House Castus goes to war.

Artists, remembrancers, and nobles write poems, stories, and epics about wars. They describe the glories of melee combat, the skill of warriors that clash in masterful one-on-one combat. Two things they did not describe were the smell and the officers, reflected Jean Helena d’Orlean, Lieutenant of Chalcifer’s Planetary Defense Force, as she cleaned blood off the blade and teeth of her chainsword. Looking down from hilltop towards battlefield, as her men and the Imperial Guard reinforcements clashing with innumerable hordes of heretics, she wrinkled her nose in disgust. Not just at the putrid stench of war, the smell of death and defecation; of flesh burned by lasguns and flamers, of knives covered in oil to decrease their shine slipping into ribs. It was not just a smell that twisted her face with disgust; it was sound, the sound of laughter and raucous whooping from the tens of Imperial Guard officers that had summoned her to the hilltop.
They were dressed like no soldiers she had ever seen, instead of a uniform they were dressed in outfits more befitting the nobles of hive cities. Long white wigs covered in gold encrusted bows and extremely colorful and puffy coats with family crest sown into them. The only thing that marked them as soldiers were the exotic needle sniper rifles they cradled in their arms. They had laid out blankets with wine and strange exotic dishes and in between shots they engaged in polite conversation. Eyeing their guns she recalled that only half of her men had body armor.
She was torn from her thoughts by the slow always amused drawl of the general. Her blue eyes shone with barely contained rage as she studied him. His wig was half a foot high and encrusted with diamonds, his already pale face had been powdered and bleached until it was nearly transparent, and on his hands were rings worth more than her planets entire budget.
“You are the commander of the local barb- excuse me, most honorable and glorious defenders? By the Emperor you look almost like a proper noble, get rid of that awful uniform and replace it with some proper clothing and a gun and you’d be a proper human.” His face, locked in a permanent smirk grew wider as his eyes traveled up and down her frame.
She gave thanks to the cacophony of the battle below them that drowned out the sound of her teeth grinding together.
“Thank you for the compliment, Lord?”
“Ah! Excuse my poor manners I forgot to introduce myself; I am Lord Baron Herbert von Eingebildet, of the First Krasnova Musketeers.” He bowed to the hip, sweeping his gun to his back with one had while holding his wig with the other in a well-practiced movement.
“Lord Eingebildet, then, you wished to speak with me?”

He leisurely raised his gun, fired a salvo into the chaotic melee and turned back to her.
“Ah, yes at first I thought you would be one of those uneducated brutes that normally command local soldiers, I was going to tell you to ‘lead a glorious charge straight into the enemy’s ranks to do maximum damage. But now, seeing that you’re such a charming young lady, Miss Jean, I insist that you spend the rest of the battle here so I may teach you the proper way for real humans to wage war.”
“Thank you, My Lord, but I should be with my men. Now if you’ll excuse me.” She turned, drawing her chainsword and marching back toward her soldiers.
“Stop right, there Lieutenant! That is an order!” All the amusement had vanished leaving cold superiority in its place.
And that is how Jean Helena d’Orlean spent the battle standing alongside people she greatly desired to test her chainsword on. Hearing again and again how only sub-humans fought in close combat and how true humans understood the moral value of close combat.  Answering their benign, pointless questions; yes she had been educated, her father had spent most of his fortune that he had earned as a merchant educating his three children. It had mostly focused on religious lessons, math, and poetry, her father’s great love. The mention of poetry greatly excited them and she was forced to recite for them any and every poem she could recall. As she talked dark clouds obscured the sun, casting the battle into darkness, forcing the nobles to light an exuberant amount of candles.
After two hours of being a gaggle of nobles’ free entertainment, as her troops fought and died for their home, she could take no more. She steeled her spine and marched to the general intent on demanding to return to her command. As she reached him, the clouds opened up, spilling the light of the sun onto the field of combat.
Squinting into the newly revealed sun she could make out what caused this celestial event. At first it was little more than a black dot but as it approached it gained new meaning. It was a ship, barely, even to Jean’s inexperienced eyes it looked like it could shatter if she merely hit it with her sword. It was strangely wide and broad and even stranger, there did not appear to be any damage to it that would cause it to crash.
What she found strange, Eingebildet found hilarious; “Look at that! The damned traitors are so bloody incompetent they can’t even avoid crashing into the planet!” His men joined him in his laughter, the sound of their humor nearly drowning out the sound of war.  After their mirth died they returned to conversation and occasionally sniping the foe. Jean, however, did not look away; she swore that even though the gormless nobles had stopped she could still here laughter.  She was the only one who saw Gods enter the battlefield.
 Tearing through the very hull with powers words and chain axes, hulking flesh covered monsters stepped upon the soil of Chalcifer, screaming insane praises to their god. They stared at the picnicking nobles and charged, their legs eating up terrain as they howled with pleasure. At their head was a truly monstrous looking abomination, like its brethren its hide was patchwork. Some parts were organic, while others were clearly pieces of tank armor that had been hammered flat, and some were strange materials that Jean did not even recognize. What made this one truly monstrous was a massive swathe of red skin covered in blasphemous tattoos. Even from far away Jean could not look away and as she stared she could hear a voice urging her to unsheathe her chainsword and slaughter the nobles. Her salvation actually came from her irritating allies. The battle cries had alerted the nobles to the God-Machine’s presence and they responded with a hail of poisonous darts, which would have been deadly on any foe that was biological. Unfortunately for the nobles they did not fight creatures of flesh and blood; they fought something much stronger, much more terrifying.
In less than a minute the knights reached the nobles and the slaughter began. The previously idyllic hill covered in scattered blankets and food was now covered in the blood of nobles, and knights screaming over their speakers a monstrous chant: “Burn! Maim! Kill! Burn Maim Kill!”
Jean glanced down the hill, desperately hoping to see her comrades rushing to her aid, instead she saw their death. Astartes, clad in royal purple armor, had teleported into the fray of the combat and broken the first Imperial line, while the men fought on it was a doomed struggle and Jean knew it.
“Well now, this was unexpected to say the least. Ms. Jean, I propose that we make good our escape; if we run now I am positive that we can survive while they are distracted with my fellows.” The general broke the silence, tossing his gun to the ground.

