Chapter Summaries

Eli and the surviving 404th Infantry Regiment were rescued from a massive Ork assault by a mysterious squad of Space Marines, who destroyed the Ork army and led them to safety. Their leader revealed himself to be Alpharius, leaving Eli stunned by how enormous he had become.

• Eli and his soldiers were nearly overwhelmed by Orks until a squad of deep-sea-colored Space Marines appeared and rescued them.
• The Space Marines killed the Ork Warboss, detonated explosives in the gorge, and caused the Ork horde to collapse into chaos.
• The Space Marines led Eli and the surviving 404th Infantry Regiment to a concealed underground cavern.
• The squad's towering leader gave Eli roasted meat, revealed his face, and was recognized as Alpharius.
• Eli asked Alpharius how he had grown so large and whether he had eaten fertilizer.

Eli accepted Alpharius’s offer to bring the 404th Infantry Regiment into the Alpha Legion as the Eye of the Hydra after learning Alf was the Primarch Alpharius. In the years that followed, Eli and his soldiers served alongside the Legion, using blunt, unconventional tactics that sometimes influenced Alpharius’s plans.

• Eli ignored Alpharius’s revelation at first and complained that the roast meat needed cumin and chili powder.
• Alpharius revealed that he was the Emperor’s twentieth son and explained that the Alpha Legion needed Eli’s honesty as an anchor.
• Alpharius invited Eli and the 404th Infantry Regiment to join the Alpha Legion’s Eye of the Hydra, promising room, board, and seasoned roast meat.
• Eli agreed to the offer and shook Alpharius’s hand.
• Over the next few years, the Eye of the Hydra supported Alpha Legion operations with underhanded tactics, while Eli also offered Alpharius simple battlefield suggestions.

Alpharius and Eli traveled to a Slaugth-infested death world to find Alpharius’s missing twin, Omegon. They found him alive among stranded survivors, but Omegon coldly dismissed Eli as a useless piece of meat.

• Alpharius’s intelligence network revealed that Omegon was missing on a remote death world occupied by the Slaugth.
• Alpharius and Eli traveled there aboard a prototype ship powered by a Dimensional Engine that avoided the Warp.
• Alpharius, Eli, and an Alpha Legion squad crossed the toxic wasteland and found a camp of stranded survivors.
• Alpharius reunited with Omegon, who bore extensive scars and showed no warmth toward his brother.
• Omegon called the Space Marines barely useful and questioned why Alpharius had brought Eli, whom he considered unlikely to survive.

Omegon planned to use the scavengers as bait to reach and kill the Slaugth brood leader, but Alpharius rejected his willingness to sacrifice them. When the Slaugth surrounded the camp, the group fought into the nest, where Omegon led them through its dangerous tunnels.

• Omegon proposed sacrificing 642 scavengers to distract the Slaugth while he and Alpharius reached the brood core.
• Eli denounced Omegon for treating the scavengers as fodder, and Alpharius demanded that his brother abandon the plan.
• Thousands of Slaugth erupted from the ground and surrounded the camp, forcing the group to charge into the nest.
• Alpharius ordered the Space Marines to protect the mortals, while Eli helped the terrified scavengers keep moving under their cover.
• Omegon led the group through the nest's labyrinth, warning Alpharius about lethal spores and lurkers overhead.

Omegon’s plan led the team into a Slaugth trap deep in the Brood Nest, where the xenos leader overwhelmed them with a collapse and psychic interference. As Omegon faced a lethal strike, Eli shoved him clear and took the venomous tentacle through his chest.

• Eli and Alpharius noticed that the Slaugth were retreating too quietly as Omegon led the team toward the nest’s core.
• The Slaugth leader revealed itself in a vast cavern, mocked Omegon, and collapsed the ground beneath the team into a prepared trap.
• The team landed deep in the Brood Nest, where elite Slaugth attacked as the leader’s psychic interference disrupted the Space Marines’ equipment.
• Omegon ordered Alpha squad to prepare to detonate their reactors, but Alpharius refused and continued fighting.
• The Slaugth leader struck at Omegon with a blue-tinged tentacle, and Eli shoved him aside, taking the attack through his chest.

