The Genestealer Patriarch, a huge, agile four-clawed beast, was creeping through the ducts and corners of the Flame, searching for any potential victims.
The Patriarch was, honestly, pretty handsome, but the old lore was hard to put into words.
It was feeling deeply melancholy. More than a century of effort and management had been ruined in a single daemonic invasion. The deckhands on the lower levels had originally been infiltrated so thoroughly that nearly over half were infected Genestealers. Even until their deaths, those infected fools had no idea that they had given their devotion and trust to the great hive mind. Instead, they believed they worshipped something called the Four-Armed Emperor.
From its perspective, though, this Four-Armed Emperor faith had been quite useful. Every human it controlled and infected was loyal to the death, constantly invoking the God-Emperor. The soldiers who came to patrol and inspect had never suspected a thing. Not even when the Emperor's holy image somehow grew two extra arms did they become particularly wary.
After all, the Ecclesiarchy only required that you believe in the Emperor. It never specified how you had to believe in the Emperor. Thus, throughout the Imperium, one could always find all kinds of colorful rituals depicting the Emperor while incorporating heavy local ethnic and planetary styles.
Yet that same fanatical faith had also spiraled out of control when the daemons invaded. The Patriarch watched helplessly as those daemons smashed through the doors and rushed in, their greedy, bloodthirsty eyes fixed on its followers. Ordinary deckhands and residents would have either turned and fled at the sight of such terrifying daemons or been too scared to move. But these Four-Armed Emperor believers were different. Shouting, "For the Four-Armed Emperor!" they charged forward, leaving the Patriarch staring after them in bewilderment.
Holding