Chapter Summaries

Calas Typhon joined Mortarion’s rebellion with nearly a thousand warriors and became one of Mortarion’s most trusted commanders. Though Mortarion welcomed him as a brother, Typhon privately despised the old doctor, Mentor, and entered Mortarion’s headquarters after a victorious battle.

• News of Mortarion’s victories and the camp’s antidote drew refugees to the rebellion, which grew into a fortified army.
• Calas Typhon arrived with 952 experienced warriors and pledged to fight the Tyrant alongside Mortarion.
• Typhon proved his worth in battle, winning the soldiers’ respect and earning Mortarion’s trust and command of part of the army.
• Typhon secretly held Mentor in contempt despite Mortarion’s confidence in him.
• After a battle, Typhon carried a bowl of soup into Mortarion’s headquarters.

Typhon urged Mortarion to use forbidden sorcery against Gethsalam, but Mortarion rejected him and threatened to purge him if he practiced it. Typhon secretly vowed to sacrifice the old doctor, who later left camp alone to search an unexplored eastern swamp.

• Typhon pressed Mortarion to abandon the old doctor's experiments and use ancient sorcery to defeat Gethsalam.
• The old doctor silently watched Typhon, and Mortarion warned Typhon that any further use of spells would lead him to purge their ranks.
• Typhon concealed his hatred, left the command post, and vowed to prepare a sacrifice to rid himself of the old doctor.
• A few days later, the old doctor left camp alone to search the eastern swampland for corrosion-resistant plants.

The old doctor confronted Calas Typhon in the Wailing Swamp and revealed that he knew Typhon’s secret devotion to Nurgle. Typhon summoned a Great Unclean One, which attacked the old doctor as the chapter ended.

• The old doctor waited in a clearing in the Wailing Swamp and called out to Typhon, who had secretly followed him.
• Typhon confronted the old doctor with a foul scythe, but the old doctor mocked his stench and named Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Khorne.
• The old doctor exposed Typhon’s hidden altar and nightly prayers to Nurgle, leaving Typhon shocked and furious.
• Typhon prayed to the Plague Father and summoned a Great Unclean One into the material world.
• Typhon ordered the daemon to kill the old doctor, and the Great Unclean One lunged at him.

Mortarion arrived in time to save the old doctor and killed the Great Unclean One with his common-steel War Scythe. He then turned on Calas Typhon, who attacked him in desperation, leaving their fight unresolved.

• Mortarion landed between the Great Unclean One and the old doctor, confronting Typhon over his betrayal.
• Typhon claimed he had turned to the Plague Father’s power to liberate Barbarus and ordered the daemon to kill Mortarion and the doctor.
• Mortarion severed the Great Unclean One’s hand and beheaded it with his War Scythe, sending the daemon back to the Warp.
• Mortarion approached Typhon, who blamed him and charged with his Plague Scythe.
• Mortarion watched coldly as Typhon’s scythe struck his own with a clang.

Mortarion defeated and executed Typhon, then found resolve in Old Doctor’s counsel about resisting corrupting power and holding to principle. Years of technological and tactical growth followed, leaving Mortarion ready to lead the final assault on High Lord Nakare.

• Mortarion overpowered Typhon, disarmed him, and killed him after rejecting his pleas for mercy.
• Old Doctor comforted Mortarion and warned him that borrowing the devil’s power meant surrendering his soul.
• Mortarion accepted Old Doctor’s guidance and became a more mature, principled commander.
• Old Doctor and Mortarion led the resistance through years of growth, equipping it with acid sprayers, advanced breathing systems, and floating gun platforms.
• Mortarion prepared to lead fifty thousand Death Guard in an assault on High Lord Nakare at Barbarus’s highest peak.

Mortarion led the Death Guard up Barbarus’s poison-shrouded mountain and killed Nakare, freeing the lowlands. After victory, he found that the Old Doctor had vanished, leaving him a science notebook and a farewell letter.

