Troopers from the Kissian 78th, namely some of the members of my Kill team :D

Trooper Rynsk in the front is an ex-convict from the Kissian prison moons, as well as his mates, radio operator Vensk and trooper Liefeld. Trooper Lily is the squad's bruiser, a big, brawny trans woman with a sturdy trench club and one of my favorite characters.

A side note here: Before anyone takes an issue about Lily's appearance as a "negative stereotype" about trans women with her more masculine build, I will clarify a few things. First: Most of the Kissian female troopers are big and burly, since looking extra feminine isn't an important issue when you try to avoid being killed in the battlefield. Secondly: I think that as a society, we need to stop viewing femininity as something weak, pretty and fragile. Especially trans women and non-binary people with masculine features (such as myself) are forced to jump through so many loops just to prove that we are worthy for basic human decency. Just...let trans people be what they want to be.

Speedfreeks gonna speedfreek.

A better picture of Lily, the bruiser. She has been beating things to mush for the glory of the Emperor across the countless battlefields of the Epirean crusade. She's really a nice gal with a good sense of humor, and in a relationship with the melta operator of the team, a small gremlin of a woman with an unhealthy love for burning things. More about her later.

Here's a free idea for Ridley Scott, Snyder and all of the other dudes who make Sci-fi action and horror: Give us old and badass butch women! You know, wrinkles and bad attitude.

It's a bit funny for me that I can actually give credit for GW on this matter. The new Lady Creed being a huge butch granny was peak character design!

After the deafening noise of the firefight, the following silence felt unnatural. Skel slowly pushed himself up from the floor where he had thrown himself when all hell had broken loose. Two lasguns firing on full auto had turned the cistern's tight utility hallway into a slaughterhouse. Harkon was dead. He had taken the Sacred band's warriors first salvo to his chest and as a result he had been almost sawed in half by hailing fire from six autoguns.

After the deafening noise of the firefight, the following silence felt unnatural. Skel slowly pushed himself up from the floor where he had thrown himself when all hell had broken loose. Harkon was dead. He had taken the first salvo to his chest and as a result been almost sawed in half. However, his body had covered Skel and Jessup who had opened up almost immediately. Two lasguns firing on full auto had turned the cistern's tight utility hallway into a slaughterhouse. Six Sacred band soldiers were shred to pieces and were laying all around the floor and in the the pool, it’s water slowly turning red.

”What a fucking shitshow!” Skel exlaimed, after making sure nothing was moving in the room anymore. ”I thought this area was supposed to be cleared already”, muttered Jessup, slowly descending the stairs, weapon ready. ”Yeah, well, it wasn’t”, responded Skel, his voice filled with sarcasm. ”Put the glory boys in charge, and they’ll sweep through the enemy lines, straight to the top! But they sure as shit don’t care much about the dirty work. No, that belongs to the lowly shits of the infantry! Crawling through these Emperor-damned hallways and sewer tunnels, every corner hiding these fanatic bastards, all too happy to cut your throat from one ear to another!” Jessup grinned dryly. ”Well, that’s Imperial guard for you! Only in death does duty end and so on. What were these fuckers even doing down here?” Skel walked on the lip of the pool. ”I don’t know… but look at those two in the water. Not your regular jarheads. you saw the masks?” Skel prodded one of the floating bodies with his bayonet, turning the face-down laying body around. Golden pins on the collar proved her to be a higher ranking officer, and the yellow ceremonial mask on her face was filled with symbols that made Skel’s stomach turn. He pushed body away from him, grimacing. ”Shit. Yep. One of those damn chosen ones. The priests, you know? Like the ones we saw in …” ”Yeah, I was in the Hab 90 too, remember?” Jessup waved her hand. ”I saw what those bastards can do. What were they up to in here?”

Skel stepped in the water, quietly cursing as the cold water soaked through his trousers. ”What are you doing?” asked Jessup, but Skel didn’t answer. He raised his lasgun, pointing in the darkness of the opposite wall. ”There. There is something in there”, he said, stepping forward. ”Wait, Skel. I think we should call the backup. If there were priests here, it can only mean that there was something warp-related going on…” she trailed off. Skel had fished his flaslight from his pocket and his light beam was aimed at the back of the room. He only used the light for a second, but even that short glimpse filled both guardsmen with unspeakable terror. The whole back wall of the room was filled with unholy markings. The twisted glyphs were almost like living things, and even a glimpse at them made Skel feel nauseous. He turned the light off. ”C’mon, Skel”, Jessup pleaded. ”Let’s get the hell out of here. This is bad…” Skel lifted his hand as a signal for quiet. The still water in the pool had just…moved. There was something under the surface. Skel took a step back, his face turning pale in fear. ”T-there is something in the water…” he said, taking another step backwards, rising his lasgun.  

