
Psyker Grade: Thoroughly Kappa. It is something of a running joke that Wode’s grating personality is caused by lack of a soul, but in truth he merely possesses no psychic potential.
Skills: Wode is much like other primarchs, a physical powerhouse coupled to a lightning-fast mind and indomitable charisma. Outside of these gifts, though, he is startlingly mundane, with no psychic powers, nor is he even really as gifted at single combat as the rest of his siblings, his own philosophy of combat relying on meeting the enemy with force so overwhelming that the vagaries of tactics and fighting forms become irrelevant.
If anything sets him apart, it is his determination, and his ability to inspire his men to fight with all they’ve got, to squeeze every last ounce of potential from the seemingly outmatched, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. It remains to be seen if this charisma extends to his siblings however.
Wargear:
Return to Sender: A massive superheavy tank, the Return was a Baneblade-pattern tank passed down from generation to generation from the Great Merchant House of Salubria, the house Wode served, and eventually led, in the Salient Unification War. Destroyed by an ammunition explosion when the Emperor came to reclaim his lost son, the vehicle was restored as a condition of the pact that bound Wode and his gene-sons to Imperial Service. It has been extensively modified and upgraded, now surpassing the capability of even the mighty Fellblade class of tank in service with the Legiones Astartes, the turret of which has been retrofitted to the Baneblade’s hull in place of the standard one.
Last Argument: Wode’s personal autocannon, a large weapon that resembles a tank gun more than a carried small arm. It fires a discarding sabot shell made of superdense alloy that carries incredible kinetic force, capable of punching through most protective means with enough sustained fire.
Castellum O Fortuna: Wode’s armor is upsized Mk 3 Astartes plate, stripped of paint to show the bare ceramite and adamantium of its construction. Embedded within it is a relic void shield generator, that, when activated, provides a bubble of energy protection that is intensely powerful. When broken, the shield dissipates in a violent release of energy that can knock squads of armored Astartes off their feet.
Biography:
Arnulf Wode was separated from the Emperor much like his brothers and sisters, the stasis pod containing him eventually landing on the civilized world of Salient Tertius, a world ruled by an oligarchy of opulent merchant houses who had taken to controlling their populations through predatory and exploitative means. Wode was found in the desert by fighting men of the Great Merchant House of Salubria, and taken in to be raised amongst the regiment’s camp followers.
Wode grew up quickly, like all of his siblings, and learned the trade of soldiering from his surrogate family. He enlisted in the Salubria Merchant Army alongside a friend of his, Saul Imogen, the two of them serving in the same tank as a loader and radio operator respectively. Wode rose through the ranks quickly, eventually getting his own tank, then platoon, then company, and finally command of the Merchant Army itself.
Having become jaded and cynical at the spectacle of glamorized, advertised warfare that the Salient merchant houses indulged in like bloodsports, Wode enacted a conspiracy he had been planning, turning several key members in the Salubrian merchant houses and killing the rest who opposed his bid for control. The Salubrian Merchant Army became the Salubrian Unification Front, and Wode used them to wage a war for planetary unification and end the degrading practice of war for sport.
It was at a pivotal point in this war that the Emperor came to claim his lost son. Just as Wode was preparing to break the Southern houses in a surprise night raid, the Emperor unleashed his own tanks of the Lightnings legion, Wode’s lost gene-sons. The Imperials easily destroyed the incompetent merchant army. Wode, however, unwilling to treat with what he saw as off-world meddling, engaged the Imperial forces in a titanic tank battle.
Wode lost, and the SUF was defeated by the Imperial task force, but at great cost. Wode’s underequipped, undergunned rebel army inflicted hideous losses on the attacking Imperials, with some SUF vehicles becoming multiple aces in a single night.
With Wode’s defeat, the Emperor offered a truce, and then service in his Imperium. Wode accepted, naming terms that the Emperor accepted unconditionally. This agreement was named the Pact of the Lance, which Wode’s legion named itself after, replacing their original name of Lightnings.
The Pact was as follows:
1. The Salient Unification War would be finished as the Pact’s first action.
2. The surviving men and women of the Salubrian Unification Front would receive a pardon, as well as the option to continue service in the Imperial military.
3. Wode’s personal tank, the Return to Sender, would be repaired.
4. The Astartes of the Pact of the Lance would inherit the Right of Conquest, a common clause in Salient army contracts that allowed soldiers to keep plunder from the battlefield for their personal gain.
In return for these stipulations, Wode was to be bound to the service of the Emperor for life, carrying out the Grim Crusade for as long as it was necessary.
First Meeting
It had been a hard run. Wode stood in the cupola of the Return to Sender, his Baneblade super heavy tank and checked a handheld auspex again. The little device was wirelessly hooked up to the real auspex display in his command throne inside the vehicle, allowing him to check his contacts even when he stood as he was now, with his head up out of the hatch. As he expected, there was no evidence of their opponents in the Southern merchant houses just yet, but, if his intel was right, they’d be running into them soon.
The point of this run had been to make a cross-country assault across the desert sands, hitting the enemy elements just as the morning suns rose over the horizon. It turns out at their current pace they’d get there a little earlier, which was just fine to the men of the Salient Unification Front, Arnulf Wode’s personal army.
