On all fronts, the Ultramarines and Space Marines from other chapters under the command of Roboute Guilliman were making tremendous progress, driving the filth back. And the seventh month of the campaign to reconquer Ultramar was supposed to be a turning point.
Instead, it brought a nightmare that conventional weapons couldn't fight.
It started quietly across the Drohl, Talassar, and Parmenio Systems. Soldiers of the Ultramar Defence Auxilia found themselves crying. It wasn't born of fear or standard battlefield trauma which the newest recruits always suffered from; it was a physical, uncontrollable weeping.
Now, this didn't sound so bad, but in the middle of firefights, frontline troops were blinded by endless streams of thick, foul-smelling tears that stuck their eyelids shut and burned their skin. It was horrid for those afflicted and also those who had to witness it.
They called it the Sorrow, or the Weeping Plague.
In the worst cases, the patients wept until their eyes festered and rotted right out of their skulls, leaving them permanently blind and yet still wailing in agony.
The spread was terrifyingly fast, too. The vector with which the Sorrow spread was microscopic, biting mites. They infested ration packs, swarmed inside uniforms, burrowed into ammunition crates, and even poured out from between the pages of opened Imperial Truth tombs.
Sanitation protocols as the auxilla knew them did absolutely nothing. The siege of Leotold's Keep completely collapsed as the disease ravaged the ranks, and the previously unstoppable Ravishol offensive ground to a complete stop. The human soldiery was reduced to a stumbling, wailing horde of useless weight, and that wasn't helping their cause.
Interestingly enough, it only affected mortals. The transhuman Adeptus Astartes, the Tech Priests of the Mechanicus, and even the fiercely devout Adepta Sororitas remained largely untouched.
But for Roboute Guilliman, the Primarch of the Ultramarines, that wasn't enough. He wasn't about to let his people suffer. Especially when one considered that while the Adeptus Astartes had the most renown, it was the Imperial Guard that did most of the fighting, as they made up, without a doubt, the largest part of the army.
Leaving the war in the Prandium System to Chief Librarian Tigurius and Inquisitor Greyfax, Guilliman rushed to the front lines at Talassar.
He expected to find nothing but horror, having read the data slates and been told what had taken place. Miraculously, as soon as he arrived, he brought an accidental miracle.
.
Braving the heavy flak screens of the Iron Warriors, Guilliman's Thunderhawk touched down at the fortified Imperial camp in the Soldermask Valley.
The camp was deafening, with servitor-operated artillery firing away at the perimeter to keep Chaos Daemon Engines and Chaos Marines at bay. From the outside of the massive medical sheds, the muffled cacophony of thousands of weeping soldiers was maddening. Thankfully, not for the Primarch.
Guilliman ordered the camp's commander to open the doors immediately, so he could get a look at it, while they had tried to isolate the affected as well as they could.
The fortification doors opened, and as the Primarch stepped inside, the sobbing... slowly died away.
It was instantaneous.
The sick and heavily suffering soldiers suddenly rose from their cots, blinking away the grime as if they hadn't cried literal cursed tears just a second ago. Their vision cleared. Even those who had completely lost their sight sighed in relief as the agonising pain vanished.
None of the medicae could explain the science behind it, but what they understood was that Guilliman's mere presence was curing the Weepers. The mites simply died as he approached, piling up in black, dusty drifts.
It was a miracle, and the Ecclesiarchy immediately branded it as such. They praised the Emperor and the Primarch, paraded through the camps, brandishing their aquilas and shouting that the Emperor's healing light was shining through His son and all that bullocks.
And so, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Guilliman became a pilgrim. For weeks, he rushed from one infected site to another, driven by a deep, human compassion for his soldiers and the loyal warriors of the Imperium. He couldn't ignore their pain if he had the power to stop it.
But as the days bled into weeks, a grim reality set in. The Weeping Plague kept spreading. Worse and more macabre was that it kept returning to the camps Guilliman had already been to. As if the plague had a mind of its own, the mites seemed to die when Guilliman arrived, only to then suddenly be back again once he had left.
How that was possible... only the Emperor could know.
