Awake to the song,

That Clarion call,

We readied ourselves,

We Knew we were strong,

The Fields of war,

To be our Banquet hall,

Our Ballroom and Caberet,

Though family Rebels,

We prepared for the Dance,

to Klaxon song and Funeral bells,

we knew not then,

What would happen when,

Our Loyal Pods did Fall.

Short Poem Dictated by the Dreadnought Venerable Brother Katharsus Before finally succumbing to wounds. [M32(roughly)]

The Chassis and Sarcophagus of a heavily battered Dreadnought lies dormant on the tiled metallic floor of the tech-Bay. Servitors and techpriest swarming it feverishly, trying to stem the tide of colorful fluids leaking into thickening pools.

"When we first heard our task we were proud. Sad, Surprised, confused but Proud. WE were tasked with taking the warmaster Horus. WE had been trusted, because WE were the most willing to be the best. We fought as dancers, We Learned as Poets and spoke as philosophers with true erudition. We held the emperors Grace and We alone carried his colours on our back, his Symbol above our hearts, and his bloodline as our Name..."

"Now I know that is where the failing began. Not with the wasting diseases, or with the flux of high born nobles-sons who made up much of our early brethren, nor even with the discovery of that accursed serpentine sliver in the dark. It is the twisting of life and mind that comes from chasing the idea of perfection, with the fear of being less than, and all the while being blinded by ones own self worth."

"Once I believed, oh once I believed that I, Alone, was enough to reach the perfection we so craved, and my Brothers knew the same of themselves. And so We stood alone on a pedestal of our achievements, hating everyone above with vengeant envy, and not even deigning to look down to those...heh...Beneath us."

My brothers in other fleets often jested that we were cowardly, and sometimes examples had to be made, but those we fought beside understood the Beats and forms our portion of the dance took. We were the final crashing crescendo and we did our duty flawlessly.

My Fleet, The Small swathe of us that always held the rear flank, commanded by the warmaster to reach the field at the last, to be the most glorious heroic angels of the emperor we could be. To arrive perfectly on time, everytime, to be the Heroes of a losing battlefield or the absolute nail in the coffin of our enemies, Arriving as an untouched host to replace the fallen. My brothers in other fleets often jested that we were cowardly, and sometimes examples had to be made, but those we fought beside understood the Beats and forms our portion of the dance took. We were the final crashing crescendo and we did our duty flawlessly. Our great vessel, the sword ship, we called her the Wall flower, Ready to step in once we had seen the flow and heard the tempo, found our partner in the dance and stepped forth, with grace and Destruction.

It was a near-perfect theorum.

It allowed us to be preserved.

It meant we failed to save our Brothers

I will not pretend to know the twisted mind and machinations of Horus, nor how he prophecized how those battles on Istvaan III would go. Why he decided to act as he did nor what warp taint caused him To Plan the Acts he did. The things I remember, only barely now, are that it started exactly as we always planned, the dance was begun, and we had our steps. We slipped to the Warp and readied our Navy, for bombardment and our final coup de grace. Our Gellar fields held, and our troops were readied. The Wallflower waited.

But then...

The Warp became unstable around us and we were becalmed and twisted, our time sped up and our position in space was no longer permanent, and the Captain was forced to fall back to the materium, before the warp could take us. Arriving in space, we learned too late, that we had lost our place in the time of the dance. We were above a Planet, Unrecognisable after the battle, but known to us. We could recieve no transmissions from the planet or the fleets that should have been encircling it, Only debris and the ashy static of post nuclear fallout and Electrically charged Dust storms around its crippled rocky corpse.

There was too little, TOo little to be found of our fallen kin, but we tried.

We tried desperately.

We dug into collapsed bunkers and burnt out basements, We desperately called for anyone on every Vox channel, but we were only screaming into the void. Our Luck came through in insultingly small batches. A bone here, a crushed burnt mass of hair and cloth there, And so few armorments in recognizable forms that we could even honor them in burial. The Full bodies we could find Broke our hearts beyond any repair. Our Brothers, In arms, In blood, in creed and in bond. We had fought beside them, for the Emperor.

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I remember them now as Perfect warriors. Part of the machine of war. The only reason they could have fallen is if a piece of that machine attacked itself, And they were attacked from behind. Their Backplates and breathing apparatus's blown through their spines and eviscerating their organs. I pray to the emperor that they didn't know what happened, that they had died instantly, caught unawares, but too many had clearly died running.

Died Hiding...

Died in each others arms as the virus bombs flames took them.