Eli sacrificed himself to save Omegon, killing the xenos leader with a grenade, but died from his wounds after the survivors escaped. Alpharius mourned him as Omegon struggled to understand why Eli had saved him.

• Eli shoved a grenade into the xenos leader’s mouth, killing it and ending its psychic interference field.
• Alpharius caught Eli and led the surviving Space Marines and scavengers out of the nest.
• On the surface, Alpharius tried to treat Eli’s fatal chest wound while Omegon demanded to know why Eli had saved him.
• Eli told Omegon that he had acted out of care for Alpharius’s brother, then asked Alpharius to add more cumin next time he roasted meat.
• Eli died in Alpharius’s arms, and Alpharius clutched his body and sobbed.

After Eli’s death, Omegon abandoned his ruthless worldview, and he and Alpharius reshaped the Alpha Legion around protecting the weak. A month later, a powerful fleet calling itself the Human Liberation Union appeared before Horus’s forces, claiming it had come to reunite with humanity.

• Omegon knelt beside Eli’s remains and recognized the warmth and humanity his brother Alpharius had once tried to show him.
• One month later, Omegon and Alpharius honored Eli with his battered Entrenching Tool and declared that the Alpha Legion would defend the weak and fight monsters.
• The Alpha Legion and the Imperialis Militia cheered their new guiding principle, while a faint golden light faded from Eli’s Entrenching Tool.
• A fleet of more than a thousand advanced warships appeared before the Vengeful Spirit without passing through a visible warp rift.
• The Human Liberation Union transmitted a message declaring that it had come to reunite with its human kin.
• Horus ordered his forces to contact the Astropath array and report the encounter to the Emperor.

Jian Ya offered the Imperium five hundred worlds, priceless Dark Age technologies, and a way to travel without entering the Warp. When the Emperor demanded to meet the mysterious creator behind these advances, Jian Ya invited him and Malcador to a private meeting, despite Malcador's warning that it could be a trap.

• The Emperor arrived with Malcador and the Imperial leadership to meet the fleet Dawn and its ruler, Jian Ya.
• Jian Ya pledged five hundred unified worlds to the Imperium and presented Dark Age STC blueprints and gene repair technology.
• Jian Ya explained that the Dimensional Engine folded space to travel without entering the Warp.
• The Emperor realized Jian Ya had not created the technology and demanded to meet its true creator.
• Jian Ya invited only the Emperor and Malcador to meet the creator privately, and Malcador warned the Emperor not to go.

The Emperor met Liu Zhipeng, the mysterious guardian who had offered the Imperium five hundred worlds and Dark Age technology, and learned that Liu considered himself the Emperor’s divine counterpart and brother. The Emperor accepted the possibility of this alliance cautiously and asked what Liu intended to do next.

• Horus urged the Emperor to take the Luna Wolves as guards, but the Emperor went to meet the hidden figure with Malcador and Jian Ya.
• The Emperor saw Liu Zhipeng’s holographic projection and recognized him as the young man who had given him a USB drive in twenty-second-century Earth.
• Malcador raised his psychic staff against Liu, who dismissed the threat and explained that he and the Emperor came from the same source.
• Liu described the Emperor as humanity’s human nature and himself as its divinity, then called the Emperor his brother.
• The Emperor remained wary despite Liu’s words and asked what he planned to do next.

Liu Zhipeng warned the Emperor that the Tyranids were approaching and arranged a division of responsibilities to unite the galaxy against them. After they joined hands, Liu returned to his battle with the Chaos Gods and broadcast a provocative surge of psychic power throughout the Warp.

• Liu Zhipeng showed the Emperor and Malcador the Tyranids beyond the Milky Way and warned that they threatened every life in the galaxy.
• Liu Zhipeng tasked the Emperor with rebuilding and uniting humanity while he took responsibility for containing Chaos and bringing useful xenos into an alliance.
• The Emperor and Liu Zhipeng clasped hands, sending a pulse across the galaxy that stirred hope in human worlds and shook the Three Gods in the Warp.
• Liu Zhipeng turned back to his battle against Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch and unleashed a vast, taunting psychic broadcast across the Warp.