• The Old Doctor stayed behind as Mortarion led the Death Guard toward Nakare’s fortress, urging him to face the past and build a new future.
• The Death Guard overcame Nakare’s poison, necromancy, and fear magic using the Old Doctor’s knowledge and their preparations.
• Mortarion defeated Nakare with his war scythe and liberated Barbarus.
• Mortarion returned to the camp to share the victory with the Old Doctor but found his shack empty.
• Mortarion discovered the Old Doctor’s notebook and farewell letter, then searched the celebrating crowd for his vanished mentor.

Alpharius infiltrated the Imperial Palace archives as a low-ranking scribe to test the loyalty and decency of Terra’s bureaucrats, but Eli’s unselfish kindness challenged his assumptions. After Eli took a whipping for Alpharius’s deliberate copying errors, Alpharius was left to reconsider his belief that kindness always had a hidden motive.

• Alpharius disguised himself as a mortal scribe named Alf and joined Archive Section 572 to conduct a loyalty test for Malcador.
• Eli welcomed Alf, shared his synthetic jerky, and promised to protect him, while Alpharius suspected the offer concealed an ulterior motive.
• Alpharius observed that Eli neither shifted work onto him nor exploited him, despite Alpharius deliberately copying figures incorrectly.
• When the supervisor punished Alf for the errors, Eli claimed responsibility and took all ten lashes in his place.
• Eli comforted Alf afterward, explaining that he had protected him because they were workmates and Alf was new.

Alpharius triggered a false contamination alarm to test whether the archive scribes would turn on one another for a single respirator, expecting Eli to reveal his selfishness. As the scribes fought over the mask, Eli ignored it and shouted at Alf, who stood in the way of a possible escape route.

• Alpharius secretly activated an alarm that locked down archive sector four and began extracting its air.
• Alpharius staged the discovery of a single respirator, expecting the scribes to fight over their only chance to survive.
• The scribes attacked and killed one another as they struggled to reach the mask.
• Alpharius searched for Eli and found him watching Alf stand beside a slowly descending waste-disposal door.
• Eli shouted at Alf to move, leaving the respirator behind.

Eli sacrificed himself to hold open a descending blast door so Alpharius could escape, but Alpharius instead stopped the door and revealed his hidden power. After Alpharius ended the test and rescued Eli, Eli woke in a medical ward with his shoulder shattered.

• Eli jammed a heavy alloy support rod into the blast door and used his body to hold it open long enough for Alpharius to crawl through.
• Eli urged Alpharius to escape, leaving Alpharius stunned by his selfless sacrifice.
• Alpharius refused to leave and effortlessly stopped the blast door with one hand.
• Alpharius declared the test terminated, cleared the false alarm, restored the archive systems, and carried the unconscious Eli to safety.
• Eli woke in the medical department for low-ranking employees, badly injured but alive.

Eli recovered in the hospital after saving Alpharius, who questioned his motives and struggled to explain his selfless act. Eli’s simple belief in protecting his coworkers changed Alpharius’s view of loyalty, and Alpharius left promising to bring him real roast meat.

• Eli woke in the hospital and was relieved to find Alpharius unharmed.
• Alpharius interrogated Eli about why he had risked his life, proposing that he had acted for status, strategy, or religious zeal.
• Eli rejected Alpharius’s suspicions and explained that he had saved a coworker because he cared about him.
• Alpharius realized Eli’s loyalty had no price or ulterior motive, then solemnly tucked in his blanket.
• Alpharius left, promising to treat Eli to real roast meat, while Eli wondered how he would afford it.

Alpharius’s warmth reached Omegon through their soul link and restored his fading humanity on a Slaugth death world. Days after recovering, Eli returned to the archives looking for Alf, but could not find him.

• Alpharius felt warmth from Eli’s words, and it traveled through the soul link to Omegon.
• Omegon stopped eating a Slaugth larva and, repulsed by its entrails, remembered that he was human.
• A few days later, Eli was discharged from the medical department and went to the archives to find Alf and claim his promised roast meat.
• Eli searched the archives but found no sign of Alf.

