Emperor's Bane

Chapter 844: Thousand Sons’ Deadly Situation
"I am the fleet commander of the legion, but now I have no fleet."

Whenever his brothers came to visit him and asked him to come out of retirement, Motep was used to rejecting them with this sentence.

Normally, this one sentence would be enough: As he said, no one would seriously try to win over a former fleet commander who had lost his fleet, especially on Prospero now.

On the other hand, as long as Motep gritted his teeth, no one could force him to leave his seclusion: as the most outstanding captain under the former Primarch, his ability and status were far beyond the reach of ordinary people.

In the past, there were a few names in the ranks of the Thousand Sons Legion that would have forced Motep to bow his head, such as the high-ranking members of the Crimson Counsel and the five major sects, or the company commanders of various societies: they were all the elite of the Fifteenth Legion.

They were all the most trusted descendants and assistants of the Primarch Magnus.

They were all elites who could speak and express their views at the Congress of Nikea.

So, of course.

Almost none of them came back alive from that damn world.

They were all dead, or missing, or locked up: it depended on where you chose to believe the message.

In the few visits that the Imperial envoys made to Prospero, they announced that among the Thousand Sons who had come to the Council of Nicaea there had been traitors, an unknown number, and unknown motives, but that their conspiracy had been uncovered: as for the rest, they were being investigated for their alleged involvement.

So the investigation lasted for more than 20 years: it was a reasonable thing for the empire.

Among the common people, in the ruins of the long-abandoned and dilapidated streets of the city of Tizca, the saddest views filled the discussions of the ignorant: those who were older could barely remember the names of the captains and elites, while the rest had long given up hope of their survival.

But within the Legion, there are still a large number of former comrades and subordinates who are full of confidence in the survival of these high-ranking officers: they believe that those people are only dormant temporarily, and they are just waiting for an opportunity, waiting for an opportunity to return to Prospero with the Primarch and make the Thousand Sons Legion great again.

There are so many different things.

After all, in today's Tizca City, rumors are the most abundant thing.

There are optimists, pessimists, and some that are completely illogical, but in each case there are large numbers of people who choose to believe: trapped in this world that has long lost its future, advocating hope in the confusion seems to be the only option.

Few people can remain sane here.

Mortals can't.

Thousand Sons cannot.

Even Motep himself could hardly guarantee whether he could do it or not.

Maybe he has gone crazy a long time ago? Maybe everything in front of him is just his fantasy.

If it's true, that would be great.

He would rather believe that it was all an illusion.

These past thirty years of tragedy, chaos and madness: there's no telling how long this will last.

Motep leaned back in his chair: this obsidian throne was the only souvenir that those cunning Imperial bureaucrats allowed him to bring back from the Crescent Moon. He liked sitting here, as if he was still the fleet commander, deciding the life and death of millions of people under the command of the Primarch.

Speaking of this: I wonder what those wild wolves will do to his old friend?
Finally, Qianzi closed his eyes and stopped thinking about these things that were bound to be sad.

He could hear the battle-brother who had come to persuade him earlier walking down the stairs, his iron boots creaking on the marble countertops, and he seemed angry when he pushed open the door: the heavy banging on the door was one of the most common sounds heard in the city of Tizca today.

After all, everyone in this city is upset and negative.

It is easy to imagine what this brother, who had left no impression on Motep, would say to his superior Sanakot after returning.

No...that's not right.

Shouldn't it be Sir: What does Sanakot call himself now?

The leader of the Sword of Destiny?
Is it a warband? Or a warband?

Forget it, who cares?
Motep smiled, though there was no joy in it.

He opened his eyes tiredly and struggled to get up from the obsidian throne. After just a few movements, he felt a rumbling sound in his abdomen.

The instinct for survival made him roar hysterically at the former fleet commander, because even an Astartes warrior could not survive without water and food.

