Battle of Parocheus
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The Battle of Parocheus was fought between the Imperium and Dark Eldar in M36.[1]
Overview
The Haemonculi of the Altered were no strangers to the world of Parocheus. They had last visited the planet in 018.M36, and it had not ended well for them. A Raven Guard ambush had decimated their forces. However The people there were stifled by superstition, and most were afraid of their own shadows – the ideal playthings for the Coven’s Repugnomancers. Viscount Syndriq in particular took the defeat hard. His rage was so great that he discharged himself from his regeneration sarcophagus long before his regrowth was complete. So it was that when the Altered returned to the planet of Parocheus, Syndriq was still a pale and hairless fiend.[1]
The vengeful Haemonculus was in good company. Amongst the Coven lords of the Altered were several Repugnomancers that had altered their appearance to be as disturbing as possible, the better to raise their chances of frightening the defenders of Parocheus to death. Their true mission, however, surpassed mere recreation. Reasoning the Raven Guard would still be keeping a watchful eye on the planet’s fate, they intended to draw the defenders of Humanity into attack once more – only for the Raven Guard to find that this time, the roles of ambusher and victim had been reversed.[1]
Parocheus was largely a mining world, its mountains honeycombed with tunnels and electromagnetic conveyor rails. The Haemonculi had been alerted to the world’s presence when the planet’s servominers had accidentally struck a dormant webway portal with a seismic hammer. Since that day, the planet had been haunted by terrible nightmares – both imagined and horrifyingly real.[1]
Syndriq gathered the sycophantic cells of the Altered to his side, his expedition joined by those of his allies who thought the forthcoming spectacle would be too entertaining to pass up. The Viscount led his fellow Haemonculi through the webway towards Parocheus as soon as his forces were mustered, bidding the majority of his entourage linger in the webway to await his signal.[1]
Once they had made planetfall, the majority of the Coven’s Repugnomancers were content to make their lairs in the deep woods and so-called ‘haunted tunnels’. They were ready to savour the wait before the kill, just as they always had. Syndriq, however, would brook no delay. His sinewy form drifted through the outskirts of the nearest mining town, looming over miners and geo-servitors alike to sniff the air over their heads. Their fear was palpable, but it was nothing compared to the rich scent of despair to come. The miners united against the horror in their midst, but Syndriq merely floated above them, activating his clone field so that the cobblestones hurled at him passed harmlessly by. Lipless mouth wide, the Coven lord threw back his head and gave a keening shriek that was echoed by a dozen identical doppelgangers. The things that loped from the shadows to answer his call were, if anything, even more terrifying than the Haemonculus himself.[1]
When the Raven Guard made planetfall in answer to an astropathic distress call from Parocheus’s capital city, their operation was slick and fast. Not for them the thunderous strike of Drop Pods; the Raven Guard instead entered the planet’s main spaceport aboard a mining hauler, only stealing out once nightfall was upon them. Making their way along a disused culvert, the Space Marines rendezvoused with their contacts planetside. Their informers, having long had their ears to the ground for the supernatural, spoke of their predicament at great length.[1]
Every morning, new accounts of terror abounded from the populace. They spoke of gangling monsters stalking the twilight, of armed enforcers turned to obsidian statues, of red-slicked skeletons wandering back into their houses and climbing into bed, of strange symbols chalked on barrack walls, and white-haired cadavers found with rigor mortis fingers clutching at their stilled hearts. Worst of all were the tales of the pallid fiend that haunted the twilight hours, known to the populace as the Grinner. The Grinner had left in its wake the wreckage of a hundred defence troopers. The corpses had been spread-eagled and stained so that their ribcages resembled the wings of a raven, a clear challenge to the sons of Corax. They were hung by these macabre pinions all the way along the New Road.[1]
The Raven Guard captain, Yaroslan Medexus, narrowed his eyes in silent fury. The Dark Eldar were back, and were preying on those brave enough to challenge them for their own twisted amusement. Their contacts had already uncovered the common point between each apparition – the haunted mines in the crevasse known as Divil’s Gulch. The course ahead was clear. After their Scouts confirmed the location of the xenos base, it would be time to launch as sudden and as deadly an attack as possible.[1]