“All task force elements, this is Sally 1.” Wode spoke into his throat mic. “Close your intervals by 300 meters and increase pace by five klicks. We’re getting into the AO.”
It was planned, like always, to be the kind of attack that had become the trademark of Wode’s rebels - to smash into the enemy, breakthrough to their rear, and then slug it out while the other bastards were still figuring out what was going on. It was a strategy that worked, relying on the superior training and aggression of the SUF. They didn’t have the best tanks - most were locally produced copies of STC designs, save for the very best of Wode’s host, which had been passed down for generations within the Salubrian Great House that they had supplanted. They didn’t have the best firepower - most of his tank army didn’t even have full on-the-move gyro stabilization. They were outnumbered in nearly every conflict they fought.
What they did have, and what the other merchant houses would never understand; with their armies of hirelings, more loyal to the credit than to their cause, was the will to do the job, no matter how unpleasant.
Salient Tertius, the ball of rock they all lived on, was unused to the concept of total war. Conflict was ritualized, glamorized, and so shot full of ancient regulations it was as meaningless as parade drill. Men died on the sands, blood trickling into the dunes to be sucked up by the landscape and the houses grew fat on it, harvesting their population in demeaning displays of opulence. Wode was tired of it. His men were tired of it, and damn it, they were going to do something about it.
Tonight would be the biggest something. This night raid would break the southern houses, Wode thought, it would break their confidence. With luck, the inter-factional squabbling as a result of their trouncing in the southern scrubland would do the rest of the work for them, but, they had to be shown the error of their resistance in the first place. Salient would be united, and tonight that unification would be forged.
“Sally 1, this is Sally 1-2.” A voice crackled into the earpiece of Wode’s tanker helmet.
“Go ahead Saul.” Saul Imogen was Wode’s XO, a steadfast, friendly man who had been at Wode’s side ever since they were privates in the old Salubrian Merchant Army.
“I’m picking up Auspex contacts but… well. I’ll patch the feed to your console.” Saul sounded uneasy.
Wode descended into his Baneblade’s command throne, bringing up the main viewscreen. Saul’s gun camera feed was grainy, indistinct, but Wode could pick out silhouettes of tanks. Burning silhouettes of tanks.
Something had, in the time it took them to get from their FOB to the Southern army positions, wiped out said army, completely. It was a level of destruction that even the SUF hadn't yet achieved in their bloody little war. From Wode's count, every tank that their contact in the southern houses had said would be here, was here, and it was knocked out.
Wode raised his hand to key his throat mic, but his earpiece exploded with chatter. He checked his auspex monitor again, keying it up on his command throne’s view plotters. The long range scans were thick with radar contacts, all of them five or so klicks out, and so densely packed they almost appeared to be a solid line. Not the worst thing, but the new contacts were behind his tanks. He jacked the hydraulic lift on his command seat up, putting his head and shoulders above the hatch rim to the tanks cupola, then put a pair of high-vis binoculars to his eyes.
There. He could see the dust being kicked up by… Stars above, hundreds of tanks. He zoomed in a little more. Hundreds of tanks, and none of them were the inferior copies of the SUF. Ranks and ranks of Predator tanks, all of them so new he couldn’t make out even a rust trail. This was bad. He knew without question that this had been the force that had destroyed the Southern Houses army, and had made an oblique run across the desert to outflank anything that would come to investigate the destruction they had caused.
But who were they? The Southern houses had no political schisms that Wode knew of, and no merchant houses possessed so much pristine, new-model armor. Offworlders? Possible, he supposed, but from where?
“Radio discipline people!” Wode barked, his voice drowning out the panicked confusion on the radio. “All Sally units proceed to the ridgeline a klick to the north. Go hull down, and set up sightlines in a reverse slope.”
A chorus of assents was heard from the tank units. Immediately, the armor began to move, including Wode’s Baneblade, which ground and rumbled under him like a giant predatory cat.
He keyed his mic again. “All Vivian units. Disembark your transports and set up your rocket teams amongst the wreckage of the Southern house tanks. Do not fire until enemy armor elements are in range. Transports, turn your engines off, but keep running on battery.”
Vivian was the callsign to their mechanized infantry complement. They began to move as well, a motley collection of tracked and wheeled transports that interspersed themselves amongst the wreckage of their vanquished enemy. He keyed his mic one more time.
“This is gonna be a tough one, Lancers. We have to assume their auspex is as good as ours, so they know we’re here, and we’re not going to outmaneuver them. We hold this ridge, and we punish them for every meter they move. If we can break their center, then maybe we can break out and pincer them, but for now, we hold what we got.”
Another battery of assents followed, the men calmer now that they had orders. There was work to be done now, and by God, they would be the ones to do it. It was only a few minutes to get the task force to get into position, and by then, the enemy armor was in range of the SUF’s longest range guns. Still, Wode held his men to silence. The longer they waited, the less time the enemy had to accurately range them.
More minutes passed, then more. The approaching line of armor began to flash, autocannons peppering the ridgeline that Wode occupied. If they were in range, then it was time.
“All Sally elements, open fire! Roll ‘em!” Wode shouted, then the world crashed to chaos as his Baneblade fired off a giant, rocket propelled shell. The rest of his armor fired as well, as close to unison as could be achieved.