While the Primarch was busy playing pseudo-medic, the wider war effort was falling apart. Without his peerless tactical genius overlooking the entirety of the Ultramar sector, Imperial victories in the Veridian and Tarvan systems were rapidly overturned by Chaos forces.
Meanwhile, the Warp storms hitting the space lanes to and from Ultramar were intensifying. Navigators whispered that the entire sector was on the verge of being cut off from the galaxy as a whole forever if it continued that way.
Guilliman needed answers. He needed an expert, or at least someone who seemed to be an expert in... well, everything. In truth, he needed an actual miracle.
So, he called for Gerhard.
.
While Roboute Guilliman was running himself ragged playing planetary wizard-physician, Gerhard's theatre of the war was going rather well.
Across the worlds assigned to Gerhard's campaign, the Weeping Plague simply… didn't exist. The microscopic, Warp-bred mites that reduced entire Imperial Guard regiments to wailing, festering husks elsewhere in Ultramar seemed completely incapable of breaching Gerhard's battlelines.
Whether that was intentional or not, who knew.
The Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy were utterly baffled by this 'unknown' phenomenon. They would later speculate about divine wards, as Gerhard was the Emperor's and the Primarch's chosen one.
The truth was a mix between logic and miracle. Between Gerhard's passive [Blank] state radiating through the battlefields when fighting Chaos, his localised mana-isolation fields, and the sheer, mind-boggling capabilities of a high-levelled Gamer who was capable of creating things that fundamentally rejected Nurgle's plagues, the plague mites simply found nothing to affect.
But while Gerhard didn't have to deal with weeping soldiers, he did have another very different, very loud, and very green "infestation" to manage.
The Orks.
Ever since he had violently usurped the Waaagh! gained the blessing of Gork and Mork and become the 'Dakkamasta,' these green-skinned followers had developed a highly unorkodox method of adoration. Because they were Orks, the ultimate sign of respect wasn't bowing or praying, or gentle hugs and tea parties... it was trying to krump their Warboss.
Periodically, massive hordes of surprisingly highly modified Orks would crash into Gerhard's defensive lines, screaming praises to his name and power while unleashing borderline-suicidal amounts of firepower. Gerhard would happily indulge them, wading into the green tide to farm EXP like a proper gamer would, test new legendary-grade weapons, and level up his skills.
He would decimate them, time and time again, of course. The battlefield would be littered with green bodies of the Orks who all died with Orkish grins on their faces.
And the surviving Orks? They absolutely loved it.
Every time they had enjoyed a "propa good scrap," the survivors would cheerfully retreat, carrying their shattered scrap metal and broken machinery back to their Roks and leave behind the happiest Ork: the goodbye-boom Ork, as they called him. He was responsible for guarding the others' retreat by literally blowing himself and anyone in the vicinity up.
Then, the Dakkamastas would take copious notes on exactly how Gerhard had massacred them, rebuild bigger, better, and more ridiculously over-engineered walkers, and promise to come back in the next week or so for another go.
It was a bizarre and highly effective way of clearing out the actual enemy because Gerhard made sure to use the Orks in his strategies to kill all of the Chaos Marines before actually fighting them.
And he also made sure to, every once in a while, truly decimate them to the last few boyz, to reset most of their advancements quite far back. However, the Orks' DNA worked in a mysterious way, and they never really grew back as stupid as they had been all those months ago.
If Gerhard truly wanted to reset everything, he would have to destroy them entirely. But honestly, he wasn't going to do that just yet. He had other plans for them.
.
The sky above the ruined industrial world of Tartaros Tertius was choked with toxic smog, but the erratic, strobing flashes of mana blasts, heavy bolter fire, and endless explosions illuminated the streets.
Caught in the middle of a colossal, ruined transit hub was a stubborn, festering warband of Death Guard. The sons of Mortarion were famously resilient, bloated with the blessings of Nurgle, and entirely used to grinding their enemies down through sheer attrition, rot and disease.
But today, they were the ones being ground to dust. Quite literally, in fact.
