The Healing Brotherhood

The cold veil of realspace was abruptly torn open. As the roar of Warp Engines faded, the vast Imperial Fleet slid into the frigid void of the material universe, one ship after another, like immense beasts surfacing from the depths of a nightmare.

Starlight once again shone steadily upon their armor, but this long-awaited return to "normality" brought no peace.

Directly ahead of the fleet, the Star Cluster that should have belonged to humanity was now permeated by a chill that made the soul tremble.

The enemy was already clearly visible to Lorgar and Angron, both through their sensor arrays and their powerful senses.

Their opponents were terrifying remnants of the Dark Age of Technology, malignant growths that had twisted into being amid the ruins of that golden age of humanity.

In the Imperium's most classified records, they were designated the "Healing Brotherhood."

On the surface, they had constructed a flawless disguise for themselves: a beacon that had rekindled the torch of civilization after the Dark Age of Technology, a model utopia of perfect order, advanced technology, and exalted morality.

They preached renewal, order, and transcendence to the worlds they happened to encounter, displaying technological achievements that could shake even the most stubborn Imperial Tech-Priest.

Yet beneath that gleaming facade lay utterly inhuman practices, vile enough to turn the stomach of even the most coldhearted Imperial officer.

The so-called "Healing Brotherhood" was, at its core, a totalitarian state composed of scientific madmen who had utterly abandoned the most basic limits of human decency.

They were not the rebuilders of civilization, but its cancer cells, surviving by devouring and twisting other human communities.

With technology far beyond their era, they had systematically annexed every human world in the surrounding Star Cluster that had yet to return to the Emperor's light.

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