Chapter Summaries

Izkara lost contact with Grendel as the Claws of the Stars fleet arrived and broke the Anti-Huron Alliance. He turned his escape ritual into a teleportation strike against Hurun, only to land in a hall surrounded by Terminators and face Rugert Huron.

• Izkara failed to reach Grendel and dismissed the Emperor's Children leader's demands for Iron Warriors fire support.
• The Claws of the Stars fleet arrived in overwhelming numbers, prompting the Emperor's Children and Death Guard to flee as the alliance collapsed.
• Izkara redirected his Warp ritual to teleport himself and his Rubric guard to the Claws of the Stars flagship and attack Hurun.
• Izkara materialized in a strategic hall surrounded by a hundred First Company Terminators, with Rugert Huron waiting in the command throne.
• Rugert Huron welcomed Izkara and prepared to fight.

Akash and the Executioners defeated Grendel and the Iron Warriors aboard a Chaos warship, while the Death Seekers’ mortal soldiers proved their skill in battle. Akash rewarded them with Badab Savior medals and celebrated their victory with a trophy mound and a group photograph.

• Akash pulled his axe from Grendel’s chest and surveyed the corridor after the battle, noting that the Death Seekers had killed several Iron Warriors Terminators with heavy weapons and explosives.
• Akash told the Death Seekers that their mission was complete and relayed Hurun’s thanks for their role in the loyalist victory.
• Akash announced that every participating Death Seeker would receive a Badab Savior medal and have their name recorded in the Claws of the Stars’ roll of honour.
• The Death Seekers celebrated the medal as a limited-edition reward, while Akash smiled at their enthusiasm.
• At Akash’s command, the Executioners made a mound of severed Iron Warriors heads and helmets, then gathered with the Death Seekers for a photograph.

Admiral Quarren led an Imperial Navy fleet toward the Plague Claw, a Death Guard cruiser spreading plague through the Usward Sector, and relied on the Death Seekers regiment as a possible rear guard. As the fleet entered the corrupted region, most of its crew fell ill, but the Death Seekers remained nearly unaffected, so Quarren ordered them prepared for immediate deployment.

• Quarren learned that the fleet was twenty minutes from effective firing range of the Plague Claw and considered using the Death Seekers to cover a retreat if the enemy proved too strong.
• The fleet entered yellow-green clouds that disrupted its Auspex readings and spread a deadly plague through the ships, sickening Quarren and many crew members.
• Quarren ordered the fleet to count its combat-ready personnel, activate medical decks, and raise quarantine protocols.
• The report showed that most critical personnel could still operate the fleet, while the Death Seekers had stable vital signs and only mild symptoms.
• Quarren accepted the adjutant's suggestion that the regiment's faith might protect it and ordered the Death Seekers to prepare for immediate deployment.

Typhus’s Death Guard boarded Imperial ships, expecting the toxic plague to break the defenders, but the Death Seekers fought back with startling discipline and disregard for pain. The Death Guard began studying their unusual resistance as a Heavy Autogun opened fire on them at close range.

• Typhus ordered the Death Guard to board and destroy the Imperial ships covering the main fleet’s retreat.
• The plague warriors entered corridors filled with toxic mist and encountered organized resistance from the Death Seekers.
• The Death Seekers continued fighting despite casualties, lung-dissolving poison, and weapons that barely damaged the Death Guard.
• A Death Guard severed a Death Seeker and offered him Nurgle’s blessings, but the player cursed and rejected him.
• The Death Seekers fired a Heavy Autogun through the corridor, blasting their captured comrade apart while the Death Guard remained standing.

The Death Guard tried to break a company of Death Seekers with reanimated corpses and toxic fog, but the veterans endured for ten hours while treating the attack as a chance to farm Merit Points. After the Death Guard overwhelmed them, their champion admired the last survivor’s defiance and decided to report to Lord Typhus that the mortals should be turned into followers of Nurgle.

