Well well well.
Rida has ever-so-helpfully reminded me that I have this blog here. And that perhaps some of the, ah, less useful things that I insist on telling her about would perhaps be better served by typing up on Le Blogge, so that our adoring public might have an opportunity to be as bored and lost as she sometimes is.
I love her anyway.
Case in point, last night over dinner I was telling her that I spent some time Friday night writing up a nice piece of background story for a game that a friend and I were going to play on Saturday. This is it:
Zentraub IV burns.
A single candle among the burning flame of countless worlds of the Imperium. A small colony, barely able to contribute a regiment of Imperial Guard a generation, Zentraub IV was utterly unremarkable.
Mostly agrarian, with only a single raised city, home to the Imperial Governor, Gideon McCandless, and the tiny slice of the Administratum that keeps the world running, tithes counted, etc.
Unless a year ago.
Who knows why the winds of Chaos blow as they do? Or why the moth is attracted to a given flame? It defies reason, and therefore cannot be ascertained. Cannot be understood – it simply is as it does. And Chaos has come to Zentraub IV, in the form of a berserk task force of Traitor Legions.
They have to come to raid.
They have come to destroy.
They have come to kill.
But just as Chaos is inscrutable, so are the singular defenders of mankind, the Adeptus Astares – the Space Marines. While they swear allegiance to the Imperium of Man and its immortal Emperor, they are rarely answerable to anyone but themselves. And it was solely serendipity for Zentraub IV that a Strike Cruiser of the Angels of Fire Space Marines heard their distress call, and answered the call. Their drop pods streaked along the sky and came to the rescue of Governor McCandless and stood where the all-too-human PDF forces fell.
Yet what was a mere raid has now exploded into a mammoth conflict, as Traitor locks claw with Loyalist Chainsword, and ten thousand years of bitterness seethes from both sides. Whatever reason Chaos chose this world is long forgotten – all that matters now is another chapter in the Long War, as both sides rush in more forces to batter and break the other. Zentraub IV burns. Tomorrow, a winner may rise from the ashes even as the loser chokes upon them.
For the Emperor. For the Dark Powers. For War.
This is really nothing special. We were playing a big (5000 points, which is a lot of models) game of Warhammer 40,000, so I thought I'd mark the occasion. The sad part is that I emailed it to my opponent just to ramp up the game a bit…and he didn't check his email that night, or before coming over for the game.
(sighs)
Can't win I suppose.
…but I did win the game, in case you were wondering. Chaos reigns on Zentraub IV. And it was a spectacular fight.
–Robert