Emperor's Bane

Chapter 873 Terra Crisis - Evil Alliance
Although he had witnessed enough horrors in the smoke of the Great Crusade, the Forge-General of Mars was still the strangest and most terrifying being Malohurst had ever seen.

It was even difficult for him to describe himself as a [person] seeing these things with his own eyes.

This is normal.

When he was first led into the Casting General's private workshop by those obedient mechanical servants, Malohurst once thought that the deformed meat mountain in the center of the room, which was made of mechanical pieces, was just another failed work of Kalbohar.

It is no secret that the current Casting General likes [Innovation].

Until the mountain of flesh turned around and began to speak to the envoy of the Wolf God.

"Welcome to Mars, Marlowhurst."

The Twister never knew his name could sound so strange.

The owner of this voice must have already lost most of his human emotions.

"Hail, Lord of Mars."

Malohurst bowed slightly, respectful but not humble: he represented the Warmaster, and his every move symbolized Horus's attitude.

The Twister knew why his Gene-Father had gone to so much trouble to secretly hide him on the Vengeful Spirit and transport him to Mars without anyone noticing. What exactly was the purpose? Horus needed a reliable ally who could be relied on, not a group of arrogant gear fanatics.

"Lord of Mars?"

This title made the Casting General laugh, his laughter was creepy, and it also reminded the Twister of the information he had memorized before setting out.

Kalbohar, Master of Mars and Owner of Mount Olympus, was known for his discontent with the Emperor and his bloodlust for his fellows: it was said that his skull, crammed with synthetic synapses and logical thought circuits, was completely devoid of organic matter, and that he could not feel any emotion.

Whether it is pride or joy.

Although the Mechanicus have always been known for their fanatical tendency to transform the body, the Fabrication General is undoubtedly ahead of everyone in this regard: at least eighty percent of his body is filled with machines, which is unprecedented in the history of Mars.

No one knows where this leader, who has completely lost his human appearance, will lead the entire Mechanicus.

But there is no doubt that after decades of exploitation and struggle, Kalbohar has firmly grasped the entire Mars in his hands. Only a few enemies are still lingering, but they cannot cause any waves.

Even Holy Terra's control over Mars has declined to the extreme, and they have no means to check and balance the current Forge General.

All the High Lords can do is to send as many supplies as possible to the hands of the opponents centered on Lava City, but this can only help them stabilize the front line: the military advisers of Holy Terra have given the answer. Unless the High Lords Council is willing to intervene directly, Kalbohar’s rule on Mars will be almost unshakable.

His victory may be slow in coming, but it will come eventually.

In fact, the only thing that can prevent the Forge General from sweeping across the entire Mars is that the situation is not yet critical enough for a war to break out: Kalbohar is still wary of the High Lord's intervention, and all Mount Olympus and Lava City can do now is to make adequate preparations for the civil war that can be seen with the naked eye.

Lava City is ready for survival.

As for casting generals, prepare for victory.

This remarkable record obviously attracted the attention of Warmaster Horus.

So he sent the Twister, because he believed that in front of Terra, the Warmaster and the Fabricator-General had the soil for cooperation: Mars had the power that Horus urgently needed, and Horus also had the means to help the Fabricator-General solve some problems.

Of course, the Warmaster had not forgotten Kalbohar's almost open hostility towards the Emperor: but that was a matter for later.

In fact, on the issue of Mars, there is no difference between Horus and the high lords. If the Wolf God can sit in the position of the Sigillite, he will naturally use more power to support the Lava City, and it is impossible for the Casting General to truly unify Mars.

But now, it has not come to that point yet. Horus is just a challenger, and Kalbohar is his natural ally: even though this Fabricator-General has long been on the Warmaster's kill list because of his obvious hostility towards the Emperor.

But now, they want to unite with whoever they can as much as possible.

These were the last words the Warmaster gave to Malohurst when he sent him away.

The Twister remembered it clearly, but the voice of the Forge General also deafened him.

Oh my god, it's like a Titan roaring.

Do these gear lunatics really think it's wonderful to transform themselves into this?
The Twister muttered to himself, while Kalbohar laughed in front of him.

"Lord of Mars?"

"This title seems unworthy of me now."

The extremely bloated torso of the Casting General made people doubt whether he could still walk and move normally, but this did not prevent Kalbohar from using dozens of hateful metal tentacles to flexibly grab anything he wanted: including the Warmaster's handwritten letter held in the air by the Twister.

Three green mechanical eyes replaced the Casting General's originally gloomy pupils. They rotated and read the contents of the letter one by one: There is no doubt that Horus's enthusiastic flattery and promises made Kalbohar interested in continuing the conversation.

"Your Warmaster wrote me that I could use the resources of Mars to assist him, and he could use his power to help me."