It was a wall of shot, and almost all of it impacted the enemy line, kicking up great gouts of dust and smoke and fire. Wode’s own shell from his tank had passed, through-and-through, an enemy Predator tank and detonated the ammunition, popping the turret off the hull like a tiddlywink. More of the enemy lay shattered and broken, but they kept coming. No first volley, effective even as that one was, would deter a competent enemy, and a defending force never had it that easy.
His own line was getting it now - Wode whipped his head to the left and saw two tanks that were pouring black smoke, holes present in the gun mantlets where lucky shots had penetrated and achieved a kill. Crewmen were bailing out of the stricken armor, dragging their comrades who were unlucky enough to be harmed during the destruction of their vehicles.
Another volley. Another reaper’s harvest. Wode wondered, in a small part of his mind not occupied by this fight, what would happen to this tank graveyard. Would it be cleaned up? Would these tanks be recovered? Or would it stand here, bodies and all, until the sands reclaimed it?
Well. That was someone else’s problem. The enemy gunline was getting more and more ragged as it got closer. Now the enemy could properly take aim and shoot, scoring consistent kills against Wode’s armor. His inferior tanks, copies, monkey models, of the armor attacking them now folded like paper when hit with enemy munitions, but, they held, a battered string of turrets protruding from a ridge pockmarked with shell-holes.
“Vivian elements…” Wode shouted. “Hit ‘em!”
The infantry spoke up now. Largely ignored by the attackers, they unleashed a blistering volley of anti-armor rockets into the sides of the tanks that had begun to pass by them. Destruction became butchery. Dug in as they were amongst their transports and the destroyed Southern Houses tanks, the infantry could shoot and displace as they pleased, disappearing into the gunsmoke as the disciplined missile teams scythed down the approaching vehicles.
Kill counts for the SUF were climbing into the obscene, nine kills, ten kills per tank, but the enemy kept coming. They had the numbers. They had the support, but every SUF loss was irreplaceable, whereas these off-worlders kept coming, giving as good as they got. The infantry reaped a heavy toll, but soon, the enemy’s own mechanized elements displaced into the tank graveyard Wode’s men were fighting from. They were giants, covered head to toe in powered plate, wielding obscenely oversized guns and chainsaw… swords? Wode had never imagined such a brutal, cruel weapon, but here these offworlders were, butchering his men with them as easily as a man might shave.
He ground his teeth, his eyes transfixed with anger. Were they just gonna sit here and take it, then? His mind worked at a frenetic pace, arriving at two options. They could could sit and slug it out some more, but that advantage was going away. The enemy was about to take the graveyard between them, and he wasn’t confident he could win a static shooting war. The enemy had already reaped a butcher’s bill from advancing and shooting - allowing them to sit and use their no doubt superior gunnery computers was a losing gamble to his mind.
That left offense. Fight them in the confusion of the graveyard. Use the SUF’s training and verve to keep the enemy on the backfoot. Get up and actually fight the damn war. A grimace turned into a feral grin. He might save his infantry too, who, despite the effectiveness of their position and the necessity of their sacrifice, he couldn’t help but feel he’d left them out to dry.
“All Sally elements!” He roared. “Advance! Meet them in the wrecks! We’ll take them out one by one!”
A cheer sounded. This was it - he could push them back here, and his men knew it too. They surged forward, tanks cresting over the slope and running pell mell into the fracas. His Baneblade simply plowed through the berm, showering him and his vehicle in fine, powdery sand that made it look like they’d crashed through a bakery.
What happened next was a slideshow of butchery, a little slice of Gehenna. Tanks exchanged fire point blank, often killing eachother in the exchange. Men and armored offworlders were torn apart by grenades and gunfire, splattering blood and viscera in great gouts. Wherever Wode’s command tank fired, something died. The smoke and dust and grit was so thick, targets were silhouettes at best, mentions at worst. Coordination broke down. Vehicles broke down, and men perished, but the offworlders kept coming, kept fighting, kept battering them.
Wode’s tank pushed through the nightmarish vision of death that their battlefield had become, the Sender parting the fog of war the desperate brawl had created. As his vision cleared, his stomach sank. His auspex chimed as it registered more enemy contacts. Another wave. How could there be another?
He pushed his binoculars to his face. They were coming from the same direction as before, but this time, it wasn’t predators. No, it was superheavies, like his, of a model he was unfamiliar with, backed up by odd, box-shaped vehicles that sported no turrets but were far larger than anything he had but the Sender. He reached up to his throat mic to shout… something. Wode didn’t even know, and he never had the opportunity to find out.
The offworld supertanks spoke, and Wode’s contribution ended. He was flung from his cupola as at least three separate impacts shattered his vehicle’s pockmarked, rent armor and detonated the ammunition. He landed face down in the sand, and his eyes closed, his brain desperately thinking of what to do even as unconsciousness took him.
__________
When he awoke, it was with the grimy, bloodied faces of his surviving men peering down at him. He could see Saul’s gaunt features, creased with worry. Other men and women were crowded in with them, all of them jockeying for position to see what had happened. They were crammed into some kind of tent, presumably a holding tent for the captured, and now defeated, SUF.