How many days has he not eaten? How many days has he not had even a sip of water?
Motep had forgotten that he didn't really care about these things. Death was not something to be feared by the fleet commander: if there was no hope left in his heart, he would have wanted to escape from this disgusting world long ago.

But even so, instinct still urged Motep's steps. He stumbled forward in his mansion, groping among the tattered curtains and dirty corridors. His hand held the bookshelf, which was covered with thick dust a foot wide: it might have been ten years since the last cleaning.

Motep couldn't explain it clearly, after all, he was not the original owner of the house.

Finally, after picking off countless patches of mold on the wall and stepping over countless piles of collapsed beams, Motep finally stumbled into what looked like a kitchen. He fumbled around randomly, his hands and feet so clumsy that he didn't look like an Astartes warrior at all.

He grabbed a few cans and a few bottles of suspiciously murky water, and swallowed them whole without caring what was in them: Feeling his body functions starting to work again, Qianzi fell headfirst onto the cupboard, and after a while, neurotic laughter echoed in the room.

He was laughing at himself: laughing at himself for having fallen to such a state.

Who could have imagined that thirty years ago, they were such glorious warriors.

They also...

"boom--"

He wanted to express his feelings more, but was interrupted by the sound of gunfire outside the room: Motep did not feel panicked, because this had long been the norm in the city of Tizca.

It is impossible to determine exactly when Magnus' warriors and subjects began to kill each other, but they apparently continue this tradition to this day.

Qianzi sat where he was. The gunshots outside the window lasted for a few minutes. He listened carefully and soon identified from the shouting and the type of bullets that these should be two groups of mortal armed forces fighting for territory.

One of these men sounded like the former Spire Guards: half of this once elite mortal force still kept their oath, but the other half had long since lost their nobility over the past twenty years, disappearing into the ruins and joining the bandits.

However, Motep had no right to condemn the depravity of these mortals: the Thousand Sons Legion was the same.

They were even one step ahead, and the legion they were loyal to had already fallen apart before the spire guards could hold on.

Motep remembers it clearly.

All that happened a few months after the tragedy in Nikaea.

------

In fact, at the beginning, Motep had no idea what was going on.

In the Thousand Sons Legion, the Fleet Commander is a rather special type of person, who is out of tune with the mainstream of the Sons of Magnus: he is not a scholar or a warrior, but is more interested in commanding fleet operations. Although his psychic powers are of the common prophetic type, he himself does not use them much.

A typical example is that when the entire legion began to cultivate its own Warp Elves under the promotion of Magnus, Motep was one of the few people who did not have his own elves: it was not that he could not, but that he simply had no interest in doing so.

He felt that this was not very safe: his cautious mentality of commanding fleets for a long time made him more willing to make safe decisions. Similarly, as someone who was used to sitting on the throne of a voidship, Motep preferred to take the initiative to go out rather than delve into psychic power on the land of Prospero: so when the unavoidable need to go out fell on the head of the Fifteenth Legion, Motep's fleet would often become the answer put forward by the Legion.

He never thought that he would be blessed by it.

When the famous Ullanor Ritual and Nikea Tragedy occurred, his fleet was unable to participate in them, but was fighting side by side with the Ultramarines on the Five Hundred Worlds to encircle and suppress an Orc Empire: it was indeed a pity that he could not witness the grand events of Ullanor and Nikea with his own eyes, but what happened next was shocking.

There were rumors that something had gone wrong at the Council of Nikea. At first, they were just whispers among the most informed people, and no one believed it was true: after all, that world was home to some of the most powerful people in the galaxy, and with the Emperor in charge, how stupid would someone be to cause trouble there?
This is what Motep thought, and he continued to devote himself to the military mission. Until the mission was nearing its end, the Extreme Warriors who had been fighting alongside him suddenly became a little strange.

To be fair, Motep's impression of Guilliman and his descendants was not as bad as that of most Imperials: he saw with his own eyes that the Ultramarines were also brave and loyal servants of the Empire and trustworthy brothers, and he also forged friendships with many of them.