The Haemonculi allowed their Raven Guard guests to imagine themselves hidden for a little longer – just long enough, in fact, for their Tactical Squads to reach the mouths of the tunnels ranging through Divil’s Gulch. The Raven Guard, as circumspect as ever, had sent servo-skulls into each tunnel the better to map out its contours and trigger any unwelcome traps. They found nothing inside but darkness. In fact, once the servo-skulls had passed a certain point, they garnered only static interference. The Raven Guard attributed the phenomenon to the mine’s electromagnetic rails, but in their hearts, none of them were quite so sure.[1]
Into the mine tunnels the Raven Guard ventured, keeping together in squads of ten – the Codex Astartes was very clear on such clearance measures. As each Space Marine approached, his field of fire interlocked so cleanly with that of his fellows that even a charging ambull would have been quickly dispatched. Mile after mile of tunnel was searched with no sign of the Haemonculi, nor their minions As the Raven Guard progressed in single file down the thin passageways at the mine’s heart, the Space Marine at the rear of each squad simply went missing. As soon as the anomaly was detected, fierce subvocal comments were exchanged. The Raven Guard sergeants weighed an all-out blitz to recover their battle-brothers against the stealth parameters of their mission.[1]
The decision was made for them when the Raven Guard felt the entire mountain shudder. The webway portal in the depths of the mine had been violently breached. The Raven Guard, suspecting the ominous tremors to be the initial rumblings of an earthquake that would trap them underground, enacted a tactical retreat towards the mouths of each tunnel. It was then that the Covenite skimmers fell from the skies with a great tearing scream. Bolters raised, every one of the mustering Raven Guard looked upwards at the same time. In that moment, scores of disfigured Wrack minions boiled out of the darkened mineshafts behind them. Several of the Dark Eldar were blasted apart by the Raven Guard’s reflexive bolter drill, but in many cases the Space Marines took a fraction too long to respond. Syndriq’s Wracks hacked and sawed with ecstatic abandon at the joints of their foes’ battle plate, their gleeful shrieks muffled by their masks. Many earned only broken necks and gouged hearts as the Space Marines fought back hard, but the Covenites kept attacking nonetheless.[1]
The skies above boomed as a Stormraven Gunship squadron burst from the clouds. Assault cannons thudded death into the Wracks below. Each craft’s metallic jaws opened wide, and wedges of Assault Marines rocketed from their interiors, flipping in mid-flight to crunch feet-first into the Covenite craft that were skimming the mountain’s shoulders. Several of the arrowing Raiders broke apart under the sheer force of their power-armoured charge, but the leading craft evaded them without harm.[1]
Standing with one foot upon each of his flagship’s balustrades, Syndriq opened a jeweled, egg-shaped casket and cooed encouragement to whatever was inside. A passing Land Speeder lanced a melta beam a hair’s breadth from the Haemonculus’ bald pate, the residual heat leaving a black scar. Syndriq only laughed. A split second later a tentacle of unlight lashed out from the casket, yanking the craft’s pilot from his seat and causing the skimmer to crash headlong into the mountainside. A Stormraven Gunship’s underslung missiles arced down. Viscount Syndriq, enraptured by the spectacle of his Wracks tearing a Space Marine limb from limb, was struck in the small of the back. He was thrown unceremoniously forward an instant before the missile detonated, blasting him into little more than a spattering of wet flesh.[1]
Quvelich the Emaciator, a reed-thin Haemonculus that had known Syndriq for millennia, twisted his lips in a moue of irritation. He gave an imperious command to the Grotesques clambering along the ruined gatehouse. A moment later, they flung themselves headlong at the night-black Stormraven tearing along the mountainside. All but one of them missed altogether and dropped flailing down into the dust below. The one that caught its prey knocked the gunship off course so that it careened into its brother craft, sending them both spinning to an explosive death on the moonlit slopes below. The lone Space Marine that fought his way out of the cockpit was fallen upon by the creations of Maestru Thrylemnis, an ally of Syndriq’s from the Prophets of Flesh. The dark artisan’s Talos Pain Engines tore the pilot limb from limb before reassembling his corpse in a fashion more acceptable to their master. At the mouths of the tunnels the surviving Raven Guard had regrouped and were fighting back hard. They were almost all engaged at close quarters, fighting back-to-back as they battled to contain the Wracks closing in around them. Bolt pistol shells blasted striated muscle from bone, gauntleted fingers dug under face masks and combat knives plunged into Dark Eldar brains. Here and there a grenade detonated, shrapnel sinking into pale flesh whilst ricocheting harmlessly from ceramite power armour.[1]