Liu Zhipeng drew Gork and Mork into the Warp battle, then traveled to Solemnace to awaken an ancient Krork for the coming Tyranid calamity. The Krork woke in combat readiness and fixed its gaze on Liu Zhipeng.

• Gork and Mork heard Liu Zhipeng’s psychic surge, tore open the Warp, and attacked Khorne, Nurgle, and Tzeentch.
• Liu Zhipeng left the Chaos Gods occupied and sent an avatar into realspace to seek a powerful biological weapon against the Tyranid Swarm.
• Liu Zhipeng’s avatar bypassed Trazyn’s defenses and reached a stasis display containing an ancient Krork on Solemnace.
• Liu Zhipeng shattered the Krork’s stasis field, and the awakened warrior immediately entered combat readiness and locked its gaze on him.

Liu Zhipeng defeated Ghazghkull in a brutal fight and made him accept Liu as the strongest boss. He showed Ghazghkull the approaching Tyranid swarm and began warning him that it threatened the Orks’ worlds.

• Ghazghkull attacked Liu Zhipeng, but Liu met his punch and sent him crashing through the Museum.
• Ghazghkull charged with his Chainaxe, but Liu dodged, struck him, threw him to the ground, and battered him until he could no longer fight.
• Ghazghkull knelt before Liu and swore to obey him as the stronger boss.
• Liu projected a star map showing the Tyranid swarm approaching the galaxy and told Ghazghkull that it meant to devour all life.
• Liu pointed out the green dots marking modern-day Ork planets.

Liu Zhipeng sent Ghazghkull to unite the Orks and prepare them for war against the devouring bugs. Ghazghkull crashed onto Scrap World, where angry Orks gathered around the crater to confront him.

• Liu Zhipeng urged Ghazghkull to unite the Orks and forge them into a Krork army to fight the bugs.
• Ghazghkull accepted the coming war, roared his battle cry, and followed Liu Zhipeng through a portal to an Ork planet.
• Trazyn the Infinite arrived at his ruined exhibition hall and found his prized exhibit missing and a middle-finger graffiti painted in Krork blood.
• Liu Zhipeng left Ghazghkull suspended above Scrap World, and Ghazghkull plunged into the planet's scrap fields.
• Orks emerged from the wreckage and converged on Ghazghkull's crater, threatening to kill him and strip his armor.

Ghazghkull emerged from the crater and judged the modern Orks to be grotesquely degenerated, while the Broken Tooth Tribe's warlord Iron Skull challenged him from atop a Gargant. Ghazghkull leapt straight toward the machine, leaving the confrontation unresolved.

• Ghazghkull rose from the molten iron and silenced the modern Orks with his presence.
• Ghazghkull condemned the Orks' degenerated bodies, limited intelligence, and crude weapons, and resolved to reshape them through violence.
• Iron Skull arrived in a scrap-built Gargant and demanded Ghazghkull's armor and submission.
• Ghazghkull leapt across the crater and appeared in front of Iron Skull's Gargant.

Ghazghkull seized control of the Orks by tearing apart a Gargant and killing Warlord Iron Skull, then forbade worship of Gork and Mork. Seeing how far the Orks had degenerated, he concluded that only a violent forced reboot could save them.

• Ghazghkull ripped the Gargant in half and crushed Iron Skull’s head with his bare hand.
• A Boy declared Ghazghkull the Orks’ new boss, and hundreds of thousands of Orks knelt before him.
• Ghazghkull silenced the Orks with a psychic roar and vaporized their idol of Gork and Mork.
• Ghazghkull declared that all Orks under his command were forbidden to worship gods and ordered them to rely on their strength and weapons.
• Ghazghkull recognized that reason could not save the degenerate Orks and decided they needed a violent forced reboot.

Ghazghkull’s Krork spores transformed hundreds of thousands of Orks into intelligent, coordinated Krork and restored their WAAAGH! network as a tactical link. He ordered them to build an automated arsenal and train for war, intending to seize the world in one week.

