The Warsmith Rutabo Gares looks down over the edge of the observation balcony of the dark surgeon’s theater. Laying on a cold metallic slab is the bloodied and mangled form of Dorian Cicero.
The sorcerer stares up at the Warsmith barely breathing. All around the frail remains of the pleasure seeking Slaaneshi devotee are the clicking noises of metal on metal, the surgeons of the Dark Mechanicus move in the near darkness, their glowing red ocular implants and machine like droning the only real evidence of their presence.
Rutabo recalls the grand battle beneath the earth only hours ago. The corpse worshipping whores of the False Emperor ambushed his mines. He recalls with only the sort of crystal clarity that an astrates could possess the waves of power armored humans swarming his positions and clearing the way for their Exorcists and Bane Blade designed to look as part war machine part cathedral. Their long range guns too far back in the depths of the tunnel to see launched precision bombardments on his forces in the opening moments. The rock walls of the caverns shook as their temple tank launched death upon his forces, and leaderless in those opening minutes his forces suffered.
He remembers moving onto the field, Baldwin his loyal second taking control of the main force while Badista of the Word Bearers and his own Warrior-Fanatics came to the aid of the mines chanting their prayers and slaughtering with purpose. A smile comes to his face when he recalls the Brass Scorpion and their own Bane Blade reaching the field and the eyes of the warrior harlots widening with fear.
The Dark Mechanicus allies of his army unleashed their own warrior into the fray, Iron Heart. Rutabo watched the beast from a distance while he made his way to the field. Larger then any dreadnought standing on crooked mechanical legs like a forge crafted avian. It had wings formed from metal support beams and a head that held only one feature, a single hateful red glaring eye. One arm ended in a long barreled gun, the other a massive warhammer. It flew across the field with its unnatural wings blasting apart anything it set its eye upon and then diving among their ranks and scattering the remnants with its unearthly strength. The Dark Adepts told the Warsmith it was nothing more then a machine but Rutabo knows wrath and hate where he sees it. Their creation is capable of such emotions just as he could swear the creation enjoys killing as much as any berserker does.
A glowing light appeared as his men starting to regain the caves, a woman who hovered above the ground blanketed in blinding light and carrying a sword appeared. She was painful to his eyes and all her foolish followers cheered as this figure appeared with them.
As Baldwin gunned down one of the women’s commanders as she lay wounded against a cave wall Rutabo clearly recounts his own entrance onto the field of battle. The first moments were of Dorian confronting the woman as he marched toward their position woman. Cicero fought like the warrior he was but his armor was no match for her strange weapon and the Slaaneshi Sorcerer’s own Force Staff was powerless to strike her down. He made is entrance then. He remembers entering combat just as Cicero was wounded for the first time.
He rushed the woman and in response the shadow agents of the Corpse Emperor rallied to her, an Inquisitor and his allies. Another smile comes to the Warsmith’s face as he recalls the Inquisitor ramming his blade through Cicero’s Terminator breast plate and firing his Inferno pistol into the wound. Even more delightful was the look on the Inquisitor’s face when he watched the Glowing women crumble to the ground and vanish, the warsmith’s claws gripped tightly around her neck.
One by one the allies of the Inquisitor fell, each one died easier then the last. The servants of the False Emperor had lost their hold on the caves, the Iron Warrior’s cemented their grip on them by fortifying far more key positions then the enemy could. Wounded, the Inquisitor made his escape, grabbing onto the ladder of the temple Bane Blade as it sped past denying Rutabo a final satisfaction.
Rutabo recalls what the sages and sorcerers said about the woman he fought. “I killed a Saint today…” the Warsmith mumbles as the Dark Adepts begin their work. “I choked the life out of a living said with my own hands.”
The red laser like eyes of the adepts pass over the sarcophagus and massive mechanical body that house it that lays still in the back of the theater. He can see that Cicero notices the tomb as well. He begins to struggle against the surgeons as best as his broken body will allow.
“No… I still function! You cannot do this to me!” Cicero screams. Rutabo understands the madness that awaits those entombed in the dreadnoughts and it seems particularly cruel to one so passionate about experiencing the universe and all its pleasures.
He watches as the adepts slice off limbs, inject blackish liquids and begin their grisly work.
“The punishment is not mine Dorian. Your own Goddess Calliope is the one that demands you suffer this fate.” The Warsmith calmly responds while the last of Cicero’s screams are silenced by the removal of his tongue. “Though I may have made the suggestion Dorian.”
(So I played the largest one on one game of my warhammer career. 4200 points of Apocalypse against one of my best friends who plays Sisters of Battle. He had a really nice Bane Blade conversion that he was about halfway down with. To make five hours of game play short it was me holding three objectives at the end to his own. My Rutabo figure killed off his Saint Celestine and most of his Inquisitor but there was no final turn to finish him off. There some great moments, like my Bane Blade shell missing an entire unit and deviating onto half of a terminator squad and icing three of them and my Iron Heart <played as a demon prince with mark of Tzeentch bolt of change and warp time with wings for rules> murders a squad of twenty sisters then weapon destroys the remaining exorcist. It was a great time)