Eli was dismissed from his scribe post only to be compulsorily conscripted into the Terra Supreme Command Academy. He arrived at the elite academy thinking of Alf and the roast meat Alf owed him, but immediately drew ridicule from wealthy cadets.

• Eli learned that Alf had been transferred to a higher-level archive without saying goodbye.
• An Interior Ministry official delivered an order relieving Eli of his scribe duties and conscripting him to the Terra Supreme Command Academy for three years of officer training.
• Eli packed his belongings and flew from the underground archive to the academy in the Himalayan Mountains.
• Eli arrived in a cadet uniform with his shabby canvas bag and felt out of place among the wealthy new cadets.
• A cadet mocked Eli as a lost miner.

Eli was mocked by the noble Valerius Saul but unintentionally turned the insult around, winning laughter from the crowd. After Valerius stormed away, Cassius thanked Eli, and the two introduced themselves as future classmates.

• Valerius Saul ridiculed Eli’s name and mocked his Terra origins while refusing to shake his hand.
• Eli mistook Valerius’s insult about his smell for praise and joked that Valerius should become a battlefield scout because of his keen nose.
• The crowd laughed at Valerius, who threatened Eli before leaving the landing pad with his lackeys.
• Cassius introduced himself and thanked Eli for standing up to Valerius’s contempt for people born to technical personnel.
• Eli introduced himself to Cassius and welcomed him as a future classmate.

Eli endured a brutal first month at the academy, where Valerius and his followers made him a target. During an impossible logistics simulation, Eli recognized the historical figures being presented, but the chapter ended before he gave his plan.

• Alpharius watched Eli endure Valerius’s provocation and form an alliance with a young Adeptus Mechanicus member, then recorded the results of his social stress test.
• Eli struggled through the academy’s punishing physical training and advanced lessons while Valerius and his followers repeatedly humiliated him.
• Eli persevered by completing the training and memorizing the Dataslate Cassius had lent him.
• Deputy Dean Ferrus Manus gave the cadets a logistics analysis lesson, and Eli recognized the figures from records he had copied as a scribe.
• Ferrus Manus assigned the cadets an impossible battle plan for the Centaurus Reclamation Campaign, and Valerius questioned whether the scenario had any solution.

Eli proposed a precise plan to break through the xenos blockade, but Valerius accused him of treason for citing supposedly classified records. Deputy Dean Ferrus Manus revealed that the sources were publicly available in theory, though accessing them required an average wait of eighty-seven years.

• Eli proposed using three modified Gladius-class frigates to evade the minefield and star fortress before boarding a xenos supply ship for fuel and ammunition.
• Valerius challenged Eli's figures and accused him of stealing top-secret Imperial records and being a spy.
• Eli said he had read and copied the documents while working in the underground archives, leaving the classroom alarmed.
• Ferrus Manus said Eli's cited sources were unclassified historical documents, but required applications to hundreds of forms across seventeen archive districts and an average eighty-seven-year wait.

Eli earned full marks for his tactical simulation after Vice Dean Ferrus Manus verified the evidence behind his plan, while Valerius was left humiliated. Ferrus promised to protect Eli from interference, but Alpharius anticipated that Valerius would seek revenge during the upcoming outdoor combat exercise.

• Vice Dean Ferrus Manus gave Eli full marks after his tactical logic core rated Eli’s plan at a 73.4 percent chance of success, and gave the other cadets zero.
• Valerius blamed unseen interference for his defeat, unaware that Alpharius had planted a scrap of archive references to guide Ferrus Manus’s investigation.
• Ferrus Manus told Alpharius that he would keep observing Eli and protect him from illogical human factors.
• Alpharius anticipated that Valerius would target Eli during the upcoming Outdoor Simulated Combat Exercise.
• The academy assigned Valerius to command the elite Blue Team and Eli to lead the Red Team, made up of cadets regarded as misfits.