Jean stared and said nothing, she simply stared at him. His wig was at a weird angle, his priceless rifle had been abandoned, and sweat was trickling down his faces taking the powder with it. He tugged at her shoulder trying to get her to move, she did not move. With a sigh he turned, it was then that she moved, with a glorious roar her blade separated the coward’s head from his neck sending it tumbling to the ground. She was no tech-priest able to interact with and interpret the will of machines but she swore that she felt a burst of satisfaction from her weapon. She spat on his head and turned back to the other nobles, or rather their corpses. None of them were left standing and she could do nothing but watch, as the monsters moved to assault the already crumbling lines, all of them but one. The leader was walking directly toward her. The speakers boomed out a woman’s voice, clear like a bell and as cold as ice.
“Your allies are dead, you’re subordinates have been slaughtered and you’re planet is doomed. You have two paths to survive; you may flee, I will let you go and you will tell others of what you saw today, or you may swear servitude to House Castus and live as one of my thralls.”
Jean did not respond with words, instead she raised her chainsword, its engines roaring with anticipation, and charged the Knight.  It reared back in surprise at this suicidal charge and Jean took full advantage of this. Dashing underneath the titan she slashed upwards at the joint of the monsters right leg. Her chainsword, still wet with coward’s blood broke in two, the knight jumped back and slashed at the PDF officer. Jean dodged the sword by a hairs breath and quickly created distance between her and her foe, her hand still clutching her useless weapon.
She stared at the knight waiting for it to destroy her, instead it stared at her in silence, and then the blasphemous knight broke the uneasy silence.
“My sincere apologies, I assumed you were as craven as the rest of your brethren, you are a true warrior, one worthy of Khorne’s respect. I rescind my previous offers, join me and I will elevate you to a knight and you will taste combat beyond your wildest dreams.
As Jean gazed upon her opponent she could only think of one thing, it was the one poem that she did not recite for the nobles. It was her favorite poem, when she joined the pdf she sown it into her uniform, she had lived her life by it, and now she would die by it.
Pointing her trembling sword at the enemy she began to recite it. At first her voice was quiet and solemn as she dug her heels into the soil of her home.
“Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored , and unsung.”
And then she charged screaming her defiance to the heavens themselves, the knight swung her sword and the world turned black.

Anatolia Tovarish and Teutates met on that hill, both covered in the blood of their enemies. Teutates noticed a new trophy on her knight directly on its head, unenhanced human skin. What human, pondered Teutates could earn such a distinction? Before he could ask Anatolia broke the silence.
“Teutates, if your loyalist brethren are as half as fantastic as the soldiers of this planet, then our wars will be greater then you or I can possibly imagine.”

With that she departed to a ship, waiting to carrier House Castus to new battlefields and as she left unseen to all, a horrifying grin covered Teutates’s face.