Grey Knight, Warhammer 40,000 meets the Elder scrolls Options

[Colonel Mustard]

This is an idea I had a while ago, and had been entertaining for a while. As you may have guessed by the subtitle, this is an Elder Scrolls/40K crossover. For those you don’t know the rich lore of 40K, here’s a rough image of it.

It is the 41st millennium, and war has raged for eternity. The mighty empire of humanity, the Imperium of Man, rules the galaxy, home to a million worlds and untold trillions of people. Guided by its divine Emperor, interred on the golden throne after being wounded by his most favour son, the Imperium is a force that seems unstoppable. Yet mankind’s great empire is beset on all side by aliens, traitors and, most fearful of all, the daemons of the warp. These creatures, existing in a realm not dissimilar to Oblivion, are the most deadly threat to all living things. Existing in the warp are the four Gods of Chaos, Khorne, blood of skulls, death and battle, Slaanesh, God of Debauchery, Nurgle, god of decay and disease and Tzeentch, the god of plots and cunning, the weaver of fates and destinies, playing the great game of existence with the skill of a grand master. Whether they are united or they are divided, the four gods of chaos plot, scheme and plan to destroy the material world and make it one with the warp, damning all living things to a nightmarish existence of eternal torment.

And to fight these foes are the mightiest of warriors. The Space Marines, the Adeptus Astartes, the greatest warriors ever to stride upon a battlefield. Made by the divine Emperor of Mankind, each Space Marine is genetically engineered to be stronger, faster and far longer lived by any ordinary man, and psycho-indoctrinated to know no fear. Wielding the most powerful weapons and armours humanity has available; the Space Marines form an impenetrable bulwark against the foes of man. And greatest among them are the Grey Knights, Humanity’s last line of defence against the denizens of the Warp. The military branch of the Emperor’s Holy Inquisition; the Grey Knights are clad in blessed adamantium and wield the fabled Nemesis force weapons. Each one of these holy warriors is able to fight and defeat an army single handed. And now, a company of these blessed warriors has been sent to combat the dread army of Askillarrat the Insane, a greater daemon of Tzeentch, and amongst them is the fabled Brother Captain Alicarius.

Grey Knight-Book One of the Liber Oblivionicus

Part 1-Daemons

Purple flames clawed the sky like the talons of some bizarre, reality defying monster. Buildings were consumed by its twisting blaze, it intense heat melting the rockcrete and steel that made them up, slumping them down into a thick syrupy liquid.

And in the flames, creatures charged forward. Twisting and dancing impossibly, Daemonettes, the alluring yet repellent servants of Slaanesh, made their way through the flames, giggling and singing sweetly. Next to them shambled the Plaguebearers. Corrupted hulks, with a single eye and a horn sprouting form their foreheads, they dripped with disease, buboes spilling pus and gashes in their stomach spilling thick, rubbery intestines. They carried huge, rusted blades, thick with rotten blood and the entrails of their foes, whilst flies buzzed about them, occasionally stopping on their host to feast on a small part of rotten flesh.

Next to them sprinted Bloodletters, murderous servants of Khorne. Their skin, coloured blood red, split and bled constantly, an unending tribute to their monstrous patron. They hefted great broadswords, roaring and screaming in their hatred.

And most bizarre of all were the daemons of Tzeentch.

To behold a creature of such madness and lack of logic was enough to drive most men insane. The cavorting and twisting monstrosities giggled with insane laughter as they advanced, flames crackling around them. Faces formed on their bodies, in any place they could, sometime even being held between their outstretched hands.

And against this horde of unholy death stood fifty of the Imperium’s finest warriors. Nemesis force weapons were activated, electricity crackling around the blessed halberds and claymores. Storm bolters, mounted on the wrists of suits of adamantium armour, were cocked and loaded. The Grey Knights were the only force that stood between the Daemons and the utter annihilation of the planet.

Brother-Captain Alicarius muttered the prayer of vengeance as he slammed the specially made magazine of bullets into his weapon. Around him, warriors murmured prayers to the God-Emperor as they prepared for battle, checking weaponry systems and getting into battle formation. Behind, he heard Brother Deacus attach a tank of prometheus into his incinerator, the highly volatile fuel having been blessed and mixed with holy oils to cause the most damage possible to their daemonic foes.

The warriors took up their battle positions, and allowed the auto-senses in their helms to pick their targets and display their range.

The Daemons thundered onwards, approaching faster than ever.

“Pick Targets!” shouteded Alicarius. “On my order…fire!”

Bolter shells ripped from the Grey Knight lines, the bullets detonating inside their targets, causing the daemons to be blasted apart.

Yet they continued.