They were caught in a brutal, relentless and outrageous pincer movement never seen before Gerhard existed. From the southern direction, Gerhard and his highly disciplined, heavily armoured Imperial forces were systematically dismantling them. Gerhard had armed the Imperial Guard under his command with Adept-Grade lasguns, bolter pistols and armour, all of which he had created himself. As for the Adeptus Astartes, they had been gifted with Special-Grade Heavy Bolters and Flamelaunchers. Both groups had access to all kinds of grenades and to tanks under Gustav's control.
And Gerhard... blue mana bolter rounds punched through corrupted ceramite and rotting flesh with each strike, exploding in massive detonations so the plague-marines couldn't even utilise their toxic blood as a weapon.
From the northern approach came the chaotic, mind-breaking racket of the Dakkamasta's Ork Warband.
"WAAAAAGH! KRUMP DA STINKY BEAKIES! FOR DA DAKKA MASTA!"
Heavily customised Ork Deff Dreads, sporting sleek bits of diamantine plating looted from previous encounters with Gerhard, tore into the Death Guard lines.
The Orks didn't care about the toxic fumes or the rotting Warp aura of the Chaos Marines; they just wanted to clear the way so they could get to the real boss fight waiting on the other side. They did dislike the rotting Marines, though; on the other hand, they were fun to fight, since they were more resilient.
After another two hours, the Death Guard were annihilated. The final Plague Champion was cleaved in two by a lightning-clad Bonesword just as the Ork Warboss stepped over a pile of singed rubble from the other side of the square.
Gerhard stood in his Hulkbuster suit, which he had improved again so he would not be left behind, and continued to advance.
The battlefield fell into a tense silence. The Imperial Guard regiments immediately locked their lasguns onto the Ork horde, while the Orks revved their choppas and pointed their heavily modified shootas back.
The sea of green parted.
Stepping over the twitching remains of the Death Guard Champion was a massive Ork. He was clad in huge, heavily reinforced Mega-Armour that looked suspiciously like a crude, scaled-up knockoff of an Adeptus Astartes Terminator armour, complete with a glowing, gear-toothed heart and a middle finger painted on the chest plate.
Gerhard rested his Bonesword on his shoulder, wiping a splatter of Chaos gore from his helmet. He looked up at the towering green mountain of muscle and cybernetics and grinned. The helmet folded away.
"Ah, you must be the new Warboss while I'm not here," Gerhard said, a savage, eager grin spreading across his face.
The massive Ork slammed his Power Klaw against his chest plate, the metal ringing like a cracked church bell. His singular bionic eye whirred and focused on Gerhard, practically vibrating with excitement.
"Aye, I's be Krump-Cog da Morky! An' I's be itchin' for a propa WAAAAGHHH!!"
Gerhard's grin widened. He cracked his neck, feeling the mana pool in his veins, readying a [Divergent Fist].
"Then let's not waste any more time, shall we?"
Krump-Cog threw his head back and let out a deafening roar, raising his massive weapons to signal the charge.
"WAAAAAAGGGHHH!!!!"
Gerhard lowered his stance and donned his helmet, ready to launch himself forward into the glorious, EXP-rich fray, when he was interrupted.
BEEP--BEEP--BEEP--
A high-priority, encrypted signal flashed urgently across Gerhard's retinal display. The localised vox-caster in his helmet rang with the unmistakable, heavily ciphered override codes of the Ultramarines' supreme command.
Hans' voice cut through the private neural-link, cool and apologetic.
[Master. I apologise for interrupting your leisure time. But we have just received a Priority Secundus distress transmission directly from Talassar.]
Gerhard paused, his mana fluctuating and caught Krump-Cog's massive Power Claw with his armoured hand.
"Hans, I'm about to test this Ork's ribcage. Can't it wait?"
[Negative, Master. It is from the Lord Commander himself. Primarch Guilliman has requested your immediate presence. He requires... a miracle. Whatever that means.]
Gerhard sighed, dropping his stance. The Waaagh-energy crackling around the plaza seemed to stutter in sheer disappointment.
"Raincheck, Krump-Cog," Gerhard shouted over the cheers of the Ork horde. "Duty calls. We have to wrap this up!"
Still holding on to the Warboss's Power Claw, he pulled him in and punched his midsection.
[Divergent Fist]