“What about him?”
The man gestured to a picture in front of him. The thrum of the warp engines guided by the Emperor’s astropaths reverberated through the gargantuan ship’s cockpit. The picture was of an Imperial sergeant, his hair a short, ice-blue Mohawk and he was in mid-swing, clutching a vibrating power sword.
“His name is Danith Teraco. The Faranorn Terror. He was sergeant of a small squad of guardsmen in a defensive force fighting against a misdirected Salamanders assault army led by Vulkan H’Stan himself. After withstanding the force of the Salamander commander’s flamer, they were assaulted and all his squad was destroyed.”
The man grunted. “So what’s so special about him?”
“Well… you have to understand that Vulkan was already wounded at this point, sustaining a lasgun shot in the arm. But after duelling with Teraco, Vulkan… he succumbed to the bite of the Faranorn Terror’s sword. He wasn’t killed, but it was enough to put him out of combat for a good while; his wounds were grievous. And even though the Salamander’s crushed the Imperial Guard, the head of the assault was cut off and it ground to a halt.”
The man went silent as he examined the picture for a moment. He picked it up and passed it to the taller, older man standing next to him. “So he’s the one who felled Vulkan. Impressive. What about him?” He pointed to another picture, this one of a man wearing the signature fatigues of Faranorn’s forces, a cool blue with red marking decorating the fringes. His right hand was enclosed in a standard-issue powerfist and his face seemed etched from old granite, chipped and worn in places.
“That is Sergeant Grigori Leonidas. The Lion. During a combined assault by Khorne and Nurgle traitor marines, a greater daemon waded its way through many hapless guardsmen, wrecking havoc behind enemy lines. But it finally met its match against the Lion and his squad. Even though he lost many veteran troopers, by the Emperor’s will he felled that ungodly beast. I hear he has since been promoted to Platoon commander. Along with Teraco, in fact.”
“Interesting…” A techpriest, a member of the mysterious Adeptus Mechanicus, entered the room, brushing his hands lightly against the adamantium hull of the ship. He was humming incantations under his breath, prayers to the dead Emperor and his undead spirit. He was continuously blessing the hull, warding it from chaotic intrusions and protecting it from the tempestuous unpredictability of the warp.
“And her? Who might she be?”
“She… she’s a ghost. There’s no recorded name, no DOB, nothing. We don’t even know her rank. All we know is that she appears at every major battle out of nowhere, launching a destructive demolition charge that’s almost certain to vaporize her targets and more often than not disappear again under a hail of retaliatory gunfire. By all accounts she should be dead countless times over but… no body is ever found. However during a skirmish between the Imperial defenders and Ork invaders, she managed to assault and destroy a half-strength squad of Boys before tying up some Killa Kans and soon after vanishing into thin air.”
“Interesting…” The man repeated, resting his chin on his steepled fingers and gazing out at the chaos storm they were sailing through. “Very interesting…”