• The Death Guard sent shambling zombies made from dead crewmen and Death Seekers toward the trapped defenders, but the Death Seekers waited until the kill zone to open fire.
• The Death Guard flooded the dead end with toxic fog and wave after wave of zombies, while the Death Seekers held their position for ten hours and the players celebrated earning Merit Points.
• The Death Guard attacked the position themselves, quickly killing the defenders until only one wounded Death Seeker remained alive.
• The Death Guard champion offered to revive the fallen and free the survivor from pain if he joined Nurgle, but the Death Seeker detonated a bundle of modified grenades and blew off the champion’s right arm.
• The champion stopped his warriors from slaughtering the remaining mortals and ordered them to report their resilience to Lord Typhus, saying they should be inducted into Nurgle’s ranks.

Typhus decided to capture the Death Seekers and personally convert them into servants of Nurgle, prompting the Death Guard fleet to abandon its attack on the rest of the Imperial Navy. The surviving Imperial fleet escaped and triggered widespread war preparations across the sector.

• A wounded Death Guard warrior reported the Death Seekers’ extraordinary toughness and combat performance to Typhus.
• Typhus decided the Death Seekers would make valuable mortal auxiliaries and ordered his fleet to capture them alive for a personal baptism.
• The Death Guard redirected its attack toward the warships carrying the Death Seekers, allowing most of the Imperial fleet to escape.
• Admiral Quarren ordered the Imperial ships to break contact and make an emergency Warp jump.
• The retreating fleet spread news of the Death Guard invasion, prompting the sector to mobilize for war and the fleet to regroup and plan its defenses.

Typhus tried to convert the captured Death Seekers to Nurgle by infecting them with living rot, but one player broke down and disconnected rather than endure the infestation. The remaining players recoiled from Typhus’s offer, and one joked that he would rather wait for Guilliman to lead them into Nurgle’s Garden.

• Typhus ordered his Death Guard to wake the paralyzed Death Seekers and preached to them about joining Nurgle.
• A player claimed he wanted to convert and asked Typhus to remove the paralytic toxin, so Typhus infected him with a chunk of living, rotten flesh.
• The infected player felt worms spread through his body, panicked, and disconnected; his body rotted into a heap of maggots.
• Typhus told the other captives that the worms would become their symbiotic family, horrifying the immobilized players.
• One player teased a companion about joining Nurgle, but the companion said he would rather wait for Guilliman to lead them into the Garden.

Typhus had seven Nurgle sorcerers corrupt the captured players, but their bodies changed while their minds remained defiant. After the transformed players attacked or killed themselves, Typhus demanded that the sorcerers explain why the ritual had failed to claim their souls.

• Typhus offered the bound players one last chance to join Nurgle, but they answered with insults and refusal.
• Typhus ordered seven Nurgle sorcerers to perform a corruption ritual, transforming the players into plague warriors.
• When their restraints vanished, one player lunged at Typhus with grenades while the others attacked Death Guard or killed themselves.
• Typhus's Destroyer Hive devoured the resisting players, leaving the deck strewn with bones and debris.
• The sorcerers debated why the players retained their consciousness, and Typhus demanded a solution to the problem.

Typhus concluded that the Death Seekers were linked to a powerful Planetary Soul and ordered the Death Guard to stop taking prisoners and keep attacking. Trapped aboard an Imperium cruiser, the remaining players prepared to countercharge the Death Guard while others readied the reactor to overload if they fell.

• A sorcerer proposed that the Death Seekers' unusual bodies and souls were controlled by their world's Planetary Soul, and Typhus accepted the theory as a reason to corrupt their homeworld.
• Typhus ordered the Death Guard fleet to continue its assault, abandon attempts to capture prisoners, and test the mortals' limits.
• The surviving Death Seekers retreated into the cruiser's engine room, where their commander suggested overloading the reactor as a final resort.
• A player urged the trapped group to launch a stimulant-fueled countercharge against the Death Guard gathered outside the blast doors to earn merit points and buy time.
• The commander approved the countercharge, ordered the remaining players to stand by the reactor, and watched the assault squad inject combat stimulants.

The players launched a drug-fueled suicide charge that briefly drove back the Death Guard, but poisonous fog and Bolter fire wiped out the assault team. With the engine room about to fall, the remaining players overloaded the cruiser’s plasma engine and destroyed the ship, ending their battle.