The Daemons came within Incinerator range, and burning blue fuel was jettisoned onto the creatures, burning many of them to cinders. Their screams echoed across the battlefield.

Then the creatures were upon the Grey Knight lines.

Alicarius swung his halberd in an arc, slicing through a bloodletter, before spinning and planting it in the bloated, rotten belly of plaguebearer. He yanked his weapon upwards, sending an arc of rotten gore flying into the air, before it splattered onto his armour. It hissed as it contacted the blessed adamantium, the ichors reacting violently with the holy oils and unguents upon the armour.

Alicarius span and slashed with his brothers, slicing through the daemons, bellowing litanies and prayers and sending off bursts of bolter fire at point blank range into any Daemon foolish enough to get close enough.

Suddenly, he was slammed to the ground by something that looked like a mechanical rhinoceros made of reddened brass, ridden by a Bloodletter. A Bloodcrusher of Khorne-a dread knight of the Blood God. The rider’s massive obsidian sword made a swing for Alicarius’ head, but he jerked his neck back to avoid being decapitated. He raised his own weapon and slashed through his enemy and its mount. Gore and mechanical parts scattered around him, and Alicarius rolled to his feet, slamming his blade into a daemonette too slow to avoid him. Then he was wreathed in blue fire.

He stood his ground, his body battling against the flames’ physical assault and his mind fighting the sorcerous one attempting to consume his soul. He took a step forwards, then another, constantly pushing against the power of the flames, to be confronted with the most bizarre creature possible.

Its body was shifting mass of purple-blue flames, while screaming maws that belched fire twisted and writhed around its body. Alicarius’ halberd slice through it, and it disappeared in a cloud of glittering blue smoke.

He turned as his hyper-enhanced senses picked up the sound of someone moving behind him. He span, storm bolter raised, to see a monstrous creature born of man’s worst nightmares. Similar to some massive, bipedal vulture, the creature’s multicoloured feathers flickered and twitched madly. In one of its clawed hands it held a staff, crackling with sorcerous power.

It was a Lord of Change, a greater daemon of Tzeentch and most powerful of his servants.

Alicarius let of a burst of fire with his storm bolter, the weapon’s immense recoil dampened by the servos contained within his armour, but it was to no avail. Even with the innumerable blessing laid upon them, the explosive bullets could not penetrate the shield of magical power that guarded the daemon. Hefting his halberd, he charged.

His first blow was blocked by the daemon’s staff, but Alicarius could see that its daemonic creature within it was struggling to repulse the holy power of his weapon. He span, allowing his momentum to carry him away from the daemon, before his weapon sliced through the monster’s ankle.

At least, it would have done.

With a boom of air being suddenly misplaced, the daemon disappeared, and reappeared to his left instantaneously.

“Very good, captain!” it roared over din, its beak clacking with every word. “But you won’t kill me that easily.

It leapt forward, attempting to crush him with its taloned feet, but Alicarius had expected this and simply dodged out of the way. He turned, just in time to block the daemon’s descending staff. It withdrew, only to strike again, but Alicarius parried it before charging forward, allowing his weight and momentum to plough him into the monstrous bird-creature. It reacted too slowly, and roared with pain as the sigils and wards upon Alicarius’s shoulder guard touched its skin, burning and blackening it. In return, it sent a blast of warp fuelled lightning towards him, but the same psychic shields that had just hurt it so stopped the attack.

“You cannot beat me,” it shouted. “No-one can beat me!”

“I wouldn’t be so sure!” he shouted.

The daemon raised a multicoloured eyebrow.

“Behind you,” Alicarius murmured.

The daemon turned, cautiously keeping an eye on him to ensure against a surprise attack. Then it saw two grey knights carrying incinerators behind it. It didn’t have time to dodge before burning promethium, mixed with blessed oils and unguents, was pumped directly onto it.

It jerked and spasmed as the hyper-volatile fuel gushed over it, and fell to the floor, writhing in agony. The burning hot assault abated suddenly, and Alicarius nodded his thanks to his two battle-brothers.

“I said you shouldn’t be so sure,” he said, as he walked over to the daemon, his blade raised and readied to deliver the killing blow.

“Neither should you,” the deamon riposted, its beak splitting in a perverse mirror of a grin. A barrier of warp fuelled lightning formed around them, crackling and twisting madly. Alicarius tried to back away, but the lightning would not let him pass, at least, not let him pass without burning him to a crisp.

The light shone brightly over them, dazzling Alicarius even through his helmet’s filters, and the only noise louder than the crackling was the daemon’s laughter.

“You’re coming with me now!” he roared. “I’ll torture your soul for eternity!”

“Never!” Alicarius roared back.