“Boss, hey.” Saul said, his voice hoarse with thirst. “You gotta get up, man. The… offworlders, they’ve been coming by here, and they, well. They’ve been asking for you. Can you walk?”
Wode grunted, raising himself up onto his elbows. He looked down at his feet, which were bare. He was wearing… almost nothing really. The explosion that had popped him from his ruined Baneblade like a champagne cork had blown off all his clothes, but left him miraculously intact. Even his cuts and bruises, taken earlier that day, had closed up and faded. It’d always been like that, some far off part of his brain had said, he’d never been sick, and even grievous injuries had just gone away, whether or not the medical attention given to them was competent.
“I think so, Saul.” Wode said eventually. He took Saul’s hand, though it wasn’t much help to the far, far larger man, and stood, brushing grit from his naked body.
“Y’want somethin’ to wear, Arnie?” Saul said, chuckling. “You’re naked and you look like shit.”
Wode grinned. “Yea? You got an XXXL uniform laying around I don’t know about? All my kit’s gone with the Sender.”
Saul grimaced, looking like he’d been punched. “Aw, man. The Sender. I can’t hardly believe that.”
“Me neither, Saul.” He sighed. “Well. If they trounced us that badly, then I suppose they can deal with having to see what I was given when I was born. You’ll come with?”
“Sure boss. We’ve been through this much. I was there at the start, and I can be there at the end. Least I can do for the SUF. For… you.”
“For all of us.” Wode echoed.
They exited the tent, two ragged prisoners. They were picked up immediately by a waiting detachment of the armored giants that had butchered Wode’s men. Oddly enough, the warriors formed a guard of some sort around Wode, escorting them across the miserable SUF camp the way they might escort an honored dignitary. Arnulf was taller than these men by a head or two, but they dwarfed Saul, who was only five and a half feet tall. The warriors said nothing audible while they walked, but Wode could hear the clicks of vox pushes keying and unkeying inside the helmets.
“Awful gracious of them.” Saul said, fidgeting with a watch on his wrist as they marched. “With how they were attacking us, I was expecting a bullet in the head when I called the surrender.”
Wode nodded. “It was you who packed it in, then?”
Saul nodded. “Yea. I… I couldn’t, y’know? I couldn’t wrangle them like you can. Everyone was so scattered, panicked…”
Wode smiled, gently. “Saul, if I hadn’t been blown out of my britches, I’d’ve done the same, I think. If you’d stayed and fought til the last, I would’ve dragged you out of your grave and killed you again.”
Saul laughed. “Glad I saved myself that.”
They approached a pre-fab building that had been erected quickly, but with great skill in the hours after the battle. Strung along it were banners from an outfit Wode had never heard of, the Lightnings, and a golden, eagle standard pole with an ensign hanging from it so brilliant, so stark that he couldn’t help but gawp at it. Depicted on it was a twin-headed eagle, an…
Aquila. The word struck into his head like a hammer striking a gong. Where did he hear of that word before? Had he seen this image in his past? Maybe. He couldn’t place it, but something in his soul knew it, knew it as sure as he knew his own name.
The escort reached the building and stopped, forming a procession that led to the door. These men wore armor of an ochre yellow, with a sigil on one shoulderpad of a black lightning bolt gripped in a mailed fist. They snapped to attention with a bang of steel on steel that made Saul jump. Wode merely clenched his jaw, and, with as much poise as he could muster, he walked, Saul in tow. The giants each snapped to parade rest as Wode passed, and as he got to the doors, the last two men on each side opened them.
Inside was a lavish room, a round table that sat a living god burnished in gold armor. Faceless sentinels stood at the wall behind him, similarly adorned, wielding great spears with brutal, chopping blades and integrated guns of some sort. As Wode entered, his eyes began to water, so struck was he by the brilliance of the man before him. Watering soon became tears. Something welled up within him that never had before. He realized, Wode realized, that he had missed the man before him. As his soul had recognized the aquila, it recognized this man, it had loved this man, like…
A father.
“My son.” The giant said, his voice sonorous, deep, cooling the welling emotions in Arnulf like a cool stream of water on a hot day. “My son… returned to me.”
Wode was struck dumb by this. Son? Was this man his father? “I… You have me at a disadvantage…” Wode choked the words out, his voice small and somewhere far away.
“I understand. There is much you must come to know.” The giant spread one hand, encased in a bladed, gold talon. “You and your men fought well. Fought exactly as I had made you. I have come…”
The god in front of Wode smiled. “You could say I have come to… enlist you. I have need of you, lost child of Mankind. Of… me.”
Wode and Saul sat. If this god in armor was affecting Wode so severely, Saul was worse. He simply weeped, sobbing openly at the sight in front of him. Arnulf put his massive hand on Saul’s shoulder, squeezing it gently.
“You got a strange way of asking for help, y’know that?” Wode said. His voice had waver in it, but something in him firmed up. “These men were my friends and comrades, and you’ve butchered them.”
The god dipped his head. “You speak the truth, despite the risks. I could be finished with you here, you know?”
“You could do that.” Wode admitted. “But you didn’t have to meet with me if that was your goal from the start.”
“And you didn’t have to fire first.” The god’s tone was patient. “Intentions, actions, and consequence all form great patterns that we, of men, cannot truly discern when we make the choices that we do. Despite what we have done to one another, we sit here now, no?”