Everything happened so quickly. One moment Skel was standing in the water, finger on the trigger, and then he was no more. Only a widening circle in the water on the spot he had been standing on. ”Skel? Skel!” Jessup scanned the surface through her sight. This was all going down the shitter and fast. Images from Hab 90 all those yeasr ago in Kissia flashed through her mind with terror-fuelled speed. All that blood. The warp-magic peeling off the faces of her comrades. The piles of dead, warping, turning to something… ”Skel! Come on! Please…” Jessup was losing her nerve, and fast. Skel was her best friend, but the terror was quickly overriding all of her brain funcions. ”Fuck this… Fuck this. I’m going, Skel! I’m going to get h…” and the surface broke.

The thump of the frag grenade going off was regocnizable even when it was muffled by a copious amount of water. Reflexibly Jessupp threw herself to the bloody floor, just as Skel flew over her head, followed by a stream of bloody water and klumps of something meaty. All of a sudden a terrible stench filled the air, making Jessup gag. She struggled upright, only glancing at the water, where something was slowly pushing itself up from the water. Only a glimpse to it’s many eyes was enough for Jessup to empty her bladder. She scrambled towards stairs, almost tripping over Skel. His eyes were open. He was breathing. His right arm was missing and his clothes were torn. Blood was flowing freely from the stum as well as from the several smaller wounds across the right side of Skel’s body. Jessup wasn’t gone too far to not recognize Shrapnel wounds. ”G-got the bastard…” Skel was muttering. Blood was flwing out from his mouth and ears as well. ”W-whit the…fr-frag. Got my hand…” Jessup readjusted. Her wounded friend became a focus point, something to concentrate, something to do to keep the madness away. She grabbed Skel’s left hand, making him squel from pain. By the emperor, he was falling apart. ”Fucking leave me!” Skel shouted, gritting his teeth. ”G-give me your gun and I… I’ll hold th-the…”

Jessup didn’t say anything. She simply hoisted Skel up over her shoulders. No time to tend his wounds. They would be long dead before he would bleed out down here. Skel screamed, he was in agony. Jessup stole a quick glance at the pool, saw how tentacle-like appendixes were pushing towards her, and finally gave up to fear. Screaming, she ran towards the stairs and then up. A screeching sound came from below, like a scream of a thousand souls in agony. Jessup was weeping, reciting the litany of emperor’s protection between sobs. The stairs seemed to last forever. She could feel the cold grip of fear in between her shoulders. At any moment those unnatural, warp-formed tentacles would grab her ankle, and pull her and Skel down, to a fate worse than death. How many steps left?

Invasion of Morentos VII was a success, but the events in the shrine-hive of Evelior soured the mood across the crusade fleet. The holy shrine of St.Evel, the ecclesiarchy temples and the monuments had to be destroyed by an orbital bombardment. The Sacred band, realizing they were losing their grip on the world, had conducted dark rituals all accross the holy city, infesting the city’s water supply with warp-born horrors. It was a small wonder that the imperial forces were able to retreat before it was too late, thanks to a duo of soldiers, who were able to escape after wthessing the birth of one of the creatures. After a short period in the inquisitioral custody the two guardsmen were released and trasferred to the Kissian 78th. Almost all of the Kissian units who had suffered through the ”horror” during the Noctis aeterna had proven to be quite resilient to the warp-taint, and the inquisition officials decided that further purges for the units involved was not necessary. Morentos VII was liberated, and the construction of a new shrine-hive was commissioned. The crusade headquarters could only find solace in the fact that the whole world was not lost to the taint.

A few billion more dead, a shrine destroyed, another world brought back to the imperial hold. The Epirean crusade kept grounding on…

War-thralls of the Sacred band. These soldiers are the descendants of those soldiers who followed their Astartes commanders to treason 300 years ago. They maintain their old organizations and training, adding the gifts of the chaos gods to the mix. As a result these regiments are well trained and a terrifying enemy for the soldiers of the imperium.

Through the twisted corridors of the orbital stations of Mordekai III, the kill teams of Kissian 78th fought, killed and died to clean them from the tainted soldiers of the Sacred band. In the tight confines of the station there was no room for tactics or clever plans. It was all just butcher's work, bayonet against bayonet.

The ork kommando was among the enforcers before any of them had the time to react. The one with the shotgun went first, not being able to bring his larger gun to bear in the tight confines of the train's maintenance corridors. Large piece of sharpened metal cleaved him in two, from the left shoulder to the right hip, and the green monstrosity was already swinging it's another choppa to the officer. He didn't have time to react either, as his head separated from the body with a messy geysir of blood. The last officer tried to avoid the ork, but he tripped over the body of one of his companions, and the ork stomped on his head without making a fuzz, it's gaze already locked with Jackie's.