As the warp and reality began to merge around him in the tiny, self contained space, Alicarius did the only thing he could. He turned, sprinted, and plunged his blade into the daemon’s feathered breast, killing both its physical form and the essence of it soul.

And around him, reality shattered in a flash of light, sucking him into the warp.

This post has been edited by The Bean: Feb 22 2009, 04:37 PM

[Colonel Mustard]

Part 3-Heretics

“Alright men, you know the drill,” Serrio said. “Get the guards first, before they can summon up that damn armour of theirs. Deal with the others later.”

The nine men with him nodded, drawing their weapons. Veterans of the Legion, and specialists in fighting daedra and rogue sorcerers, as well as various other dangers beyond the abilities of your average Legionnaire, Serrio’s men were the best of the best. Their heavy plate clanking, the soldiers made their way through the caves.

The first thing they noticed was that there was no doorkeeper of any sort to try and halt their entry, and that the cavern was deathly silent. The only noise made seemed to be the dripping of water and the whisper of wind gently flowing through the stone tunnels. It was an interesting development-whenever Serrio and his soldiers had raided a cave full of Mythic Dawn cultists there was always a doorkeeper and a guard of some sort present.

“Ringlor,” Serrio said, suspecting something was wrong. “Scout ahead.”

The bosmer nodded, drew his bow, and slipped past the other men. Unlike his compatriots, Ringlor was clad in lighter armour and well trained in woodcraft, like almost all wood elves. The other men were forced to wait, but a few moments later, the wood elf sprinted back, all regard for stealth forgotten in his haste.

“Come quickly,” he shouted. “It’s a summoning!”

Serrio spat a vicious curse out, before motioning to the men under his command to follow him, and quickly. No wonder the place was so quiet. If there was a summoning going on then every one of the cultists would be present. It meant bad news for him and his men. They would be unable to pick the cultists off one by one and the presence of daedra would make their work doubly dangerous. But Serrio had a job to do, and a duty to the Emperor and The Nine to do it.

Serrio and his men thundered forwards, determined to stop the summoning before the cultists could call a daedra forth from Oblivion.

A yell of “MEHRUNES DAGON!!” echoed down the cavern, the cry amplified by some unnatural power. Serrio snarled as he realised that the cultists had finished the ritual. The daedra was loose.

Then the cultists started screaming.

The column of soldiers slowed as they heard this. Once a daedra was summoned it was bound to its master’s will. Never before had a daedra managed to break loose of the pact that forced it to serve whoever had summoned it. Yet somehow, one had. Either the cultists had made a mistake or the Oblivion spawned creature was vastly more powerful than they had anticipated.

Whatever it was, Serrio and his men would have to kill it.

#

“Die, heretics!” Alicarius roared as he swept his halberd through a throng of the cultists, who screamed in pain and terror as they died. Lightning crackled along the weapon’s blade, the sheath of superheated electricity disrupting the very molecular structure of their cells.

Another of the heretics, wearing some kind archaic armour over his robes, ran at him screaming a war cry. Alicarius grabbed him and snapped his neck.

A panicked throng had formed around the cavern’s only exit, as people struggled to escape. Alicarius raised his storm bolter and fired into it, the rounds shredding the unarmoured cultists and blasting their corpses to smithereens. There was a click as the weapon’s clip ran dry and so, raising his halberd, Alicarius charged straight into their midst.

#

“What’s happening in there?” Lerrad asked as a panicked daedric cultist fled straight past them, screaming in terror. A few of them wearing armour and wielding weapons tried to engage them, but their panicked state meant that they were clumsy, and they were simply cut down.

There was a series of deafening bangs and over a dozen of the cultists simply exploded in sprays of blood and gore. A few more streamed through the entrance, many of them stumbling from cuts in their legs.

And that’s when the Legionnaires saw the giant.

Moving faster than any man, the massive, silver armoured warrior thundered out of the cave. In two strides, he had overtaken and crushed a pair of cultists. A third fell and, realising there was no escape, begged for mercy, yet the giant remained silent and simply plucked the screaming man up by his temples between two massive fingers. With a squeeze that required no effort, the giant crushed the man’s skull.

Alicarius snarled with disgust as he wiped the cultist’s blood off his fingers using the man’s robe. He glanced up to see ten men, wearing thick plate armour and carrying a variety of weapons.

“What is that?” he heard one man asked, his highly tuned hearing picking up the awed question. They spoke Imperial Gothic, but with a strange local dialect that made it difficult to work out what they were saying for a moment.

“I am Brother Captain Alicarius of the Grey Knights Space Marines,” he announced, allowing his helmet to amplify his voice. “Who’s in charge here?”

One man, who seemed older than the rest, stepped forward.