Wode nodded. “Speak, then… Father. It’d be a waste not to, if I’m getting your reasoning.”
“Just so. I have… I did, rather, create you for a great purpose. This war you’ve started on this planet. Why did you start it?”
Wode shrugged. “I felt I had to. The way the people here were being treated disgusted me. I wanted to wipe it clean. I wanted... I suppose I wanted to see the beasts that run this rock extinct so that something more… more dignified could take its place. As to what, I mean…”
He laughed, a small, soft thing. “I didn’t think that far.”
The god nodded, as if this was the answer he’d expected. “I made you exactly for what you described. I wanted a conqueror. A leader. What spurred you to action here, on Salient, happens every day, every hour, across this galaxy, in far greater numbers, in far worse circumstances. I share your feelings. I suspect the way I felt somehow implanted onto you when I forged you. You have siblings much like you, siblings who were created to lead my vast legions across the stars, all reflections of me. These men with me were made in your image, from the same stock.”
“The giants?” Wode asked. “The butchers?”
“The Astartes.” The god corrected. “The Space Marines. And… your gene-sons.”
Wode was silent, for a time. The god regarded him with paternal interest, leaning forward in his seat.
“And you want me for this… what? Crusade?” Wode asked, finally coming around.
The giant nodded. “A crusade. A grim, crusade. I want to reunite the scattered remnants of our species. We’ve struck out amongst the stars, my son, and in our arrogance we have lost one another dabbling in forces, in technology we don’t understand and can never fully tame. I want you to help me wipe clean the predators, the… monsters, from the galaxy so that we can stand united once more. So that we can live free of fear, of degradation.”
Wode nodded, chewing on his lip in thought. “It sounds like you want a pact from me. An agreement.”
“If that’s what you wish to call it.”
“It is. Alright, dad.” Wode met the god’s gaze, his eyes burning at the man’s brilliance, but he stared anyways. “I join your crusade, and I lead my sons into battle. That’s what you want from me.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I have terms too.” Wode said. “I’m convinced, but there’s loose ends here.”
“Name them. I’m sure we can fulfill what you request, within reason.”
Wode looked to Saul, who nodded. Both of them looked up at their God, their Emperor. Their father. He nodded to them.
What came next, was history.
Legion
Name: Pact of the Lance (Former Name: The Lightnings)
General Term: Lancer, Pacter
Legion Number: X
Legion Strength: ~150,000 Astartes
~ 200,000 Auxilia, combat and non-combat
Armour Appearance: The Lightnings were never really a legion that desired lots of ornamentation, and the Pact proved even more visually austere. There is little regulated ornamentation of armor, with most legionaries forgoing it entirely, as space is at a premium in armored vehicles. The armor is unpainted metal, and the Legion symbol is often traced out in black paint with no color whatsoever. The Pact relies on the armor’s in-built transponder system to identify command ranks and other legionaries, preferring to keep their armor unadorned to make it harder for snipers to pick out important members. The Legion wears mostly Mk 2 armor for its availability, though the Mk 3 is popular amongst the mechanized infantry for its durability in assaults and close range gun battles.
A veteran tanker of the 1st AG. Note the augmentic leg, many tank commanders survive their vehicles being shot out from under them, and leg injuries are common due to interior fires and explosions venting from open hatches as they climb out.
A mechanized infantryman. This Lancer has opted for a close combat loadout, using the Legion’s trademark spear.
Artillery Lancers often go helmetless to make the conditions inside the fighting compartments of self propelled guns more tolerable.
Warcry: “Roll ‘em!” (Official, often used as the radio command to commence an attack)
“Saints and Martyrs!” (Unofficial, used as an expletive)
Favored Tactics/Battlefield Role: The Pact inherited a lot from their Primarch and the fast moving, desert wars of Salient where he learned his trade. The trademark of the young Legion is its tank companies, vast ranks of Imperial armor that strike out at the foe in precise, unstoppable spearheads of steel and guns.
The Pact favors the aggressive war, using their tanks as battering rams to punch holes in the weakest parts of an enemy battle line, then encircling the cut-off foe and destroying them in detail with the less glamorous mechanized infantry of the Legion and its Imperial Army auxilia. It is not uncommon for the Pact to outpace its logistical elements, relying on prosecuting their conflicts with plunder from their opponents.
Even on the defensive, the Pact will constantly probe the enemy for weaknesses, and, if detected, sally forth on daring raids that will hopefully allow the Pact to once again operate on their terms.
Legion Structure: The Pact is organized much along the lines of Wode’s army during the Salient Unification war. The roughly 150k Astartes are split into 5 army groups of 30,000 Astartes, and each of those armies is split into brigades of 5,000. Those brigades are split into regiments of 2,500, battalions of 1250, companies of 250, platoons of 50, so on, so forth. These are of course, mostly on paper, as in reality the Legion is split into mission-specific task forces made up of any composition of Astartes from any of the army groups.
The 5 army groups each have a specialization, the 1st being tanks, the 2nd being mechanized infantry, and the 3rd being self propelled artillery. The 4th is the specialist army group, made up of combat support Astartes like combat engineers, reconnaissance assets like Land speeders, and anything else the Pact may need without dedicating 30,000 Astartes to doing it. The 5th is the replacement and training army group, and is never actually deployed. Instead, the other army groups source replacement personnel from the 5th.
