155 People in Position

Baal

"What? Did you sense something?"

The gaunt primarch slowly rose to his feet. Blood-dry, fine sand ran between Mortarion's hanging fingers.

The arid, barren Baal had never been suited for cultivation, and that fact had not changed in ten thousand years.

A hundred meters before Mortarion, beneath the blazing sun, Guilliman was negotiating with Baal's personnel. The Imperial Regent's crimson cloak fluttered in the wind, while glimmering specks of starlight gathered around him, nearly dazing the mortals and Space Marines who approached. They instinctively wanted to kneel before Guilliman and submit to him.

Behind Guilliman, who shone like an unsetting sun, stood the other two, dark and twisted as they huddled in the shadows of the towering buildings.

Hades and Mortarion had unanimously decided to send Guilliman to handle diplomacy, for no particular reason.

People did not wish to approach them either. The Pale Lord resembled a skeletal monstrosity clawed from a grave, while the Underking radiated an aura that made him impossible to look at directly.

"Hard... to describe?"

Hades pondered for a moment, still crouching as he poked at the sand with his hand.

The instant he entered Baal's atmosphere, Hades had immediately begun surveying it with the Null Field.

He had never seen such a strange Psychic Power field.

Baal's crust was almost entirely covered in golden Faith Power. Pure, dazzling light wrapped every gap as tightly as an eggshell, and for a time Hades could see nothing but gold.

This Faith Power came from the church complexes across Baal's surface. Psychic Power, fine as capillaries, emerged beneath every believer's feet before pouring into Baal and coating this vast eggshell in thick gold.

After his preliminary scan, Hades gathered the Null Field, drawing in the boundless, wasteland-sparse field before condensing it into a long spike and