"A pale giant god and an old man with wondrous knowledge are leading humanity in a slaughter of monsters."
The news spread like invisible spores given wings, piercing the sickly green toxic fog that shrouded Barbarus year-round. At an unbelievable speed, it reached every lowland, every gorge, and every mortal settlement surrounded by poisonous swamps on that despairing planet.
At first, people did not believe it. Throughout Barbarus's long, dark history, resistance had often meant the cruelest of deaths. But when the survivors healed by the old doctor and the warriors who had witnessed Mortarion behead xenos lords returned to their villages with captured xenos weapons and jars of clear antidote, fervent hope shattered their doubts.
Countless refugees crushed by oppression, exiles, and mortals clinging to life in the deepest underground burrows began bringing their families toward the camp of legend.
The rebel army grew exponentially, swelling rapidly from a few thousand to tens of thousands. Under the old doctor's planning, the once crude camp quickly expanded into a fledgling steel fortress. Towering walls were erected to keep out the poison, while rough but efficient ventilation systems roared day and night, feeding filtered, clean air into the camp. Huge chemical furnaces burned around the clock. Mortals hauled materials back from the ruins of xenos fortresses, cartload after cartload, and threw them into the furnaces, turning them into molten steel for weapons and armor.
Among this enormous influx of recruits, the arrival of one force drew particular attention.
It was an armed force nearly a thousand strong. Unlike the scattered refugees, every member of this group looked exceptionally tough. Their clothes were just as ragged, but they wore crude yet effective armor pieced together from xenos carapaces and metal scraps. Their weapons were far superior to the hastily sharpened iron pipes