This was certainly a surprising turn of the events. Just as the finest of the Moloch law enforcement were about to arrest her from indecent behavior (why wouldn't a girl be allowed to fuck a cute PDF officer when she was not on guarding duty, she could never fathom, but here we are), a greenskin saboteur had decimated them within the time it took to blink one's eyes. It wasn't too hard to guess what it was doing here, she and the whole Kissian 6th had been ordered to protect the massive, city-sized trains from those monsters. The agri-world's produce was feeding half the sector, but ever since the greenskin invasion five years ago, these irritating units of unusually sneaky orks had been making trouble.

Now the smiling, yeasty smelling thing was staring her right in the eyes, grinning. It didn't attack, instead it just made a beckoning gesture with it's blade. Jackie felt a similar, deathly grin creeping over her own face. She had been slaughtering the enemies of emperor on many worlds during her 37 years of life, always preferring the intensity of close-quarter fighting over shooting. She just had the knack for it, a nasty streak in her genetics, a hunger for violence. She didn't even remember that she had a lasgun on her back, her blood was up and the battle-frenzy was taking her over. "Okay, you ugly fuck," she said, pulling her blade free from it's scabbard. She was a man-made monster, forged in the endless wars of the imperium, a killer, and the ork had recognized a kindred spirit. She Cracked her neck, flexing her arms, both the right one made of flesh and the augmetic replacing the left. "Let's dance".

She may be tired from the day's battle, still aching from exhaustion and the painful memories of lost comrades. But a Kasrkin would not go to sleep before first maintaining her gear, so she just goes through the motions, the sweet numbness of performing a repetitive task taking over her mind... Tomorrow they are going to rest, so whiskey will help in the task as well. Just another day in service of the god-emperor...

Idea for this short comic has been brewing in the back of my mind for quite a long time, and I finally decided to do something about it. Kissian 156th rifles has been in the forefront of a desperate defense against merciless Necron assault, but now, for some reason, it’s all quiet on the eastern gate. A ruse? some kind of cruel joke? We are going to find out soon.

I have been taking animation courses at the art school, and thought I should try these new skill-sets to draw some Kissians. This lady is the leader of my veteran guardsmen killteam.

Floor by floor and room by room, the kill teams of Kissian 77th fought through the manufactories and hab areas of Urgos main hive, burning away the taint of chaos with lasfire and white-hot plasma. After the corrupt soldiers of Urgos PDF were defeated by Odysian armored regiments on the great plains of the Urgos equator, the remaining cultists retreated to the hive-cities of their world, hoping to fortify them and hold off the imperial onslaught. But instead of a traditional siege operation, the crusade high command sent in the Kissian 77th. This regiment consisted almost entirely from veteran soldiers, hand-picked from several Kissian regiments. It’s fighters were trained and honed to a crack unit, specialized in infiltration missions, scouting operations and the kind of wet work which was usually not suited for normal infantry regiments. Every fire-team was lead by a battle-hardened sergeant, armed by the best possible gear, every member of the unit trained to act independently and effectively in the most dire situations.  

Usually these units fought on a several different war zones, always only a company or two, assigned to a captain or major who had complete operative freedom. This time, however, the entire regiment was transported by Valkyries and dropped to a several different locations across the city. These independent units then started to clean up the streets, sector by sector. After a two weeks of extremely gruesome close-quarters fighting the Urgos main hive finally succumbed, and after that it was easy for other main battle units to mop up the rest.

Some musings about how the society works on chaos-worshipping worlds.

Some musings about how the society works on chaos-worshipping worlds. I think it’s an overlooked issue, chaos marines taking the central stage on that side of the old war as well, and the common humanity is just fodder to be fed to the guns. I think Dan Abnett has done at least something to satisfy my curiosity on Gaunt’s ghosts, allowing short but fascinating glimpses to the machinations of star spanning conglomerate worshipping the chaos gods.

But besides cult activity in imperial worlds, there is very little talk about the common life. I have been thinking a lot how things are on the Epirean sub-sector, and here are my thoughts. The chaos-ruled sections of the area consist of three kind of worlds. The central worlds are ex-imperial planets that followed Sacred band in their revolt against the imperium. Forge- and hive worlds maintain the logistical and administrative systems of sacred band’s warmachine. Then there are the outer worlds, the wild and primeval planets which have been chaos tainted since the days of the long night. Wild warrior tribes and their kings have ruled here since time immemoriam, and they are the min source of manpower for the regiments serving chaos. Third and last, there are the daemon worlds, separate domains that are ruled by daemons and warp creatures, but still closely associated with the sacred band’s domain, and threre is a lot of interaction between the.