So, when his friends suddenly began to withhold his supplies, Motep thought it was just an accident, perhaps a problem with the logistical routes: he also turned a blind eye to the XIII Legion's subsequent rather odd military maneuvers until they had in fact surrounded his fleet.

Fortunately, however, Motep was not the only one who cherished the friendship forged in the war: the captain of the Ultramarines personally came to the bridge of the Thousand Sons battleship, persuaded them to lay down their weapons and surrender voluntarily, and took out the arrest warrant issued by the Emperor.

After thinking it over, Motep did as he was told.

So, he and his men spent several months on a beautiful world: until Guilliman stood before them.

The Lord of Five Hundred Worlds...something is wrong.

In his pupils, there seemed to be burning anger towards the Thousand Sons, but in the end, the Primarch did not say much, but only roughly told him what happened on Nikaea: before Motep could recover from the news, the Ultramarines had already stuffed all the Thousand Sons into the transport ship.

By the time he realized what was happening, they were back in Prospero.

The Custodes, Dark Angels, Space Wolves and more mortal soldiers have surrounded this world.

Motep and others were driven off the boat and then thrown roughly onto the sand in front of the city of Tizca: throughout the whole process, Zhuang Sen stared at them coldly and ruthlessly.

At the feet of the Lion King, there were already piles of bones, all of which were the Thousand Sons warriors who had tried to resist.

So, no one dared to resist.

Motep's men were the last Thousand Sons to return to their home planet. After their arrival, the remaining members of the Fifteenth Legion were concentrated on the sand in the city of Tizca: three legions surrounded them, and the Custodians' guns were filled with bullets.

Faced with the absolute advantage in strength, the personal support of the two Primarchs, and the decree conveyed by the Emperor himself, the Legion, which was already leaderless, lost the power to resist: their Primarch and all the senior officers had been captured on the land of Nikea, and what remained on the home planet were only a bunch of bewildered soldiers and middle and low-level officers.

Resist? How and against whom?

Are we going to disobey the Emperor's orders? Isn't that treason?
After much hesitation, the Thousand Sons Legion and their spire guards were disarmed: some people tried to resist during the period, but when the Lion King flashed in front of the resister and slowly took off his head, everyone chose to remain silent.

The psychic powers displayed by the Lord of Caliban in this process, such as the ability to teleport without anyone noticing, have silenced most of the Thousand Sons warriors: that is a height they will never be able to reach in their lifetime.

In comparison, the silent Leman Russ seemed more reasonable: when the Imperial Guards wanted to kill all the Thousand Sons soldiers, and when the Lion King remained silent, it was the Wolf King who answered the confusion of the Sons of Magnus.

He announced the Emperor's decree bluntly.

Because some of the Thousand Sons' high-ranking officers colluded with the aliens and attempted to rebel, the Conference of Nikea went wrong, causing permanent and irreversible losses to the Empire: the Thousand Sons Legion should be punished for this.

Primarch Magnus was severely wounded in the tragedy at Nikaea, and was forced to recuperate in a location that was kept secret for his own safety: the rest of the senior officers were detained until they were cleared of suspicion.

This news is really too devastating.

Most of the Thousand Sons warriors present had no idea what was happening: how did they become subordinates of the rebels overnight? They had also lost their Primarch and all their senior officers? And judging by the looks of the Dark Angels and Space Wolves, they seemed to be losing more than that?
Motep remembered clearly: riots and large-scale protests broke out immediately, and the disarmament measures that had been carried out earlier took effect at this time.

Compared with the silent Dark Angels and the Custodians who had been suppressing their murderous intent, even the Space Wolves looked kinder.

Jonson walked among the dissatisfied crowd, the sword in his hand mercilessly reaping the lives of the rebels: he wore the pendant made by the Lord of Dawnbreaker on his chest, and when the silver-white carving glowed slightly, the desperate psychic energy of the Thousand Sons would turn into invisible.