• The Death Seekers charged through the broken blast door and carved a path through the Nurgle zombies toward the Death Guard.
• A player detonated Frag Grenades against a Plague Marine, and the squad commander ordered his warriors to retreat and regroup.
• The Death Guard filled the corridors with poisonous fog and fired on the surviving players, wiping out the assault team.
• The engine room commander ordered the remaining players to overload the plasma engine as the zombies breached the final barricade.
• The cruiser exploded in space, killing the remaining players and ending the group’s battle.

Typhus abandoned his plague campaign and redirected the Plague Fleet toward Pedetia, hoping to recruit its Death Seekers while undermining Abaddon's plans. The fleet arrived at the system's edge, where the players at Watcher-7 spotted it and raised the alarm.

• Typhus ordered the Plague Fleet to head for Pedetia and recruit its inhabitants, despite a Death Guard commander's objection that their plague campaign would be cut short.
• The Death Guard recognized that Typhus's retreat would leave the sector's defenses intact and make Abaddon's planned assault on Cadia more difficult.
• At Watcher-7, bored Death Seeker players detected a huge fleet emerging from the Warp at the system's Mandeville Point.
• The Watcher-7 captain ordered a Level One combat alert and told the players to post on the forums and call everyone back.

Robert, Archer, and Joker learned that a massive Death Guard fleet led by Typhus’s flagship, the Terminus Est, was heading for Pedetia. Cato Sicarius joined their bewilderment as the chapter ended with the planet facing an unexplained, overwhelming threat.

• Sicarius praised Pedetia’s cooperative industrial production, and Robert credited its culture of survival.
• Robert abruptly summoned Archer and Joker to the Governor’s Mansion and brought Sicarius with him, warning that Pedetia might not survive the day.
• Archer and Joker joined Robert in expressing shock, prompting Sicarius to demand an explanation.
• Robert revealed that a Plague Fleet was heading straight for Pedetia, led by the Terminus Est.
• Sicarius recognized Typhus’s flagship and realized the Death Guard’s main force was coming, but none of them could explain why.

Robert organized Pedetia’s defenses against Typhus’s approaching Plague Fleet, securing Ultramarines support and seeking unlikely allies. He then suspected Tech-Priest Redito’s mysterious Relic had drawn the enemy and ordered Archer to investigate.

• Robert rallied Joker and Archer to mobilize reservists, raise Planetary Defense Force troops, and put Pedetia’s factories and mines into emergency production.
• Cato Sicarius pledged himself and the Ultramarines Second Company to defend Pedetia and contact Marneus Calgar for aid.
• Robert told Joker to seek a temporary alliance with the Orks and investigate whether Tzeentch Daemons might oppose the Plague Fleet.
• Robert ordered Archer to deploy the Martyrs Chapter immediately, despite concerns about the risks to its Adeptus Astartes players.
• Robert recalled that Redito had once mentioned protecting a Relic and suspected it might have attracted Typhus, so he told Archer to question Redito urgently.

Joker met the Ork boss and warned him that a terrifying green foe was coming to destroy Pedetia, persuading the Orks to prepare for war. The Death Seekers left, while the Orks roared that they were the greenest and most terrifying.

• The Ork boss prepared to fight the Death Seekers, but learned their boss had come to meet him.
• The Ork boss challenged Joker to a duel, and Joker said there might never be another war between them because a greater threat was coming.
• Joker warned that the approaching foe was green, and the Ork boss angrily insisted that no one was greener than the Orks.
• Joker left in his Chimera and explained that the Orks would attack the Plague Legion to prove their superiority.
• The Ork boss rallied thousands of Orks to declare themselves the biggest, most terrifying, and greenest.

Archer learned that Redito’s Relic was an STC that produced a Warp-mutating drug, then brought it to Robert, who saw it as a way to create Chaos-corrupted soldiers to fight the Death Guard. The chapter ended with Robert and Archer wondering whether the suspiciously convenient discovery was truly a coincidence.

• Archer asked Redito about the Relic, and Redito revealed it was an STC that produced a drug called Panacea, which transformed test subjects into Chaos Spawn.
• Redito gave Archer the sealed STC and revealed that its production line remained hidden in the Holy Trinity Manufactorum.
• Archer reported the STC’s dangers to Robert and proposed destroying it, but Robert ordered him to restart the production line.
• Robert showed Archer a player’s forum post about surviving severe Chaos corruption and proposed using the STC to create a Chaos-corrupted Death Seekers Legion.
• Archer and Robert noticed how conveniently the forum post and STC had come together, then questioned whether the coincidence had been arranged.