We only found a few, I hesitate to even say they were living then. A handfull of brothers were found fully suspended, there sus-an membranes keeping them alive under too much rubble for the viral gas and fire to reach, Some of the Deathguard survived, one, even, of the World eaters. A veteran of the unification wars, Kraht Apopletus.

There was so much devestation many of my brothers simply marched into the wastes, alone, to die with the spirits of the fallen. Unable To deal with the loss of it all.

So many of our brothers fallen to chaos one way or the other.

Our Gene-sire, Despic..c..cably twisted into a Hateable, Pitious knotted monstrosity.

Nothing to show for our generations of Toil and Trials.

Nothing but the dust.

Our Pride Killed Us as much as our brothers on those fields of death. When the Image we had thought of ourselves shattered and we were no longer gloried by its light, we could finally see the devastation. Our Words, our actions, and deeds. They had insulated us to our lonely monastaries, and our drive to excel above all others, perhaps even above the emperor, became a lead to be dragged by the neck to what should have been the gallows. We would not... could not accept reality, even after it beat us about the head. We had been Betrayed as much as our empire had been, But many of us still felt such self disgust at being even remotely connected to those.. those Tr.. aaitors. Some became silent and unmoving in their despondance, others Fled to far reaches of the stars, fearing death and censure for simply existing.

I could not Leave my brothers, I would not have survived the feeling of abandoning them. Not as I was Then. It was our Captain, Asterious Peregrin, who mobilized those of us who remained. WE had heard vox casts of a battle further out afield, on Istvaan V, The loyalists of our empire had banded together and were attacking there, and we could join in as support, our weapons were untouched and our ship fuelled to full, and we would scrub our name of the shame of failure.

The warp had other plans.

Becalmed again in the dimensional doldrums we could not push our ship no matter the force our engines put out, and time split off from our path and so the time we felt was a 10th of what passed. We once again Stepped in at the end, though this time we had come out when the ships were still present, Still dogfighting. Their were loyalist Naval officers flying their small craft and harrying the larger Swordships, buying precious seconds with every soul, just to allow those few survivors a chance to return to Terra, and bring word of what happened here to our emperor. There was warp signatures of great ships leaving away from this planet, with no way to know the loyalties of the astartes aboard.

There were other Ships, The hulks of which we could see burning up and sinking into the gravity well of istvaan V.

We only had one option ultimately, With barely a word our entire cadre was in motion, ready for war. By Order of Captain Asterious We set our sightson the Warmasters reserves, those he had left behind to finish those left on the planet, His brutality the only aspect that must not have been changed by the ruinous powers. The Wallflower unleashed salvo's of lazfire, filling the space with light and heat, decimating the shields and armor of their ships, and our vortex missiles hit their command tower before any reaction could be seen. Either they didn't see us coming or Believed by the color of our livery that we were therre to Aid in wiping-up the leftovers.

They were technically correct.

Our Storm Talons and other dropships, screamed into the upper atmosphere Scanning VOX channels and searching desperately for the lights of ongoing fire fights. Our Jump pack ready brethren dropped on Sons of Horus and World Eaters from the sky, taking them with surprise and silent ferocity then popping back to the sky to hop to the next spot, and our Medics were Running Triple Duty. The orders were, No Members of the ravens, the salamanders or the iron hands were to be left over if possible, no kin left behind. While the Wallflower lit the sky with the fires of falling traitor ships, our pilots flew without stop ferrying the few Survivors, the few who were able to be moved. There was little more than a few hundred

The traitors got no more mercy than a swift death.

I was one of those ordered to stay On the bridge, in order to martial and direct those on the ground as I had had the longest service record of those in our remaining forces. I am almost glad I did not have to witness those battlefields firsthand, the vox-comm gave enough detail. Evenn still I must admit, Being unable to properly remember the names, and not knowing who fell except by number... It eats at my soul and cuts deeper than any blade wound I have suffered these many millennia.

They deserve to be remembered no matter how the Inquisition rants about the importance of their censorship... Some things should not be allowed to be forgettable.

Unfortunately that appears to have been the curse our chapter gained, once it was finished making space setting aside the curse of pride. The curse of forgetfulness, and of being forgotten. Our colors are forgotten, our deeds are forgotten, our brothers fall and rise again, whole of body but amnestic of prior being. It is with these facts in mind and the cool feeling of death settling into my reactor that I feel we must begin a Chapter wide In-itia-Tive to consolidate and congregate our knowledge, Our teachings and our legends of our brotherzzz. We must not fall into the practice of pride, nor the pseudo-pride of false modesty. We will state the truth as seen and heard, not as felt, nor as feared. With this our chapter may yet not fall to stagnation. It may yet keep other chapters from falling to their flaws.

It may yet Atone us.

On the best of days we believe it can happen.