Already tired of all this imprecise violence, the aristocratic Lord Faerughast was halfway towards his waiting Raider when a bearded Scout Sergeant lunged out of concealment and impaled him with a power sword. Faerughast raised his eyebrows and nodded in appreciation – the human had hidden himself well. If the Coven lord had still possessed a heart, it would have been run right through. The Space Marine yanked his sword up through Faerughast’s torso, but it achieved little more than imparting a delicious thrill of pain – the Covenite’s vital organs were nowhere so predictable. With an almost casual grace, the Haemonculus reached out to caress the warrior’s open jaw with his flesh gauntlet. The Scout Sergeant swelled briefly before exploding in a welter of blood. Faerughast licked his worm-like lips appreciatively, his refined senses analyzing the vintage as his secondary limbs stitched together the bloodless valley of his chest. There was something there, some kind of flaw-taste dancing tantalizingly on the tip of the tongue. Then he had it: the gene-seed of the Raven Guard was still functional, yet by the tang of corruption within, it was only a heartbeat away from something far fouler. Eyes creased in silent amusement, the Haemonculus tapped a ruby at his throat and contacted his fellow Covenites. A far more inventive revenge was within their reach.[1]
With Syndriq dead, Faerughast’s fellows took little convincing to go along with his plan. Ichor injectors and flesh gauntlets were set to paralysis rather than fatal doses; cells of Wracks and Grotesques alike were commanded to capture rather than kill. The Raven Guard’s Assault Marines fought with renewed fervor when they saw several of their number, rendered as motionless as statues, borne off in the claws of hunchbacked Grotesques. They made little progress, for the Wracks pouring out from the minehead outnumbered them three times over. One by one, the Space Marines were being borne to the ground and paralyzed. Several activated their jump packs and boosted away, only for the Venoms circling above to send them crashing back down to earth with streams of splinter cannon fire. Desperate now, Captain Medexus pounced upon the laughing Quvelich as he was busy peeling a scalp from a fallen Space Marine. The captain punched his lightning claws through the Haemonculus’ neck with such force he not only decapitated him, but slashed apart his spinal sump in a fountain of hideous liquids. The Dark Eldar’s disembodied head rolled to a halt nearby, laughing quietly to itself as it stared at Medexus with beady black eyes. A cell of Wracks skittered in close, one stabbing a needle into the back of the Space Marine Captain’s neck as a second gingerly picked up Quvelich’s grinning head.[1]
Suddenly, two more Stormravens hurtled out of the skies to send missiles slamming into the mountainside, blasting two Grotesques to pieces and sending rubble tumbling down to partially block the mineshafts. It was all the signal the Haemonculi needed. As one, the Covenites retreated into the darkness, the largest of their number dragging their Space Marine captives with them. Bolter fire hammered into fleshy backs and blasted holes in the metal carapaces of Pain Engines, but the Covenites were so invigorated by the slaughter they ignored even the most grievous of wounds. The last of the Wracks scrabbled across the scree on all fours, closely pursued by tearing volleys of fire from the Stormravens. One of the Covenites juddered as large-calibre bullets tore him apart, but the rest made it into the darkness intact. A second later, the mountainside shuddered, and the avalanche the Stormravens had begun finally buried the minehead openings altogether. The Raven Guard, having lost not only their comms feeds but also dozens of good men, were ill-inclined to dig their way through the rubble in pursuit of their foes. Pragmatism overrode the fiery desire for vengeance, and as the Stormraven Gunships settled down with their metal jaws open, the remaining Raven Guard regrouped. Over a score of their number had been stolen away into the darkness by the very foe they had come to slay; they could not afford to lose more. Vowing that this was not over, the Raven Guard solemnly boarded their gunships and made for low orbit.[1]
Two days later, a Space Marine strike force blasted its way into the webway tunnels that fringed Parocheus. After a brief skirmish with the Covenites in the otherworldly tunnels beyond, the missing Raven Guard were recovered to a man, their memories clouded but their bodies intact. After a lengthy quarantine the abductees rejoined their battle companies, dying one by one in noble service to their Chapter. Their gene-seed was recovered and implanted into fresh recruits. Over time, their legacy was dispersed throughout the Chapter. Yet a darkness now lurked there, written into the very genetic code they prized the most. A hundred years and a day after the clash upon Parocheus, the sudden mutation of Raven Guard gene-seed saw dozens of their finest warriors hatch into grotesque monsters. An entire generation of new recruits had to be put down. In the end, the vengeance of the Haemonculi had been wrought by the hands of those who sought to defy them.[1]
Sources
- 1: Haemonculus Covens - A Codex: Dark Eldar Supplement — A Murder of Ravens