From the imperium’s point of view armies of chaos are just some kind of bestial monstrosity, acting without any sense other than pure malice. Outside imperial åroåaganda, however, we have to accept the fact that simply the logistiscs of waging a war on a scale that contains several solar systems requires a very highly sophisticated bureacracy. In the realms of Sacred band’s transhuman warrior kings, a very similar administrative apparatus toils on, and most of the people under it’s yoke live their lives in pretty much similar conditions than their counterparts in imperial worlds. They also have domestic life, where someone has to cook the food, wash the laundry, raise the children and live those very basic, dull and content human lives. The biggest difference is, that instead of worshipping the emperor, the Sacred band and it’s subjects have found a way to co-exist with chaos gods in a mutually benefitting manner.

 The cults of the empyrean creatures have their own traditions and ways to worship, and especially the armies are to a man devotees of one or another god. Human sacrificies are common, but even more than that there are other kinds of ways to appease the gods: Killing their enemies and offering gifts. Childrens are raised in this worlds, and most of the times they follow the same career as their parents, and those manifesting psychc abilities are greatly revered and they often rise quickly to higher positions. Another way to climb the social ladder is military service, and yong men and women eagerly seek glory as war-thralls of the Sacred band.

Some worlds have been completely given to the chaos, and these daemon worlds are ruled by warp-spawn monstrosities. Many people take pilgrimage to these worlds, seeking assistance from the daemons and doing their bidding. The interstellar travel is maintained by several guilds with their own cults and ways of worship. These guilds are in close relations with the priests of dark mechanicus, thir cursed forgeworlds churning out weapons and ships as well. Even though it’s highly illegal, several imperial rogue traders trade with these chaos fleets and there are worlds with very suspicious double loyalties, acting as a neutral ground for these interactions. Chaos worlds also trade with the worlds owned by leagues of Votann and with several minor alien species, who also provide mercenaries for the Sacred band’s war machine.

Imperial worlds and those of the Sacred band are like two sides of a coin. There are more similarities than differences between these soceties, including soul-crushing bureacracy, disregard of individual lives and constant vaging of war, but the ideological divide is so hard, that no ne really sees it. There can be no conciling between these extremes and I guess it’s a real tragedy on itself. Wars are massive and especially cruel, where the populations of conquered worlds are often exterminated and/or enslaved, and the extraction of any kind of resources from a conquered world is a merciless business.

Im planning on writing some stories from the Sacred band’s point of view, but as usual, it depends on how much I have time and energy.

When the crusade high command was finally able to send the Space marines of the black sun Chapter to the industrial world of Hanan, they were surprised to find out that the cities were still fighting on. Companies of Kissian 85th and 177th Kurian Ulans, along with the local PDF, had been holding off a major invasion of the Sacred Band forces, led by units of traitor Astartes. In the dark confines of the huge manufactoriums, the soldiers of the imperial guard put up a desperate fight, slowly giving ground only to lure the enemy warriors to deadly ambushes set up on choke points across the tightly packed walkways and corridors. After months of intense fighting, the defenders were low on manpower and almost out of ammunition, but the attacking forces had faced such a grievous losses, that their defense crumbled almost immediately after the Loyalist Space Marines made planetfall. After the battle the remnants of the Kurian Ulans and Kissian units were able to form only three companies of infantry, so the units were merged togehter and then attached to the Kissian 77th. The skills these soldiers had developed during their desperate defense made them an excellent addition to the special operations regiment.

Damn. These Spacenam-miniatures from Wargame Atlantic are very good! Finally I can make good looking characters for my Catachan-variants of the Kissian guard. They are known as moonsoldiers, since their regiments hail from a planet-sized moon of a gas giant in the Kissian system. Before the Horror it was a penal colony, where convicts from all around the Epirean system toiled in the mines and refineries in the middle of the poisonous jungles and hostile organisms.

When the Sacred band's invasion fleets emerged from the roiling warp storms, the prisoners organized themselves to repel the attackers, and after that they proceeded to help the hive-world of Kissia primus. They plaid a no small part in the final liberation of the world and the scouring of the system after that.

When the liberation fleet arrived and the Epirean crusade was launched, they were offered pardon, and the whole prison colony was drafted as part of the Kissian guard regiments. They bring their skills as guerrilla warriors to the table, and are led by a team of skilled veteran officers, who were once stripped from their ranks after a disastrous defeat or some other failure earlier in their careers. Now they have a chance to redeem themselves, and for that goal they are willing to do anything.

The plot thickens…