Lord Gnawdwell, Warlord of Clan Mors, stood resplendent in crimson warpstone-powered plate, a heavy power-claw gritting against the hilt of his power-sword. As the leader of the most martially aggressive clan in the Under-Empire, Gnawdwell spearheaded the assault. Alongside him marched the Right Claw of Mors, Queek Headtaker, leading his infamous Crimson Guard as they breached the spire-palace of the former Planetary Governor.
After the Governor had fled with his remaining retainers into the lightless void of the Imperium Nihilus, the palace had predictably become the inner sanctum of the Genestealer Patriarch. Now, it was a fortress garrisoned by a nightmare host of first- and second-generation hybrids, hulking Aberrants, and bloated Abominants.
"Protect the Father-Source!" the Aberrants bellowed in their sibilant, guttural tongue, swinging heavy power-hammers and industrial picks to intercept the verminous tide.
"Go! Push-throw the trash up there! Move-move!" Queek shrieked with characteristic mania. In the legends of the World-That-Was, Queek had been known as a reckless berserker, and in this millennium, he remained a whirlwind of savage violence. Yet, he was still a Skaven; his "bravery" was strictly measured by the number of bodies between him and the enemy.
At Queek's command, wave after wave of Clanrats, armed with warp-rifles resembling crude, elongated Mosin-Nagants, charged into the fray. Emerald tracer fire lit the halls. Though the Aberrants pulverized hundreds of rats with every swing, the Skaven numbers were an inexorable tide.
The fortress-palace's reinforced galleries began to crumble as Clan Moulder Packmasters arrived with their Stormfiends. These bio-mechanical monstrosities leveled their integrated Windlaunchers, their beady eyes fixed on the hybrid snipers above.
"Smash! Break them! YES-YES!" a Packmaster screamed from atop a Rat Ogre nicknamed "Bonebreaker."
Dozens of Poison Wind globes arched into the defensive platforms. They did not explode; instead, with the delicate sound of shattering glass, they released thick, billowing clouds of viridian vapor. The Poison Wind, refined from ground warpstone, acted as a horrific corrosive; any hybrid who inhaled the mist was reduced to a puddle of genetic slurry within seconds.
The final breach was not made by heavy artillery, but by Warp-Grinder weapon teams. Using glowing, emerald-tipped drills, the Skaven bored jagged rents into the "impenetrable" palace walls. Through these apertures, the vermin poured in from every vector.
Every clan knew the palace held the planet's greatest concentration of wealth. Driven by an insatiable lust for loot, they surged forward, heedless of casualties.
Meanwhile, Gnawdwell and the Mors Stormvermin engaged the Patriarch's Inner Circle. As a rare visionary among his treacherous race, Gnawdwell understood that the greatest treasure in this palace was the Patriarch itself, a specimen of immense value to the Great Horned Rat.
"Vermin... you dare seek death?" the Patriarch hissed. Its massive, six-meter-tall frame loomed over the Skaven, its telepathic voice booming like a physical blow.
"Trophy, loot! This belongs to Mors! Yes-yes!" Gnawdwell chittered with a thief's grin. He raised a clawed hand. "Let the Bell toll! Thirteen times! The Great Horned Rat walks among us!"
The Crimson Guard, hundreds of Stormvermin in blood-red plate wielding warp-halberds, hurled themselves forward. They used tens of thousands of Slave-rats as meat-shields, firing arcs of warp-lightning from their polearms while the Patriarch's claws, capable of rending terminator plate, tore through the Skaven armor with sickening ease.
Gnawdwell remained unperturbed. The beast was merely in its death throes. Several Warp-lightning Cannons focused their beams from the rear, sniping the Patriarch and punching jagged, glowing green holes through its thick chitin. Gnawdwell and Queek would not risk their own hides until the monster was spent.
Finally, as the Patriarch grew sluggish from the sheer slaughter of millions of rats, and even its elite hybrids began to fall under the weight of the swarm, the cult played its final card. Several Neurothropes, the "brain-spawn" of the cult, channeled the collective psychic will of every hybrid on the planet into the Patriarch.
The air thrummed with bio-electric power. A massive psychic discharge turned the nearest Skaven into charred husks. Terror, the natural state of the Skaven, began to take hold. Despite the whips of their masters, the rats began to recoil from the radiant, predatory god-thing before them.
Just as Gnawdwell began to consider which rival clan he could sacrifice to cover his own retreat, a colossal psychic shadow fell over the palace.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Like overheated kernels, the heads of the Neurothropes and Astropaths exploded one by one. Their grey matter did not hit the floor as gore; instead, it transformed mid-air into squealing white rats that scurried into the shadows.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The rhythmic sound of a wooden staff striking the alloy floor echoed through the silence. From the sea of cowering rats, a man draped in black robes emerged, leaning on a crook of rat-hide.
"You have revealed yourself, vermin-master," the Patriarch spat, its alien face twisting.
"You have failed, insect," Lucius said, raising his staff. "Submit to the judgment of the Great Horned Rat."
With a defiant roar, the Patriarch lunged with all four primary limbs. Lucius simply flicked his staff. A terrifying surge of warp-energy instantly sheared the creature's arms from its torso. He raised his hand, and with a resounding thoom, the Purestrain Patriarch was crushed as if by an invisible Titan's foot, reduced to a splatter of acidic ichor and shattered chitin.
With the Patriarch's death, the psychic veil over the world shattered. The millions of Genestealer cultists who had fought for "family" and "kin" were suddenly ripped from their delusion. They looked down to see that the "blessed children" they held were multi-limbed nightmares. Their "beloved relatives" were chitinous, four-armed abominations. The collective scream of a world's worth of people realizing the horror they had wrought broke the back of the resistance.
The Skaven did not care for their existential crisis. Spurred on by the blades and bullets of their Warlords, they swarmed over the broken, weeping cultists.
Thirteen Terran hours had passed since the final assault began. Atop the cloud-piercing apex of Hive Zavka, the ancient Imperial Aquila had been torn down. In its place stood a massive, jagged Great Bell.
Over the next thirteen Terran days, the remaining resistance cells, Chaos cultists, and bandits in the wastes were swallowed by the furred tide. On this obscure mining world in the Segmentum Obscurus, the Skaven had not just survived, they had established a foothold.
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