The Imperial Auxilia assigned to them are responsible for their own organization.
Legion Characteristics: The Lightnings, much like the Judicators (later the Doomsayers) had very little trouble integrating with their lost genesire. Their way of war was similar to Wode’s own little merchant army, and they took to his views on armored, aggressive war like a raccoon takes to trash.
Culturally, the Pact is very pragmatic and results-oriented. What works, works, and what doesn’t is abandoned. Legionaries from Wode’s host are constantly honing their craft, running training exercises day and night until even the most complicated maneuvers are rote memory.
Unlike a lot of Astartes, however, the Pact values free time, rotating units out of action to rest during operations, where the Legionaries engage in recreational activities, such as cards, dice, feasts, and sleep. Due to a defect in their gene seed, the Pact’s Catalepsean nodes operate at a reduced capacity, making it necessary for these warriors to recuperate at levels that seem indulgent to more austere Legions. In particular, Lancers often engage in human vices such as lho sticks and stimulants, especially to stay awake during their high tempo combat operations.
A quirk of the Pact is the Right of Conquest, a clause written in the titular Pact of the Lance that allows the Pact legionaries to keep the loot from their victories. Battlefield trophies were a perk of employment in the Salient merchant houses, with many soldiers joining for the opportunity of bringing home valuable trinkets and weapons for prestige and money. The Pact practices this into the current day, keeping vehicles, weaponry, banners, and technology from conquered enemies, many times using that loot in battles immediately after the conflict they acquired them in.
The Legion also practices the Astartes custom of service studs, although instead of time served, the Legion uses studs to mark combat deployments where a Lancer scored at least one kill, with the color of the stud denoting the rough amount of said kills. Lancers without studs are considered ‘new meat’ and are subject to mild ridicule and jests from their fellow legionaries.
Dramatis Personae:
1st Army Group Praetor Erhardt Grieg: The Bloody 1st is led by Praetor Grieg, a hardbitten, gregarious Astartes tanker who has crewed AFV’s since before Wode inherited the Legion. The 1st is, of course, directly under the Primarch so Grieg is considered the Legion’s second, although he does not act as Wode’s ‘voice’ nor has any desire to do anything but ride his tank into battle.
2nd Army Group Praetor Johann Kohl: Kohl is the leader of the Second Army group, the Bandits. If Grieg is the veteran tanker, then Kohl is the veteran infantryman. Dominated by mechanized infantry, the 2nd takes great pride in their men doing the vast majority of the ‘hard work’, as it is the mechanized infantry who does the bulk of the killing in the wake of the tanks. Kohl is a quiet, ruthless man, with a cutting tongue that even the Pact considers cruel.
3rd Army Group Praetor Armin Schultz: Schultz is the leader of the Redlegs, the Third Army Group of the Pact. Schultz is a methodical, calculating leader, not prone to any sort of emotion at all. He likes his men to carry out fire missions with cold, clinical precision, as timely artillery support can mean the difference between victory and glory, or an ignominious death.
4th Army Group Praetor Gregor Liebowitz: The 4th Army group is captained by Praetor Liebowitz. A fiery tempered maverick, Liebowitz is a tireless advocate of unusual technology and tactics, always finding new ways to ‘torment’ (his words) the men of the 4th with some new battle lore or experimental wargear from the Legion forges. Nominally, the 4th is the combat engineering army group, but in practice the 4th AG is a catch-all for anything the Legion needs, including the legion's apothecaries and librarians, but not in great number, earning them the nickname ‘Geniuses.’
5th Army Group Praetor Saul Imogen: Saul is a baseline human from Salient, a rarity in the Legions as a human holding Astartes rank. Saul was the XO of Wode’s personal army in the Salient Unification Wars, and a capable tank man. He, along with a cadre of Astartes and Auxilia training officers, drill the aspirant Astartes mercilessly in the principles and concepts of armored warfare. Saul is friendly and good-humored, but has an almost legendary reputation amongst the Lancers due to the oddity of his rank and duties. It is a common joke amongst the Legionaries, for instance, that Saul is the true primarch of the Tenth, and Wode is secretly taking his orders.
Specialist Formations:
1st Company of the 1st AG, 'Hell's Wall':
While the Pact mostly parcels out its legionaries in mission specific task forces, one company is always deployed together. Hell's Wall is an elite formation of the Legion's Superheavy Fellblade tanks, led by Erhardt Grieg himself. Given the best vehicles, the crews of the 1st are all multiple aces, experts of both blistering offense and stolid defense, having laid low many enemy vehicles and monstrous xenoforms. Hell's wall will fight to the last, always eager to test their steel against the worst foes the Crusade has to offer.
Relationships:
The Emperor: The Emperor is father, employer, and commander all in one to the Pact. They are an uncomplicated Legion and hold no resentment to the Imperial regent.
Their Primarch: To the Pact, Wode is idolized as an example of all they believe in. Wode often fights in the front, whether on foot, in a transport, atop his relic tank, or even in more mundane armor such as Predators, Land Raiders, and on one notable occasion from the back of a humble Cargo 8 supply truck. This ethic, while dangerous, endears him to his men, human and Astartes alike.
