As a gesture of his support, Lucius dispatched a Grey Seer Verminlord to the Word Bearers Legion to serve as an emissary and advisor to Lorgar.
Lorgar did not refuse the gift. He gazed upon the towering, twisted Greater Daemon, draped in its opulent robes, with genuine satisfaction. In his eyes, this emissary was a divine reward for his steadfast piety.
"Yes-yes... the faith of the Great Horned Rat... we-we shall see it spread. The Great-Mighty power of the Horned One~" the Verminlord, Kreeolaq, hissed with a greasy, sycophantic grin.
"Leave this matter to us," Erebus interjected, stepping toward Lorgar. His tattooed, shaven scalp glistened with a mask of pious cunning. "I shall confer with the God's emissary immediately to draft a new liturgy, one that ensures the True God's gaze remains fixed upon us."
Suspecting no ulterior motive and viewing this as a natural extension of spreading the primordial Truth, Lorgar nodded. He granted Erebus and his foster father, Kor Phaeron, full authority to manage the conversion.
"Emissary, we can establish an Ordo of the Lord of Distortion at once. There are more than enough Word Bearers clerics ready to walk the path in service to the God," Erebus said, bowing and scraping before Kreeolaq. His display of groveling was a performance the Verminlord found intimately familiar.
"Yes, man-thing. It is in your hands. The Great Horned Rat... the Horned One rewards-gives!" Kreeolaq chuckled, his sharp talons patting Erebus's shoulder with a weight that made even the First Chaplain's spine stiffen.
True to their nature, Erebus and Kor Phaeron immediately began rallying their loyalists. They preached the faith of the Lord of Distortion, calling upon those Astartes zealous enough to champion this new "Truth" to join their ranks.
As sons of Lorgar, the Word Bearers were biologically predisposed to seek a master to worship. Many instantly declared their conversion, eager to offer their lives to the Great Horned Rat.
"Excellent. Then the Brotherhood of Distortion is born. Brothers! Our new God is generous; He has sent His emissary to bestow His dark benedictions upon us!" Kor Phaeron bellowed, his voice carrying the practiced authority of an old priest as he addressed a gathering of roughly three hundred Word Bearers.
The three hundred Astartes dropped to one knee, their voices rising in a rhythmic, liturgical oath: "For the Truth!"
And so, with deceptive ease, a new Astartes lodge dedicated to the Great Horned Rat took root. As the only deity to show the "Sycophant Legion" immediate and tangible favor, the Horned Rat secured their service with minimal effort. While Lucius had no intention of folding the Word Bearers entirely into his personal command, they would serve as a potent tool for spreading the Vermin-creed across the galaxy.
…
The Great Rat-infestation of the Sol System drew toward its bloody conclusion once the Emperor used His ruinous divine might to forcibly quell the Warp storms.
On Holy Terra, the moment the ten clans sensed that Whitesick's schemes were failing, their "Alliance" dissolved into a series of pre-planned backstabbing clauses. Aside from the Alpha Legion, who had already extracted themselves, the other clans, particularly Clan Moulder on Luna, and Clan Skryre and Clan Verminus on Mars, fell into a cycle of mutual sabotage.
When Clan Verminus prepared to launch a massive, decisive siege against the Imperial Palace on Terra, the details of their deployment were "leaked" to Roboute Guilliman by an anonymous Skaven source from a rival clan.
Guilliman had no idea why such comprehensive intelligence had appeared on his desk, but the Lord Regent was not one to ignore a gift. He moved with cold efficiency, personally leading the 3rd through 7th Companies of the Ultramarines, eight successor Chapters of the Ultramarines and Imperial Fists, and millions of Astra Militarum in a massive counter-offensive.
"Father, can this intelligence be trusted?" Mikael Fabian, Captain of the 3rd Company, asked his gene-sire with concern. He did not wish to doubt the Primarch, but he feared a xenos trap.
Guilliman, hand resting on the hilt of the Emperor's Sword, shook his head. His voice was resolute. "There is no logic to its presence, Mikael, yet my intuition tells me it is genuine. Will you trust me?"
"Always, Father! Your word is my command!" the Captain barked.
Across the plateaus of the Himalayas before the Palace gates, the Imperial forces had dug in. Thousands of Basilisk self-propelled artillery pieces were positioned in a perfect interlocking grid. Guilliman had orchestrated a masterclass in counter-seige warfare based on the leaked plans. He refused to believe any commander could outmaneuver him, save perhaps for the long-dead Horus.
As predicted, the Auspex arrays, recently modified by the Adeptus Mechanicus to detect subterranean movement, began to wail. A massive enemy force was approaching from below.
"Commence the operation."
Mikael nodded and relayed the command to the Mechanicus cohorts. The Tech-Priests and Skitarii activated a monolithic machine the size of a cathedral.
With the roar of a binary machine-spirit, the device, dubbed the "Earthshaker," begun its cycle. It emitted a localized ultrasonic frequency that triggered a magnitude 7.0 earthquake.
The Imperial lines had been reinforced for the shock, leaving the Astra Militarum merely staggered. However, the effect on the Skaven tunnels was catastrophic. "Substandard" would be a generous description of Skaven engineering; their tunnels were a perpetual cycle of collapse, slavery, and frantic re-digging.
Under the stress of the seismic waves, tens of thousands of tunnels buckled. Millions of Skaven were instantly entombed in the shifting earth.
"Kreaah! Impossible! Human-things did this-that?! How?!" the Warlord of Clan Verminus shrieked, watching his perfectly planned subterranean highway turn into a mass grave.
With their tunnels ruined, the Skaven had no choice but to burst onto the surface and face the Emperor's wrath head-on.
The first Doomwheel breached the crust, followed by a tide of vermin so dense it turned the landscape into a roiling sea of black fur. The Skaven screeched in a cacophony of fear and hunger, unleashing a hailstorm of warp-bolts.
Hundreds of looted Imperial tanks, Doomwheels, and Doom-Flayers, all the ramshackle hallmarks of Skaven war-tech, churned up a wall of dust across the Tibetan plateau.
Guilliman felt a cold, righteous fury. How had so many xenos survived beneath the very cradle of humanity?
He raised the Emperor's Sword, its flaming blade a beacon for the loyalist host.
"Creeping barrage—FIRE!" the Lord General of the Astra Militarum commanded. The Basilisk batteries roared in a continuous, deafening thunder, raining shells into the thickest clusters of the rat-horde.
The Skaven were vaporized by the thousands, yet more always surged forward to fill the gaps. Plagueclaws, Warp-Lightning Cannons, and Warp-tech artillery soon began to return fire, hammering the Imperial lines.
The distance closed rapidly until, by unspoken agreement, both sides launched a massive charge.
Knight suits led the Imperial armored columns into the fray, while Astra Militarum infantry, fixed bayonets glinting under the cover of the barrage, slammed into the chattering mass of the Skaven.
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