“The ordinary narwhal, or unicorn fish, is a kind of whale which grows to a length of sixty feet… [It] is armed with a kind of ivory sword, or halberd, as some naturalists put it. It is a tusk as hard as steel.

Occasionally these tusks are found embedded in the bodies of other kinds of whales, against which the narwhal always wins.  Others have been removed, not without difficulty, from the hulls of ships which they had pierced clean through as easily as a drill pierces a barrel.”

Terran Explorer, Jules Verne, 1870, in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

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“I will call you Ishmael.”

Ishram Mael recalled his first meeting with the shipmaster. The twice-heigh had addressed him in High Gothic from the quarterdeck of the Náhvalr with a vox-enhanced dialect that made him sound like a hundred wooden instruments playing in slow motion. 

The pale interior of the Náhvalr reminded Mael of the Hollows on Necrosant IV. The ghost woods had covered the entire planet in a three-dimensional and multi-layered carpet of grey bio-dust. But contrary to their appearance, the Hollows had been alive. Like so many other forests in the vast expanse of the Imperium, the Hollows was an ever-changing web of purposeful beings dependent on each other. Communicating above and below ground the trees had shaped their surroundings as much as their surroundings had shaped them, tricking visitors to distribute their seeds. Even Mael, himself just a visitor, had brought some to Neith, where they now lay dormant in sub-freezing temperature seed vaults.

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“So many worlds full of purpose,” Mael thought as he once again panned the quarterdeck of the Náhvalr. His visit to the Hollows had been half a lifetime ago when he was a young apprentice. Now he had risen to priesthood within the Ordo and was on yet another bio-retrieving mission. His first onboard the Náhvalr, yet so close to home. His round glasses were covered in a thin layer of spidery bio-dust, slightly blurring his already deteriorating vision. He was keenly aware of the bio-mechanical ship around him. The Náhvalr was a hunting class boarding ship and as sentient a being as the ghost woods on Necrosant IV. Its straight and spirally-fluted prow served as the first point of entry during hunts. It made the ship look like an enormous tusked whale.

The Náhvalr was built for hunting. Its preferred prey was void whales – solitary creatures spawned in the abysmal depths of the Sea of Souls now roaming the currents of realspace. Bone from their thoracic vertebra had been extensively used in the creation of bryophyte habitats on the surface of the once thriving thorn moons. While the Thorn Moons Crusade had led to the complete destruction of their boreal home world, the crew onboard the Náhvalr was on a hunting mission in Segmentum Obscurus hunting an adult void whale more than ten thousand Terran miles long. Upon boarding the massive creature, they had been beset from all sides by countless ravenous creatures inhabiting its labyrinthine bowels. Ferocious fighting had continued for a fortnight before they took down the void whale and secured valuable material for their then burning home world.

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That was many moons ago and this night was yet another hunting night.

Their greatest hunt of all hunts.

The shipmaster stood once again at the centre of the quarterdeck. His gnarled terminator armour had the colour of old dryftwoode washed ashore on some foreign and weather-beaten coast. It made him look like one of the Hollows. He was a giant among men. A whale hunter extraordinaire flanked by a dozen crew members, all weathered seafarers readying their hunting weapons; harpoon guns, anchor-shaped axes, bomb lances, flukes and their obligatory blunt gaff, or Blásturongul, used for dragging enemies into close combat during boarding actions.

Engulfed in an Empyrean afterglow, they had navigated the Náhvalr through the Sea of Souls for longer than Mael could remember. Sailing along the raging shores of the Cicatrix Meladictum from the Halo Stars to Segmentum Pacificus before entering the undercurrents of Segmentum Solar like a pale ghost drifting soundlessly through the cosmic night.

Visible through the porthole behind them the Great Rift was roaring and howling like the raging animal it was, a deep chasm wide and alive, tearing at the very fabric of the Imperium. Before them, their prey loomed like a massive beast in the burning sky; 

Venus. 

The dense depths of the planets sulfurous atmosphere shrouded everything below them in thick, yellowish clouds. Above them, shimmering Pallagio spires glowed orange like lighthouses on fire in the Venutian mesosphere. As the Náhvalr rammed into the side of one magnificent spire wall of vitrified rockcrete with splintering force, spiral-prow first, a guttural hunting roar from the shipmaster reverberated through the labyrinthine interiors of both ship and spire. Like echo-chambers, they multiplied the roar over and over again, until it was as if a thousand legionaires had brought fire to a planet already in flames.

“Call me Legion, for we are many!”

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On Iron Sleet we have re-ignited Ynqvisitor and are now preparing for full-on 40K war on Venus!

This is the opening scene of my Crataegus Legion making planet fall!*

I love to write and began this scene when I was invited to take part in Bjarni Dali’s amazing Dryftwoode campaign on the Faroe Islands in August 2023. I sadly didnt manage to go, and recently made some slight adjustments to it.

Shipmaster Hagalaz Urz is a rare breed. For Millennia he has been navigating his hunting class boarding ship, the Náhvalr, across the Sea of Souls, known by those not sailing its currents as the Aether. Like the rest of his closest crew members, he is wearing custom-made terminator armour (hint!) and is armed with weapons ideal for boarding actions; a massive anchor-shaped force axe, ropes, a harpoon gun – his Balchin bomb lance – and the obligatory Blásturongul!

Contrary to my initial Crataegus Legionaires, there are no Imperial insignia on Urz. Instead, I have based him on the amazing Horus Ascended model by Forgeworld, introduced classic Chaos Marine iconography and added a pair of horned tusks – a green ode to John’s amazing Magnus the Red!

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For this opening scene, I also decided to include a new Linnæanne Brother, to tell the tale of Urz and his crew. I used this narrative trick in both the Pilgrym and the Thorn Moons Crusade, so it ties my current story-line nicely together with the previous chapters of my Iron Sleet explorations:

Ishram Mael, called Ishmael, is a Linnæanne Brother from the moon-sized seed vault Neith circling Venus. I came up with the narrative for Neith, Venus and the Linnæanne Brotherhood during the Pilgrym. Ishmael is on board the Náhvalr to help recover artifacts needed to transform the Golden Throne into the Green Seat of the Emperor Reborn. He has risen to priesthood within the Ordo of Neith, his goals rooted in his obligations to the brotherhood and their search for the truth in an Imperium where everything you have been told is a lie!

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Dramatis personae

I

The Náhvalr, called ‘Aether Corpse’

Hunting class boarding ship

Crataegus Legion

TMC XVI

Hagalaz Urz, called Legion 

Shipmaster

Crataegus Legion

TMC XVI

Ishram Mael, called Ishmael

Frater

Linnæanne Brotherhood

Neith, Venus

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* No whales were hurt during this writing. I oppose whale hunting and believe that all whales should be left in the oceans to roam free. If you want to support that, please check out WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, the leading global charity dedicated to the conservation and protection of all whales, dolphins and porpoises.