Lox had once looked into the so-called Butcher's Nails. This blasphemous technology, inherited from the Dark Age of Technology, had once been used as brain-machine interface components for the Stone Men. Under certain circumstances, the Stone Men would replace compatible parts to help them wield their strength with greater sensitivity.
But the madmen of Nuceria had utterly twisted its purpose. To satisfy their perverse desires and preserve their rule, they chose to implant this technological creation into human brains.
Over the long years of the Age of Strife, the Nucerians had turned their intelligence toward a wicked path.
Countless clever minds continuously enhanced its destructive power and aggressiveness, gradually creating the vile invention known as the Butcher's Nails.
Lox simply could not understand how humanity had ever conceived of driving such a cursed thing into the brains of its own kind.
Throughout the long Age of Darkness, countless planets cut off by Warp storms had suffered civilizational regression and technological loss. Worlds like Nuceria, which descended into madness and chaos, were far from rare.
When completely severed from the outside world, left isolated and helpless, law crumbled, morality vanished, and the malice buried deep within human nature began to take the high ground.
"I once met Locke, commander of the Twelfth Legion. He was within a Contemptor Dreadnought at the time and was captured by us during a battle," Lox said.
When the name "Locke" left his mouth, the pupils of this War Hound who had served for centuries suddenly contracted, as though he had heard something wholly unexpected.
"I know you are loyal to the Emperor and hate traitors beyond measure. But Locke was different. Though he was among the World Eaters, he still did everything in his power to save that glorious Legion from its fall."
The Broken