Malcador and the Imperial administration: Strained. Wode is blunt, coarse, and uncaring of anyone's opinion except his men, his father, and everyone who helps them get into the fight. The red tape already present in the fledgling imperium grates on the Legion and their genesires nerves.
Cult Mechanicum: The Pact has a great regard for the Cult Mechanicum, if nothing else because a legion so dominated by armored fighting vehicles needs the support. A techpriest enginseer looking to increase his station in the Cult would do well to sign on with the Pact - the Legion will provide good reference to any techpriest who can keep up with the maintenance demands.
Other Legions: The Pact views other Legions on a sliding scale of trustworthiness based directly on how often they’ve deployed together and how competent the other legion was perceived to be. The Pact, however, views itself as the best, of all time, ever, and no other legion could ever hope to supplant their own opinion of themselves.
Imperial Army: The Pact views the Auxilia much the same as other legions, the only ones being worth a damn being the ones who have served with them and served well. The Army doesn't have much of an opinion, good or bad, of the Pact, in part due to the legion's age, and partly due to the similarity of the Pact to conventional Imperial Army armored formations.
Name: Pact of the Lance (Former Name: The Lightnings)
General Term: Lancer, Pacter
Legion Number: X
Legion Strength: ~150,000 Astartes
~ 200,000 Auxilia, combat and non-combat
Armour Appearance: The Lightnings were never really a legion that desired lots of ornamentation, and the Pact proved even more visually austere. There is little regulated ornamentation of armor, with most legionaries forgoing it entirely, as space is at a premium in armored vehicles. The armor is unpainted metal, and the Legion symbol is often traced out in black paint with no color whatsoever. The Pact relies on the armor’s in-built transponder system to identify command ranks and other legionaries, preferring to keep their armor unadorned to make it harder for snipers to pick out important members. The Legion wears mostly Mk 2 armor for its availability, though the Mk 3 is popular amongst the mechanized infantry for its durability in assaults and close range gun battles.
A veteran tanker of the 1st AG. Note the augmentic leg, many tank commanders survive their vehicles being shot out from under them, and leg injuries are common due to interior fires and explosions venting from open hatches as they climb out.
A mechanized infantryman. This Lancer has opted for a close combat loadout, using the Legion’s trademark spear.
Artillery Lancers often go helmetless to make the conditions inside the fighting compartments of self propelled guns more tolerable.
Warcry: “Roll ‘em!” (Official, often used as the radio command to commence an attack)
“Saints and Martyrs!” (Unofficial, used as an expletive)
Favored Tactics/Battlefield Role: The Pact inherited a lot from their Primarch and the fast moving, desert wars of Salient where he learned his trade. The trademark of the young Legion is its tank companies, vast ranks of Imperial armor that strike out at the foe in precise, unstoppable spearheads of steel and guns.
The Pact favors the aggressive war, using their tanks as battering rams to punch holes in the weakest parts of an enemy battle line, then encircling the cut-off foe and destroying them in detail with the less glamorous mechanized infantry of the Legion and its Imperial Army auxilia. It is not uncommon for the Pact to outpace its logistical elements, relying on prosecuting their conflicts with plunder from their opponents.
Even on the defensive, the Pact will constantly probe the enemy for weaknesses, and, if detected, sally forth on daring raids that will hopefully allow the Pact to once again operate on their terms.
Legion Structure: The Pact is organized much along the lines of Wode’s army during the Salient Unification war. The roughly 150k Astartes are split into 5 army groups of 30,000 Astartes, and each of those armies is split into brigades of 5,000. Those brigades are split into regiments of 2,500, battalions of 1250, companies of 250, platoons of 50, so on, so forth. These are of course, mostly on paper, as in reality the Legion is split into mission-specific task forces made up of any composition of Astartes from any of the army groups.
The 5 army groups each have a specialization, the 1st being tanks, the 2nd being mechanized infantry, and the 3rd being self propelled artillery. The 4th is the specialist army group, made up of combat support Astartes like combat engineers, reconnaissance assets like Land speeders, and anything else the Pact may need without dedicating 30,000 Astartes to doing it. The 5th is the replacement and training army group, and is never actually deployed. Instead, the other army groups source replacement personnel from the 5th.
The Imperial Auxilia assigned to them are responsible for their own organization.
Legion Characteristics: The Lightnings, much like the Judicators (later the Doomsayers) had very little trouble integrating with their lost genesire. Their way of war was similar to Wode’s own little merchant army, and they took to his views on armored, aggressive war like a raccoon takes to trash.
Culturally, the Pact is very pragmatic and results-oriented. What works, works, and what doesn’t is abandoned. Legionaries from Wode’s host are constantly honing their craft, running training exercises day and night until even the most complicated maneuvers are rote memory.
Unlike a lot of Astartes, however, the Pact values free time, rotating units out of action to rest during operations, where the Legionaries engage in recreational activities, such as cards, dice, feasts, and sleep. Due to a defect in their gene seed, the Pact’s Catalepsean nodes operate at a reduced capacity, making it necessary for these warriors to recuperate at levels that seem indulgent to more austere Legions. In particular, Lancers often engage in human vices such as lho sticks and stimulants, especially to stay awake during their high tempo combat operations.
