Title: “Feast of the Ninth: The Dark Saga of the Imperial Legion”
In the grim darkness of the far future, where there is only war, the Ninth Legion of the Imperium stood unparalleled in their survival instinct. Their story opens on a dystopian world, a desperate battleground where tribes were systematically dismantled through brutal close quarters combat. Full-scale engagements were shunned in favor of these ruthless skirmishes, each clash a testament to the Ninth’s unwavering tenacity.
In the early years of this struggle, the Ninth Legion found themselves outmatched and undersupplied, abandoned by the wider Imperium. Yet, the Legion’s survival instinct was as strong as their gene seed, and they adapted to their dire circumstances with a primal ferocity. Their enemies, the mutant tribes of the Northern continent, became their lifeline. Rather than annihilating these tribes, they dominated and molded them, pressing the hardiest mutants into the Legion’s service.
The children of these mutants, once bred as mere meat stock for their techno-barbarian overlords, were transformed into angelic warriors through the implantation of Sanguinius’ gene seed. The Ninth Legion’s apothecaries took this grim resourcefulness a step further, encouraging the practice of cannibalizing the war dead for sustenance.
This macabre solution not only benefited the Legion but also denied resources to the enemy. Through these strategies, the Ninth replenished its ranks and continued without contact with the wider Imperium, a feat unmatched by any other Legion. As they drew strength from their fallen enemies, they steadily took ground, depleting enemy forces and food supplies while bolstering their own strength.
Yet, the Ninth’s survival tactics were not without controversy. A diary recovered from a missing officer of the Veridan Regulars ominously referred to the Legion as the “Charnal Feast”. The rank and file mortal soldiery of the Great Crusade whispered the nickname before it was forcibly suppressed with Sanguinius’ arrival. The same diary hinted at a grim fate for the 46th Veridan Regulars, suggesting they were used to sustain the Legion either through literal consumption or by providing the flesh needed by the charnal priests to create new warriors.
The populace of Kebran viewed the Legionaries as devils from their myths, stealing children and feasting on corpses in rituals more barbaric than even their masters. The name “Imperium of Mankind” was whispered in fear and awe, seen as the force of their own undoing.
The final battle came in the 12th Terran year after their planetfall. Eloi, the enemy warlord, weakened by years of starvation and surrounded in his fortress spaceport, attempted one last desperate assault. But his slave sorcerers’ magic was no match for the unarmored novitiates of the Legion. Eloi tried to escape in a primitive spacecraft, but was intercepted and annihilated by Imperial Cruisers bearing the heraldry of the Seventh Legion. The Imperium had finally come to reclaim its warriors.
Leading the fleet was Rogal Dorn, newly reunited with his Imperial Fists. He arrived on Kebran to find a world ruined by the Imperium’s making. Furious at the report of the Ninth Legion’s actions, he refused to accept the compliance of Kebran and ordered the city of Ban raised and burned, erasing the sins of the Ninth Legion before any remembrancer could set foot there.
With each victory, the Ninth Legion’s ominous legend grew and spread. They became the specters haunting the wild fringes of the Great Crusade’s advance, the terrors unleashed by the Emperor to forge his path across the stars. They accepted this role with grim pride, their cold fury and brooding hunger for blood and death as terrifying as it was effective. The Ninth did not relent, did not retreat, and could not be stopped. They fought until the enemy was completely annihilated, ignoring thoughts of mercy or empire-building. For the Ninth Legion, the only acceptable outcome was a graveyard of their enemies.
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