Welcome to Tenerum

Colchis System III

The Death World of Tenerum

At the heart of this system, a dark red star hung high in the sky, casting thin, cold light over the cursed land.

This was Tenerum, an inferno recorded by the Imperium as a Death World.

Jagged rock spires and bottomless rifts covered its surface. The air reeked of sulphur and ozone, and low, unsettling growls drifted from the distance now and then, as though the planet itself were a vast, living creature filled with malice.

A Thunderhawk Gunship bearing the insignia of the Seventeenth Legion, the Word Bearers, hovered like a vulture beneath the murky yellow sky.

Its engines roared like thunder, whipping dust and gravel from the ground—the only discordant, artificial noise in this deathly still world.

The gunship's belly hatch stood open, and an icy gale rushed inside.

At the hatch stood a giant of steel who seemed to have stepped out of myth.

He was Lomanheim, the Holy Word Overseer responsible for training recruits. He wore ancient Mark II Expeditionary Power Armour, its dark grey plates covered in fine scratches and bullet craters that silently spoke of his long years on the battlefield.

The Word Bearers' insignia stood out on his pauldrons, while the skull denoting his rank as overseer was stamped into the centre of his breastplate, symbolising his unwavering loyalty to the Imperial Truth and his duty to defend it.

He wore no helmet, revealing a weathered, angular face. His short, grey-white hair stood up like steel needles, and his deep-set eyes, sharp as a hawk's, surveyed the recruits before him who were about to face their final trial.

Nearly a hundred trainees stood in orderly ranks before him.

They wore neatly arranged field training uniforms, but beside their mentor's battle-weathered face, they looked new and