"What a beautiful promise: But the person who wrote this letter probably doesn't know enough about the current situation on Mars."

"I am far from being able to control the entire production capacity of Mars. Several important furnaces and forges are still in the hands of stubborn rebels: For example, the mistress of Lava City, Corelzeth, is gathering all forces that dare to oppose me within her walls."

"If your Warmaster expected more, he may be disappointed."

Strangely, although Kalbohar's words sounded like complaints and a sign of weakness, Malohurst could hear a clear sense of boasting in them: the Twister was not surprised, as Horus' most trusted confidant, he had done all his homework long before setting out.

He knew the real conditions on Mars better than any other Luna Wolf.

The story begins two hundred years ago.

At the beginning, in order to obtain sufficient production capacity to support his Great Crusade, the Lord of Mankind chose to come to Mars and become the Omnissiah that the Mechanicus had been waiting for for thousands of years: thus, the Imperial Sky Eagle was given two heads, and a part of the people on Mars hated him forever.

Kalbohar is one of them. Although he was just a humble technician when the Emperor came, this did not prevent him from sneer at the power of the Lord of Mankind: in his view, the Emperor was just a hypocritical invader, and the beautiful future he declared was all empty talk.

The developments that followed also echoed Kalbohar's ideas to some extent. As the other head of the Imperial Skyhawk, the Martians never gained the equal status that they nominally deserved. They lost their independence and pride and had to contribute a lot of production capacity to the Emperor's conquest, but the rewards they received were far less than what they paid.

The Emperor did not help Mars to restore its dominant position in the Mechanicus. Instead, he has been secretly assisting the rebels in the galaxy. The endless war orders and the tyranny of the Primarchs are disgusting: apart from empty clichés, those more practical members of the Mechanicus are not satisfied with the rewards they get from the Empire.

There is no doubt that this discontent thrived in the soil of the Great Crusade until it eventually borne bitter fruit: long before the Council of Ullanor in the 150th year of the Great Crusade, Kalbohar had been rapidly promoted from a mere technician to the Forge General of Mars, from then on gaining supreme power and a large number of loyal followers.

The seeds of rebellion started from the top and continued to spread across the land of the red giant.

For the Forge General and his supporters, the tragedy that occurred in Nikaea was undoubtedly a godsend: a large number of furnaces and forge cities lost their owners, and Kalbohar easily placed his trusted followers there, gradually taking control of the entire Red Giant.

He has completely mastered all the fleets on Mars, as well as every critical air defense base and orbital platform: this ensures that outsiders can hardly interfere with the situation on Mars, and also ensures that Kalbohar's opponents have almost no way to escape after the war fails. In the early stage, the extreme chaos caused by the Nikaea Conference and external problems such as the Badab Crisis caused the high lords to have no time to deal with the problems on Mars, but this does not mean that the seal holder will be helpless against Kalbohar: he has long known the latter's rebellion.

Thus, when Kalbohar's iron claws forced the remaining independent forces on Mars to begin trying to band together for warmth, assistance from Holy Terra arrived as promised: the survivors formed a more solid alliance with Lava City as the center, effectively thwarting the expansion of the Casting General's power network.

The situation thus came to a stalemate, but the overall turmoil on Mars did not change, and the mechanical priests loyal to various parties were on the verge of a war: the cause that the Forge General had originally hoped to achieve through political games, espionage, and secret assassinations had gradually developed into the fuse of a full-scale conflict.

Mars is about to be engulfed in civil war, this is the consensus of everyone in this land.

As for Omnissiah's disappearance, it will be the last domino before the war.

And it was at this time that the envoy representing the Warmaster stood in front of Kalbohar.

It's hard not to be moved by the casting of the general.

But he also had some doubts in his heart.

The shadow left by the former Lord of Mankind on Kalbohar was too deep.

After all, Horus is well known as the Emperor's favorite son, and the world will explain how similar he is to the Lord of Mankind: Will he be like the Gene Father he always imitates, with nothing but threats of force and empty promises, which will only cause the Forge General to bleed in vain?

This concern was too obvious in Kalbohar, and Malohurst could easily feel it. In his heart, he couldn't help but admire the Warmaster's foresight: Horus had already foreseen the situation before him.

I also told him how to solve it.

"grown ups."

Malohurst took a step forward, interrupting the Forge General's musings.

"Excuse me, my father and I both know what you are worried about. Some unpleasant things in the past are indeed a cause for concern, but please rest assured that the Wolf God knows very well how important allies you and Mars are to him, and Lord Horus has always been generous when it comes to his friends."

"I don't doubt that."

The Casting General nodded.

"Although I am on Mars, I know as much about the galaxy as you do."

This is not an exaggeration.

For a long time, Mars was indeed not interested in information from the outside world: until they suffered a big loss on the issue of Morgan.