The Lion King executed at least two hundred people, including the two hundred who resisted most courageously: the Dark Angels achieved even greater results.

As for the Guards: if the Wolf King hadn't been holding them back, Valdor would have almost ordered Prospero to be massacred on the spot.

On that day, hundreds of blood were shed on the sand by the Thousand Sons, and the losses of the Spire Guards were even more tragic: not to mention that many senior members of these mortal auxiliary forces were directly taken away by the Empire afterwards, which was equivalent to crushing the organization of this elite division.

After this battle, the Thousand Sons Legion was basically broken, and they could not even form a temporary leadership team: when the Fifteenth Legion was in deep chaos, the Empire's combined punches came one after another.

In the face of the Lion King's sharp blade, the remaining Thousand Sons warriors had to put black shackles around their necks: these abominations of unknown material blocked their psychic powers, and the power that once could move mountains and fill the sea now seemed difficult to even destroy a window.

Not only that, all heavy weapons and warships were confiscated, and the qualification to awaken the Dreadnaught was also revoked. Except for a few swords and the most basic pistols, the Fifteenth Legion lost all their equipment: the situation of the Spire Guards was not much better.

Motep was not immune to this, and lost most of his weapon collection and an entire fleet as the Space Wolves seized them; his crew was thrown off the ship, and his sailors were taken to an unknown destination by the Empire.

Hope they are still alive.

In a single day, the Thousand Sons lost everything they had.

Just everything they thought it was.

Because, starting from the second day, the Empire's punishment methods became increasingly severe.

The destruction of the Thousand Sons' resistance was only the first part of the punishment: over the next long months, the Dark Angels and Space Wolves completely took over the city of Tizca, and the Lion King and the Lord of the Custodes committed unimaginable atrocities upon the land.

They demolished the airport, leaving only a pitiful route for traffic, and basically destroyed Prospero's ability to communicate with the outside world.

They also confiscated all of the Thousand Sons' gene seeds and identity documents, as well as all means of external communication: if the Wolf King had not pleaded for mercy, the Custodians would have even wanted to burn down the Great Library of Tizca, on the grounds that they suspected that there were some unclean elements hidden in Magnus' collection.

But the most fatal thing was that they destroyed the psychic energy collection array of the city of Tizca: in the hundreds of years before that, it was this device and the underground hydroponic system that provided Prospero with an endless supply of living materials and energy. After it was completely destroyed, the living standards of the entire world would fall into a catastrophic regression.

But the Empire doesn't care: or rather, that's what the Empire wants to see.

Because after that, the Imperial army destroyed every city on Prospero except Tizca, and drove its residents into the planet's capital: the large foreign population far exceeded Tizca's tolerance limit, but was conducive to the Empire's centralized supervision.

After doing all this, the Imperial Guards placed their surveillance cameras all over the streets and alleys of Tizca City, and left a message: if any of the cameras were damaged, or if they detected that a Thousand Sons tried to remove the magic-suppressing collar, something worse would be waiting for them.

How bad is it?

A few months after the ban was issued, some of the remaining senior officers of the Thousand Sons Legion, who still had prestige and power, tried to gradually resist the atrocities of the Custodians: but soon, they were ruthlessly taken away by the guards of the Lord of Mankind.

And these last senior officers of the 15th Legion never returned.

This in some ways became the final domino in the collapse of the Thousand Sons Legion.

After seeing that the descendants of Magnus had fallen into complete chaos, the guards of the Lord of Mankind returned to the skyline in a swagger.

They left behind desolation, ruin, and grief, with a ban on ever leaving Tizca.

And, above every Prospero and Thousand Sons warrior, the vast fleet that blocked out the sky: if they wanted, the Imperial Overseers could destroy this city, this world, and this Legion at any time.

The death game for the Thousand Sons has begun.

(End of this chapter)