• Ghazghkull released concentrated Krork spores across the Scrapyard, triggering the Orks’ painful genetic restoration.
• The reborn Krork developed greater strength and intelligence, severed their connection to the Gork and Mork faith channel, and linked through a precise WAAAGH! Tactical Network.
• Gear used controlled psychic power and scientific knowledge to turn scrap iron into a high-density composite armor plate.
• Ghazghkull ordered the engineers to build an automated arsenal and the warriors to train in coordinated formations, including a Crossfire Network.
• Hundreds of thousands of Krork acknowledged Ghazghkull’s command and prepared to take control of the world within a week.

Ghazghkull completed a disciplined Krork army on a Scrap World and threatened the other Ork tribes into submission as he prepared a Great Crusade. At Ullanor, Overlord Urrak Ugg learned that a strange fleet bearing Ork signals had entered the area, though its ships were unnaturally smooth and clean.

• Ghazghkull oversaw seven days of industrial production and tactical training that equipped hundreds of thousands of Krork warriors with power armour and Super Plasma Rifles.
• Ghazghkull broadcast an ultimatum to the planet’s Ork tribes, demanding they submit to genetic completion within three hours or face annihilation.
• Ghazghkull declared his intention to unite the Orks across the galaxy and lead them toward the Great Devourer.
• A Mekboy warned Urrak Ugg that an approaching fleet carried Ork signals but had smooth, clean ships unlike any he had seen.
• Urrak Ugg and the gathered Ork Boyz fell silent in disbelief at the Mekboy’s report.

Urrak led Ullanor’s Savage Orks into battle against Ghazghkull’s technologically advanced Krork fleet. After the Krork fleet effortlessly neutralized the Orks’ opening barrage, Ghazghkull ordered a precision strike, and the chapter ended as its blue beams reached Urrak’s fleet.

• Urrak ordered Ullanor’s Boyz, Gargants, and warships to mobilize against the Krork fleet.
• Ghazghkull and Gear assessed the disorganized, technologically inferior enemy fleet and prepared their weapons.
• Urrak’s fleet fired a massive barrage, but the Krork fleet’s Deflector Fields neutralized nearly all of it.
• Ghazghkull ordered a precision attack on the enemy flagship’s reactor clusters, gravitational anchors, and command centre.
• The Krork ships fired thousands of blue beams toward Urrak’s fleet, and Urrak insisted his ship’s armor would withstand them.

Ghazghkull’s Krork fleet shattered Urrak Ugg’s psychic shield and annihilated the Ullanor fleet, leaving Urrak’s flagship to crash onto Ullanor. Urrak rallied the survivors, but hundreds of black Drop Pods then landed nearby.

• Urrak’s confidence stirred billions of Orks to form a green psychic shield that initially resisted the Krork fleet’s plasma volley.
• Ghazghkull ordered Gear to analyze the shield and strengthen the Krork WAAAGH! network, allowing a second volley to shatter it.
• The Krork fleet’s precise plasma beams destroyed the Ullanor fleet in less than three hours.
• Three beams disabled Urrak’s flagship, which crashed onto Ullanor and left Urrak alive amid the wreckage.
• Urrak rallied the surviving Savage Orks to fight the Krork ships, then hundreds of black Drop Pods landed nearby.

Urrak’s Ullanor Orks charged the Krork army, but the black-armoured warriors grew stronger and larger as they fought. Ghazghkull arrived to answer Urrak’s challenge, and the Overlord’s body began to submit to the Ancient War God’s overwhelming presence.

• Urrak ordered the Ullanor Orks to attack the Krork army, and the Krork answered with precise volleys of plasma fire.
• Urrak rampaged through the battlefield, killing Krork warriors and destroying a Light Mech as his army pressed the attack.
• Urrak realized the Krork were growing taller and stronger through combat, turning the tide against the Ullanor Orks.
• Urrak called for the Krork leader to face him, and the Krork warriors halted their fighting and opened a path.
• Ghazghkull emerged at fifteen metres tall, and Urrak’s legs trembled as his instincts urged him to submit.