Out of inertia of thinking, when the Spider Queen, who had just returned to the Human Empire, chose to form an alliance with Ryza, the biggest traitor on Mars, the Forge General and his staff did not pay much attention to this alliance which they thought would not last long.

This resulted in that when Mars finally reacted, Ryza had already grown into a behemoth under Avalon's full nourishment, enough to confront the head of the Mechanicus head-on: especially the Spider Queen standing behind Ryza, who played an almost decisive role in the confrontation.

The open and secret struggles between Mars and Ryza lasted for a whole century. During this period, every time Mars made progress on the front battlefield, Avalon would continue to provide blood transfusions to Ryza in the back to ensure that its ally would not be crushed by the Casting General.

Moreover, with the expansion of the Far East frontier, a large amount of Mars' original interests in the eastern part of the galaxy were transferred by Morgan to Riza. This move directly led to the increase and decrease of the strength of both sides.

But these setbacks alone were not enough to cause General Zhuzhu to admit defeat.

It was not until the Spider Queen, through some back-channel tactics, obtained a peace agreement for the entire Maelstrom region for Riza from the Omnissiah that Mars lost the legal legitimacy to provoke a struggle.

In Kalbohar's view, this was the Emperor's violation of the original covenant.

In the struggle between Mars and his subjects, he stood on the opposite side of the Casting General: what equality and mutual respect? The ugly heart of the Lord of Mankind was played by his descendants.

Not only did Mars lose the entire Maelstrom region on the surface, but because of the extremely critical geographical location of the Heart of the Galaxy, their relationship chains leading to the eastern part of the Milky Way were cut off one by one by Riza. In the subsequent open and covert struggles, they suffered a series of defeats and almost lost all their interests east of the Maelstrom.

But these material losses were not the most troublesome: after expanding wildly and further consolidating his authority in the Maelstrom, Ryza successfully contacted the Five Hundred Worlds, Nostramo, and even powerful vassal kings such as Angron and Perturabo through the connections of the Lord of Avalon.

Through these Primarchs, Ryza negotiated with the various Forge Worlds, promising more relaxed terms and more frequent exchanges of interests, and successfully fundamentally pried open Mars' rule in the eastern part of the galaxy: from the Great Vortex to the east, the various Forge Worlds were more willing to obey Ryza's orders rather than Mars.

The Forge of Bound Stars is no longer just a headache for Mars like Acheron VIII or Anvirus. It has grown into a true challenger, a threat that has the ability and the intention to overturn Mars.

What's worse is that with the power of an example like Riza, every powerful forge world is now somewhat restless. They have discovered that the power of Mars is not as strong as it claims. If the attitude of the Omnissiah is relaxed, why can't they become the next Riza?
Huang Quan No. 8 and Shana were ready to make a move in the Silent Star Region in the west, Agrippina and Lucius successively divided the power in the north, Graya, Kival and Steel Ball were flattering their respective primarchs in the south of the empire: Mars's rule over these had never been as weak as it was now. It suffered from the pain of lip service in every direction. The loss of a large number of interest chains and the loss of actual materials were enough to drag the entire red giant into the abyss.

In fact, the loss of authority caused by the failure of governance over the various Forge Worlds under its rule and the resulting huge shortage of materials are the main reasons that have gradually pushed Mars to the brink of civil war: the tragic failure of the external struggle has backfired internally, and in order to compete for increasingly scarce resources, everyone has decided to knock down his colleague next to him.

Opponents blame the current incompetence of the Fabricator-General for the situation, while Kalbohar's followers insist that the Emperor and Terra are behind this series of failures: Ryza is the best example.

But there is one thing that both sides agree on: they can no longer sit in the well and watch the world from a distance as before.

The tragic ending of the Morgan Problem made the Forge General begin to pay attention to the power of the Primarchs, and the powerful Warmaster was the focus of his attention.

As for the other Primarchs, they all have their own problems to a greater or lesser extent.

Of course, Morgan is great: but expecting Morgan to abandon Riza is simply a fantasy.

Moreover, it is impossible for the Forge General of Mars to be as obedient to the Primarch as Riza was.

Therefore, Horus is the better choice.

His theory of imperial federation is actually very popular on Mars.

Decentralization? Autonomy? Federation?

What a wonderful word!

Through long-term observation, Kalbohar can be sure of one thing: he doesn't care what kind of person Horus is at heart, but the wolf god is indeed good at making allies, and he is loyal and generous enough when treating his allies, and is often particularly happy when dividing the profits.

What's more, the Wolf Shepherd God is very strong: both in terms of strength and means.

Whether it is himself, his legion, or the country he rules: among all the allies Mars can find now, Horus is indeed the unique best choice.

And this is enough.

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There are two updates today, and there is one more to come.

(End of this chapter)