Archer tested whether a Death Seeker could retain his consciousness after transforming into a Chaos Spawn through Panacea. The Death Seeker’s account suggested that, with training, the unstable form could become a devastating battlefield weapon, though only for about an hour.

• A Death Seeker injected himself with Panacea and transformed into a Chaos Spawn covered in tentacles and pores.
• When Archer spoke to him, the Chaos Spawn lost control, attacked the blastproof glass, and then disintegrated as its Warp energy became unstable.
• The Death Seeker re-formed beside Archer and explained that he had retained his consciousness but could not coordinate the creature’s many limbs.
• He warned that the form’s sensory overload could traumatize ordinary players and estimated that it would last only a little over an hour before the Warp energy overwhelmed him.
• The Death Seeker claimed that, during that hour, he could defeat more than a thousand Astra Militarum soldiers or flatten a fortified position, and Archer told him to write a detailed report for the encrypted forum.

Typhus’s forces repeatedly landed on Pedetia only to be destroyed by nuclear bombs, until the Death Seekers left them a foothold in a canyon corridor leading toward the hive city. Suspecting a trap, Typhus ordered the ground inspected and prepared the fleet’s interception systems before sending in the First Company.

• Typhus ordered basic Nurgle forces to land on Pedetia, where the first landing zones were destroyed by nuclear bombs.
• Typhus redirected successive waves to other landing zones, and the Death Seekers detonated more tactical nuclear bombs against them.
• Typhus continued down the landing-zone list until Nurgle forces established a foothold in a jagged canyon north of the hive city.
• Typhus recognized the canyon route as an obvious trap but ordered his troops to inspect the ground and the fleet to prepare interception measures.
• Typhus ordered the First Company's warriors to land once the area was confirmed safe.

The Death Guard First Company landed on Pedetia and began facing a heavy bombardment, while their Plague Fleet launched aircraft to strike back. Death Seeker pilots discovered planet-wide buffs and charged into battle, determined to defend Pedetia.

• The Death Guard First Company landed in a canyon and confirmed that no buried nuclear weapons threatened them.
• The Death Guard leader planned to raise Plague Zombies, but Death Seekers opened a heavy artillery barrage on the landing zone.
• The Plague Fleet sent bombers and Plague Drones toward Pedetia to destroy the artillery positions.
• Death Seeker pilots launched Lightning fighters to intercept the Nurgle aircraft and discovered powerful global buffs supporting Pedetia.
• The pilots read how Pedetia’s people had placed their hopes in the Death Seekers, then attacked the Nurgle swarm.

The Death Seekers used the [Defend Pedetia] reconnaissance bonus to spot Death Guard hiding behind a hill in toxic fog and bombard their position. The Death Guard leader abandoned his plan to build a larger horde and ordered an attack on the mortal defenses.

• The Death Seekers' commander discovered that his binoculars revealed enemy outlines through the fog, but his first ranging shot struck a hidden hill.
• The commander corrected the artillery coordinates, and the Death Seekers began landing precise shells on the Death Guard's position beyond the ridge.
• The bombardment scattered the newly risen zombies and staggered a Death Guard in Terminator Armour.
• The Death Guard leader realized the artillery had exposed their position and ordered the walking corpses and his warriors to advance.

The Death Seekers’ inexperienced recruits opened fire too early as a corpse horde approached, allowing the Death Guard to kill their company commander and surround the fortress. After the commander respawned and led a counterattack, the Death Guard vanished, and the battlefront erupted into full-scale war.

• The company commander tried to keep the recruits from firing until the corpse horde came closer, but exploding bloated zombies startled them into wasting ammunition with chaotic fire.
• A Death Guard leader ordered a decapitation strike, and a bolter shell killed the company commander as the Death Guard advanced behind the corpse horde.
• The Squad Leaders and platoon leaders rallied the recruits and withdrew them in order into the fortress’s narrow passage, where they held off the zombies.
• After respawning, the company commander returned with fallen Death Seekers and led an attack that broke through the corpse horde and reunited the forces.
• The company commander discovered that the Death Guard had disappeared into the toxic fog, then saw explosions and gunfire spreading across the battlefront as the full-scale war began.