“I’m Serrio,” he said. “I’m the captain of these men.”

“I’ve dealt with the main body of the cult,” Alicarius said. “The heretics will still be around here though. I want your men to root them out and destroy them in the name of the Emperor. I’ll remove the daemonic taint from their altar.”

Serrio didn’t like being ordered around by a complete stranger, but he held his tongue in check. He didn’t want to argue with an eight foot tall man who could dispatch thirty people within minutes, and instead ordered his men to pair off and deal with the remaining Mehrunes Dagon cultists.

As they left, Alicarius heard one of the other men ask; “Just what the hell is a Space Marine?”

He was genuinely surprised by this. Even on the most far flung and obscure of the Imperium’s worlds, tales of humanity’s most powerful warriors, the Emperor’s Adeptus Astartes, were told. From the richest noble to the most primitive savages, everyone in the Imperium knew of the Space Marines. Perhaps the name of his chapter would not be so well recognised, as the work of the Grey Knights was shrouded in secrecy due to the dangerous and heretical nature, but the words Space Marine were enough to strike awe into the hearts of both the Imperium’s citizens and those of its enemies.

The fact that these men had never heard of one was worrying. Though they spoke Gothic, it was obvious that this world was not in the Imperium’s hold if they had never heard of its most potent tool of propaganda. If this was truly the case, as he thought, then the chances of him contacting Titan and being reunited with his battle brothers were worryingly slim. But he had other matters to deal with-the unholy room of summoning had to be cleansed.

The altar room reeked of the taint of the warp, but he couldn’t place it to a specific god. It lacked the carnal stench of Khorne, the decaying stink of Nurgle, the seductive, perfume-like scent of Slaanesh, the metallic tang of Tzeentch or the mix that showed that all of the Four were worshipped in this room, but seemed to be somehow different. Mehrunes Dagon must be some particularly powerful Daemon, able to exist without the blessing of a patron.

Yet this was not the only thing that worried him.

The room was filled not only with humans, but with xenos, the hated alien enemies of mankind. Judging by the slender frames and pointed ears of some of the corpses, some of the cultists were Eldar. This was strange-never in the history of the Imperium had Eldar engaged in the worship of the Dark Gods. On rare occasions, they had even allied with the Imperium to fight the forces of Chaos, their light troops and fast skimmer tanks compensating the heavy handed and dinosaurian tactics the Imperium employed.

Strangely enough, Orks were also present. This was even more puzzling than the presence of Eldar. An Ork’s natural disposition to just about any living being was to fight and kill it as soon as possible, yet these greenskins were working together with the other cultists. And, appearance wise, these Orks were different too. Their skin was a lighter green, the chin was smaller less jutting, and though tusks and large fangs were present, they were far less pronounced. Yet the strangest thing was that there were female ones present. It was a well known fact that all Orks were male, born form spores that floated in the wind. You could stop an Ork invasion, but a few years later they would reappear on the planet as feral tribes. Lord Inquisitor Sholto, an old friend of Alicarius’ and agreat authority on xeno life forms, had once described them as ‘like dry rot in old timbers; you could never be sure you’d got all of it. Turn your back for a minute and it would be wall-to-wall Orks in your front room, smashing your china and eating your gran..’ Alicarius had to agree that the description was extremely accurate.

And most worrying of all were the blue skinned Eldar. Though Eldar were adept at using their witchery to cast glamours and spells of all sorts, it was a well established fact that any spells altering their appearance would disappear when they were killed. The pigmentation must be natural.

This was a concerning development. Not only had he discovered two new kinds of daemon, but also a new breed of Eldar-like Xeno.

Alicarius knew he would have to purge this world for co-existing with xenos at some point, but it was clear that there was a more important job at hand. If this cult existed, others must do so as well. And if cults existed on a world, it meant only one thing-Chaos was aiming to take it in its covetous grasp. While these people were obviously feudal ones-their blades and plate-mail would be useless against the guns of the Imperium-if Chaos controlled it there would be no telling what unholy weapons they would have at their disposal.

Alicarius now had a goal-whatever happened, he would bring his formidable strength to bear on these heretics. There would be no mercy or respite for those foolish enough to fall into the Dark God’s sway. However many there were, Alicarius would kill them. He would purge their dens, kill their leaders and burn their temples to the ground in cleansing flame. He would cast their down their idols and annihilate them utterly.

Wherever they hid, Alicarius would find them. Whatever warriors they threw at him, Alicarius would fight and kill them. No adversary was too strong for him to defeat, no obstacle too hard to traverse. The Grey Knight had come, and he would kill every last worshipper of daemons upon this world.

This post has been edited by The Bean: Nov 25 2008, 08:25 PM