Chaos's power had grown ever stronger. Vast numbers of heavy Gears of War and twisted daemons had been unleashed onto the battlefield. The Emperor's Children Warband advanced amid piercing noise and manic laughter, while the Iron Warriors, a warband made entirely of engineers, had brought enormous quantities of siege weapons.
The Emperor's Children had an extremely high proportion of possessed warriors. They invited daemons to parasitize their bodies, and when Slaanesh's daemons transformed all pain within them into pleasure, any injury would make those fallen lunatics let out delighted screams as they pursued the next, even greater thrill.
After death, when their souls returned to the Warp, perhaps they would be resurrected by the Chaos Gods to fight again someday. Or perhaps they would not need to fight again, instead entering the palace of the great god Slaanesh to enjoy themselves.
The Iron Warriors, meanwhile, were a warband that did not believe in Chaos. The only reason they had betrayed was because their own Chapter Master had fallen out with the Emperor, and they too had wanted to flee the False Emperor with him.
A group of them had hidden away in the Warp, living in territory controlled by Chaos forces, yet refusing all contamination from Chaos corruption. They traded weapons and mercenary services with Abaddon.
Chaos's power could mutate humans, turning hands into demonic claws or causing tails to grow from their backs. It was a process of assimilation.
But the Iron Warriors would cut off mutated body parts and replace them with mechanical components. They loathed Chaos corruption and only wanted to work peacefully on engineering.
This time, they had clearly come prepared. They had brought several million cultist slaves from the Warp. Those skeletal yet unnaturally excited lunatics, with heretical symbols tattooed on their heads and iron