Eli led Red Team in an unconventional campaign against Valerius and Blue Team, using traps, sabotage, and the battlefield’s sewers to wear them down. As Blue Team grew furious and demoralized, Eli’s teammates began to enjoy the fight.

• Eli rallied Red Team and ordered them to avoid direct combat, aiming instead to make Blue Team sick of pursuing them.
• Valerius led Blue Team to Red Team’s empty command center and ordered a thorough search of the mountain forest.
• Blue Team encountered concealed traps, foul mud, slippery stream stones, sabotaged rations, and a looping song planted in their communications by Cassius.
• Eli led Red Team through the underground sewage system, launching hit-and-run raids while the team listened to Blue Team’s angry curses.
• Eli explained his asymmetric warfare strategy to his admiring teammates, while Cassius reconsidered how much victory depended on equipment and bloodline.

Eli led Red Team to victory over Valerius and Blue Team with a midnight sewer ambush using filth-coated Toilet Blades. His fame grew, and when instructor Brutus abused him, the Inquisition arrested Brutus after uncovering his corruption, while Old Al secretly concealed evidence of his own involvement.

• Eli and Red Team burst from the sewers at midnight and eliminated the sleeping members of Blue Team with Toilet Blades.
• Valerius charged at Eli in a rage but was caught in a vine net, ending the exercise in Red Team's overwhelming victory.
• Eli became famous at the academy, while Valerius sought ways to ruin him within the rules.
• Brutus forced Eli to clean a tank's exhaust ducts in freezing weather and prepared to strike him for alleged misconduct.
• Inquisition stormtroopers arrested Brutus over an encrypted ledger detailing decades of embezzlement and other crimes.
• Old Al secretly hid a miniature data-hacking terminal in a garbage bag after the arrest.

Eli graduated and was assigned to command the struggling 404th Infantry Regiment on the Ork-infested Kalida Sector frontier, where he quickly improved the soldiers’ conditions. During his first major battle, a series of uncanny mishaps devastated the Ork assault, and Eli urged his men to fire.

• Eli used a mysteriously delivered tactical note to pass his final simulation exam and graduate.
• Valerius Saul arranged for Eli to be sent to the Kalida Sector as supreme commander of the 404th Infantry Regiment, but Eli eagerly accepted the assignment.
• Eli arrived at the Ash Plains Defensive Line and began improving the regiment’s trenches and securing supplies for the soldiers.
• The 404th ate a full meal for the first time in three months and began to see Eli as a commander who treated them as comrades.
• During the Ork attack, their Big Iron Vehicle fired into its own forces, while jams and infighting opened gaps in the assault.
• Eli called the mishaps a miracle and ordered the 404th to open fire.

Eli and the 404th Regiment survived a string of seemingly miraculous victories, secretly aided by Space Marines protecting him under the Primarch’s orders. When a disastrous reconnaissance mission trapped them before a hundred thousand Orks, Eli chose to hold the Webway Rift so the main force could escape, but his soldiers joined him in a desperate last stand.

• Eli led the 404th Regiment through an Ork firing gap and toward an ammunition depot, where a Squig-triggered explosion routed the Orks with fewer than fifty Imperial casualties.
• Unpainted Space Marines revealed that they had covertly engineered the regiment’s victories and continued protecting Eli under orders to preserve his mortal experience.
• Over the next six months, Eli’s reputation grew as the 404th repeatedly won battles with few losses.
• Eli led four companies on a reconnaissance mission, but a faulty report brought them into a camp holding a hundred thousand Orks and cut off their retreat.
• Eli ordered the main force to flee through a Webway Rift and prepared to hold its entrance alone, but the adjutant and the wounded soldiers joined him.
• Eli and the 404th detonated explosives and formed a firing line against the Ork vanguard, beginning a desperate last stand.