A quirk of the Pact is the Right of Conquest, a clause written in the titular Pact of the Lance that allows the Pact legionaries to keep the loot from their victories. Battlefield trophies were a perk of employment in the Salient merchant houses, with many soldiers joining for the opportunity of bringing home valuable trinkets and weapons for prestige and money. The Pact practices this into the current day, keeping vehicles, weaponry, banners, and technology from conquered enemies, many times using that loot in battles immediately after the conflict they acquired them in.
The Legion also practices the Astartes custom of service studs, although instead of time served, the Legion uses studs to mark combat deployments where a Lancer scored at least one kill, with the color of the stud denoting the rough amount of said kills. Lancers without studs are considered ‘new meat’ and are subject to mild ridicule and jests from their fellow legionaries.
Dramatis Personae:
1st Army Group Praetor Erhardt Grieg: The Bloody 1st is led by Praetor Grieg, a hardbitten, gregarious Astartes tanker who has crewed AFV’s since before Wode inherited the Legion. The 1st is, of course, directly under the Primarch so Grieg is considered the Legion’s second, although he does not act as Wode’s ‘voice’ nor has any desire to do anything but ride his tank into battle.
2nd Army Group Praetor Johann Kohl: Kohl is the leader of the Second Army group, the Bandits. If Grieg is the veteran tanker, then Kohl is the veteran infantryman. Dominated by mechanized infantry, the 2nd takes great pride in their men doing the vast majority of the ‘hard work’, as it is the mechanized infantry who does the bulk of the killing in the wake of the tanks. Kohl is a quiet, ruthless man, with a cutting tongue that even the Pact considers cruel.
3rd Army Group Praetor Armin Schultz: Schultz is the leader of the Redlegs, the Third Army Group of the Pact. Schultz is a methodical, calculating leader, not prone to any sort of emotion at all. He likes his men to carry out fire missions with cold, clinical precision, as timely artillery support can mean the difference between victory and glory, or an ignominious death.
4th Army Group Praetor Gregor Liebowitz: The 4th Army group is captained by Praetor Liebowitz. A fiery tempered maverick, Liebowitz is a tireless advocate of unusual technology and tactics, always finding new ways to ‘torment’ (his words) the men of the 4th with some new battle lore or experimental wargear from the Legion forges. Nominally, the 4th is the combat engineering army group, but in practice the 4th AG is a catch-all for anything the Legion needs, including the legion's apothecaries and librarians, but not in great number, earning them the nickname ‘Geniuses.’
5th Army Group Praetor Saul Imogen: Saul is a baseline human from Salient, a rarity in the Legions as a human holding Astartes rank. Saul was the XO of Wode’s personal army in the Salient Unification Wars, and a capable tank man. He, along with a cadre of Astartes and Auxilia training officers, drill the aspirant Astartes mercilessly in the principles and concepts of armored warfare. Saul is friendly and good-humored, but has an almost legendary reputation amongst the Lancers due to the oddity of his rank and duties. It is a common joke amongst the Legionaries, for instance, that Saul is the true primarch of the Tenth, and Wode is secretly taking his orders.
Specialist Formations:
1st Company of the 1st AG, 'Hell's Wall':
While the Pact mostly parcels out its legionaries in mission specific task forces, one company is always deployed together. Hell's Wall is an elite formation of the Legion's Superheavy Fellblade tanks, led by Erhardt Grieg himself. Given the best vehicles, the crews of the 1st are all multiple aces, experts of both blistering offense and stolid defense, having laid low many enemy vehicles and monstrous xenoforms. Hell's wall will fight to the last, always eager to test their steel against the worst foes the Crusade has to offer.
Relationships:
The Emperor: The Emperor is father, employer, and commander all in one to the Pact. They are an uncomplicated Legion and hold no resentment to the Imperial regent.
Their Primarch: To the Pact, Wode is idolized as an example of all they believe in. Wode often fights in the front, whether on foot, in a transport, atop his relic tank, or even in more mundane armor such as Predators, Land Raiders, and on one notable occasion from the back of a humble Cargo 8 supply truck. This ethic, while dangerous, endears him to his men, human and Astartes alike.
Malcador and the Imperial administration: Strained. Wode is blunt, coarse, and uncaring of anyone's opinion except his men, his father, and everyone who helps them get into the fight. The red tape already present in the fledgling imperium grates on the Legion and their genesires nerves.
Cult Mechanicum: The Pact has a great regard for the Cult Mechanicum, if nothing else because a legion so dominated by armored fighting vehicles needs the support. A techpriest enginseer looking to increase his station in the Cult would do well to sign on with the Pact - the Legion will provide good reference to any techpriest who can keep up with the maintenance demands.
Other Legions: The Pact views other Legions on a sliding scale of trustworthiness based directly on how often they’ve deployed together and how competent the other legion was perceived to be. The Pact, however, views itself as the best, of all time, ever, and no other legion could ever hope to supplant their own opinion of themselves.
Imperial Army: The Pact views the Auxilia much the same as other legions, the only ones being worth a damn being the ones who have served with them and served well. The Army doesn't have much of an opinion, good or bad, of the Pact, in part due to the legion's age, and partly due to the similarity of the Pact to conventional Imperial Army armored formations.