The Skaven and the Greenskins had engaged in a massive vehicle clash across the radiation-soaked wastes of Vigilus. The battlefield was a graveyard of scorched iron; the husks of derelict war-rigs lay so thick they choked the open wilderness like a rising tide of refuse.
The Greenskins were delighted. To them, the "Humie Beakies" cowering in their armored hive-cities were as soft as maidens—they lacked the frantic, biting "get-up-and-go" of these rat-things.
But the Skaven had no desire for a war of attrition against the Orks. Lord Kratch, in particular, watched with mounting fury as his clan's resources were devoured by the astronomical costs of daily skirmishes.
"Useless-worthless! Can no-one kill-slay those trash-heaps, those green-things?!"
Kratch's explosive rage kept his underlings silent. Aside from the Undead, the Greenskins were the faction the Skaven loathed most. Fortunately, the 40K galaxy lacked the shambling dead, but the Orks proved far more exasperating.
Even Rikcruk Sliceblade held his tongue. The Greenskins seemed infinite. Assassination was a pipe dream; the Skaven could never pin down the Ork Warbosses, who spent their days shrieking across the planet's surface on soot-belching warbikes. Even with the Skaven's terrifying birth rates, and the fact that the endless Ork corpses provided a steady food supply, this was not the way of Clan Rictus. They had no interest in mutual annihilation with green-skinned lunatics; they wanted to seize this prime real estate and secure their seat on the Council of Thirteen.
Months of grinding warfare passed. Unable to stomach the extortionate fees demanded by Clan Skryre for their weapon teams, Clan Rictus eventually withdrew into the Stygian Spires. They left behind a scorched-earth barrier of excavated rot-land and wave after wave of Slave Rats, fed to the Orks like chaff.
As expected, the Greenskins soon grew bored. Killing rats was fun enough, but this static meat-grinder lacked the "proper" thrill of a true stampede.
While the Skaven viewed the retreat as a matter of profit and loss, the true masters of the Stygian Spires, the Adeptus Mechanicus of the Megaborealis, hailing from Stygies VIII, found the situation catastrophic. Even the cyborg-priests of the Machine God required water, and the Spires were their primary source.
Once the Skaven established their "vacuum zones" of death—barricades of Warp-mines and Poisoned Wind globes that choked the life from any Ork charge—the Greenskin maniacs finally drifted away in search of more entertaining prey.
Before departing, the Ork Warboss stood atop his customized warbike and gave a middle finger to the Skaven's sprawling, illegal hive-nest. "I'z lookin' down on ya, ya furballs!"
The Skaven, naturally, did not care.
However, Kratch's relief was short-lived. A Skaven Psionic Correspondent, an apprentice Grey Seer "generously" provided by the Grey Seer Clan to various Great Clans for the Great Crusade, brought a report that turned his fur white.
A Clan Pestilens fleet was descending upon Vigilus. At its head was the second-in-command of the clan, the Arch-Plague Lord himself: Lord Skrolk!
"Pestilens? Clan Pestilens? Why... those disgusting, foul-filthy things! Why come here? Do they seek to steal-take Rictus land?" Kratch jumped in terror at the mention of that horrific clan, a faction that, while not officially one of the Four Great Clans, possessed power and prestige that rivaled them all.
The apprentice Grey Seer, sporting a pair of stunted horns and a shifty gaze, squeaked, "Yes, respected Lord! Lord Skrolk says... they come for the sickened humans, the no-fur things! We must co-operate, yes-yes!"
The apprentice projected the images of the Pestilens' targets: humans whose flesh had fused with metal in a zombie-like rot, and giant humans clad in rusted, slime-slicked power armor of deep, necrotic green.
"Lord Skrolk says, if we help-assist in taking these Chaos-man things, they will help-aid us!"
Kratch wrinkled his snout. Clan Pestilens matched the Great Clans in strength, but their presence made every other clan recoil. It was rumored that even Skryre and the Grey Seers refused to send envoys to them. Due to their fanatical devotion to the Horned Rat, even Clan Eshin rarely sent assassins into their midst. Clan Pestilens was, for all intents and purposes, a localized extension of Nurgle's domain within the Skaven race.
"Fine, fine! As long as they stay-keep away from us, we help-assist. Tell them it is settled, yes!"
…
A massive Skaven hive-fleet hung in orbit, looking less like a void-faring armada and more like a collection of festering, plague-stricken sores. There were no Skryre Warlock-Engineers to maintain these vessels. Instead, the corridors were prowled by bloated, hairless Skaven whose skin crawled with parasites and weeping pustules.
A Plague Priest of Clan Pestilens, one of the few Skaven types capable of wielding magic, stood ready. They possessed the unique ability to commune with the Horned Rat and master the loathsome Lores of Plague.
"Lord, they... they have agreed-consented."
The Plague Priest spoke with deep reverence to a figure who looked like a cantaloupe that had been injected with herbicide and left to rot in the sun for months. Parasites scurried over his skin, and he exhaled a constant cloud of toxic miasma.
He was draped in tattered, rotting green robes, a Censer Flail resting heavy on his shoulder. His eyes had long ago been gouged out by his own claws, yet his fanatical faith had moved the Horned Rat to grant him magical sight. He was the Arch-Plague Lord: Skrolk!
"Yes. Wise-smart of them! This time, they shall not escape. Capture them! We need more sickness-disease to please the Horned Rat!"
Skrolk peered at the data in his claws—confessions extracted from two Chaos warbands. They bore the icons of the Death Guard and the Purge.
Among the Skaven, Clan Pestilens was the most loyal faction alongside Clan Eshin. Though they appeared to be changelings of the Plague God, both Nurglitch and Skrolk were fanatically devoted to the Horned Rat alone. They viewed the Great Horned Rat as the True Lord of Pestilence, regarding the Black Plague as his ultimate "Gift."
Their objective in this Great Crusade was not mere colonization. They sought to harvest the most lethal contagions in the galaxy. After a skirmish with a Chaos warband, Skrolk had captured several Nurgle cultists and learned the legends of the Death Guard, and how their Daemon Primarch had engineered the horrific "Godblight."
Skrolk had no delusions of deicide, but such a terrifying plague was surely the perfect sacrifice. To study these "Plague Marines" was an opportunity he could not pass up.
Upon learning that the Death Guard and the Purge had both arrived on Vigilus, Skrolk had hastened his arrival. Having no interest in the planet itself, he had issued a veiled threat to Clan Rictus: assist the Pestilens crusade, or watch as the entire world was transformed into a corrupted, rotting wasteland under the Plague Lord's heel.
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