40k: Descendant Degeneration

Fine Writing by StaevinTheAeldari

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Juve Soldier in Dystopianchimp's short video Just how valuable is education in the Imperium?

I was delightfully surprised to see that Dystopianchimp on Youtube had included the Juve Soldier drawing in his Imperial education short video. I recommend checking out his work, which is on point for Warhammer 40'000.

Spoiler

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To Eat Bitterness

In a demented aeon of suffering and deprivation, the highest ideal of man is to suffer yet more.

Harken, you spawn of man and woman! Harken to these words, for they be not a song of lying praise, but the words of truth. Oh so bitter, that truth.

When reality itself is a nightmare, one does well to excel in being ridden by it. When one's lot is to bear burdens, one will better carry them for long until one can stand no more. When one's life is meant for hardship and sacrifice, the one who will live it best will be the one who drinks the misery like fine wine and flings himself upon the altar with a will.

It matters not if the vinegar is bitter, or even if the once good wine soured into the present vinegar, as the ancient Terran sages bickered about. Know that this life is vinegar. It is meant to taste bitter, like good vinegar shall.

It was not always thus.

The primordial ancestors of man emerged out of the misty past during the Age of Terra, constantly harrowed by pain, disease and suffering. Tragedy was their lot, and their lifespans were short and frail. All the brilliance and skills and knowledge acquired through such harsh lives were wasted on an early grave.

Yet man rose above his humble nature, and at long last conquered it, after an endless learned siege of many setbacks. For the gates of woe were flung open by the battering ram of science, and the host of technology stormed the stronghold of human weakness. Thus ancient man in the Dark Age of Technology did not just claim the stars as his birthright as he colonized twain million worlds and more, and built great wonders in the void to inhabit. Nay, for ancient man rose to the challenge, and in his hubris he laboured with great cunning to unlock the secrets of creation itself. And a stepping stone on that forbidden path to damnation was to learn all the secrets of man's own fleshly nature, and then to see it turn into clay in the hands of ancient man.

And man fashioned for himself a new and better body, steered by a clear and strong mind. Genetors ensured that blissful Man of Gold was equipped with the best flesh that his wisdom could make, while dour Man of Stone oversaw the ceaseless toil of Man of Iron. And together this earthly trinity bestrode the stars like a titan, and ancient man thrived and blossomed in his godless sin, and no xenos could threaten man's worldly ascendance into greatness. Thus paradise was built across worlds and void installations remade by the clever hand of man.

Yet such arrogant wickedness could not be allowed to stand. For as ancient man denied deity and declared himself to be mightier than any divinity out there, his star realm was ravaged by machine revolt as punishment. This humbling of ancient man was not enough, for man rose anew, scarred and proud, and he vowed to the heavens that he would grasp for himself the very secrets of existence. And for this abominable transgression did Dark Ones of Hell lash out at man with a tide of witches and mutants, and the screams of mortals were drowned out as Warpstorms rent the cosmos asunder and tore man's star-realm asunder. As civilization crumbled and towers were toppled, desperate scavenger tribes hunted one another in cannibal frenzy through the burning ruins. And brother slayed brother as sister strangled sister and parent ate child during Old Night.

And all was fell.

The abyssal suffering of mankind during the Age of Strife was at long last brought to a violent end by the all-conquering Legions of the Emperor of Terra. Arising from the blasted cradleworld of our species, He lifted a fluttering banner of thunderbolts and eagle talons to the skies, and He slaughtered all who stood against Him in order to bring all the scattered tribes of humanity across the stars under one throne. The Great Crusade in all its brutality swept across the Milky Way galaxy, exterminating aliens and innocents alike. All alternative sources of human regrowth were quashed, for everyone must bow before the will of Terra and Mars united. And the Emperor oversaw a short-lived renaissance of rediscovery, shining marble monuments and burgeoning learning, and for a time the future of the human species held a promise of greatness ahead.

Yet the spectacular success of the early Imperium proved to be its undoing, for ambitious warlords that had once taken the stars for the Emperor's sake now turned on one another in fratricidal civil war. And the galaxy burned. The Emperor was nigh-on slain in the heavens above Terra, and His wounded body was forever interred on the Golden Throne, from where He guides His sinful species across the starspangled nightsky and from where He sits in stern judgement over our wicked souls for the afterlife.

For man slayed the Emperor in his unforgivable sin, and for this heinous crime must man make penance and sacrifice his own kin for a thousand thousand generations to come. And no punishment can be too cruel upon wretched man. And the shepherds of the human flock will ensure that man be ruled by sword and electro-rod and barbed whip and flame, and the masters of mankind will ensure that man's filthy back will be broken by toil without end, for man deserves nought but suffering in this vale of sorrow, and thus suffering will be dealt out as just punishment until the stars go out and the firmament rolls together like a dark scroll at the end of time.

Woe!

Woe unto man!

Woe unto sinful man!

Let us take stock of man.

Enter, the Age of Imperium. The shining wonder that once was the cunning interstellar civilization of ancient man has turned into a decrepit hovel, a ruin inhabited by squatting savages and frothing fanatics who do not even know what edenic marvels of yore they have lost. These parochial clans swear fealty to an undying deity who unbeknownst to them denied His own godhood when He walked among His people in the flesh. As the scientific knowledge and technological hardware of man slowly rusts away into oblivion, the ignorant seed of Terra scattered across a million worlds and uncounted voidholms waste away its inherent potential and energies in callous massacres and paranoid democides that lead nowhere.

Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.

At first the fortunes of human interstellar civilization stagnated on the Imperium's watch, only to then tumble down a precipice into imminent doomsday. As the Hive Fleets of the Great Devourer close in like fanged jaws from the intergalactic void, and as life-scouring Necrons awake on Tomb Worlds without number, all sparks of rekindled curiosity and innovation among mankind keeps on being extinguished by the retrograde jealousy of a red-robed order of primitive, flesh-hating cyborg witch-doctors who ken only how to maintain and build according to the simpler of old templates, but ken not how to invent anew other than by sprinkling holy oil and praying to the Machine God for revelations amid sacred incense. And all the while, the disassembled and lobotomized techno-heretical victims of the Adeptus Mechanicus happen to be the very kind of human beings whose clever minds and deft hands would have produced the knowledge that the Cult Mechanicus so craves, but only venerates if it is salvaged as archeotech from the buried ruins of better ancestors, not invented by living hands. Better to slay the deviant and those too clever for their own good, than to risk divine wrath falling upon us all for their arrogant ways of questioning and tinkering outside the purview of the Tech-Priests.

My armour is contempt. My shield is disgust. My sword is hatred. In the Emperor's name let none survive.

This cavalcade of crippling demechanization and screeching bureaucratic sclerosis is overseen by the most tyrannical regime imaginable, whose bloodthirst is only matched by its senility and schismatic infighting. The Imperium of Man is truly a colossus on feet of clay, and its rotting ineptitude and etiolated misrule has well and truly doomed mankind through its reign of fivehundred wasted generations.

As one sinspeech whisper joke would have it:

Q: What will be on the menu when the God-Emperor returns to us in the flesh?
A: Ambrosia, nectar and the sweetest of meats.
Q: And what is on the menu now under the High Lords?
A: The menu itself, if you're ahead in the line.

As mankind finds itself in such an impoverished state during the Age of Imperium, it is no secret that the lot of most Imperial subjects will be short lives of suffering, brutality, parasites, deprivation, disease and hunger clawing in their guts. This is after all right and proper, as sinful man must be made to suffer for his unforgivable transgressions tenthousand years ago and more. Burn the present to repent of past ashes.

Surely this is not the pinnacle of profound lunacy, but the fruit of wisdom.

In the grim darkness of the far future, man knows nought but hardship. It is only natural, then, that he makes a virtue out of necessity, and thus praise those who can endure misery the most. Tales of the drawn-out deaths of martyrs are told from end to end of the Milky Way galaxy. As humans huddle around campfires on feral worlds and electro-heaters on voidholms, they all tell legends of great heroes who were able to bear suffering without end in order to win through in the end, and usually also sacrifice themselves in the process. This natural respect for hardiness is further amplified by Imperial propaganda, who challenges ordinary Imperial subjects to tough it up and endure their miserable drudgery, lest they face the hellfires of purgatory for the sake of their craven weakness and baleful complaints. Let none speak against the Emperor!

Many are the sagas told about survival against the odds, in adventures that test the hardiest of humans to the limit. These myths ring all the more true because every man, woman and juve can see with their own eyes so very many people who suffer grievously, and yet carry on for the sake of duty and survival. One such example of dogged tenacity can be found in the case of Guardsman Tanlung Xiaoyuan of the Hanxian 9677th Light Infantry regiment during the Fourth Scouring of Kaichu in 873.M39, on the civilized world of Khuc Nghe in the Pahlavi sector of Segmentum Obscurus.

Following the declaration of independence of the mineral-rich region of Kaichu in 867.M39, the Planetary Defence Force of Khuc Nghe had repeatedly failed to bring the rebellious province cluster to heel. Since the embarrassment could not be solved swiftly by local forces, the Planetary Governor of Khuc Nghe, Quoc-Despot Nguyen Bao Suu, had no choice but to call for Imperial aid and reveal the Kaichuan revolt as the primary explanation for his lacklustre meeting of the Imperial Tithe quotas. In response, the Adeptus Terra called on a lesser mustering of twohundredforty million Imperial Guardsmen to crush the fledgling separatist realm. After years of slowly amassing forces, mainly shipped in from offworld, and building up logistics and infrastructure to supply this Loyalist host, the Astra Militarum on Khuc Nghe was finally ready to bring the sledgehammer of the Imperium down upon the breakaway traitors.

Retardation of human cultures across the Milky Way galaxy had unravelled far enough under the High Lords of Terra that the Quoc-Despot dared not offer up truthful information about the performance of enemy forces in his previous failed Three Scourings. Instead, the terrified Planetary Governor Nguyen Bao Suu painted a false picture of his foe, dismissing them as a horde of bandits incapable of meeting the Emperor's soldiery in a standup fight. The cunning and ruthless guerilla warfare in the jungles of the Kaichu region could only be understood by reading between the lines with the precision of a scalpel in the Quoc-Despot's carefully manicured reports. Meanwhile, scouting reports from junior officers close to the Kaichuan borders went largely unheeded during the planning stage of the Fourth Scouring of Kaichu. Thus faulty intelligence left the massive Imperial army underprepared for the campaign at hand.

And so a disaster of gigantic proportions unfolded. The Imperial forces of the Astra Militarum and the Planetary Defence Force performed what they termed a self-defensive counterattack on the separatist region of Kaichu. Instead of a smashing victory, the Imperials had their heads handed to them by the separatists in a frenetic series of engagements that saw blood run in small rivers through jungle valleys, while yet more spilled life-fluid flooded terraced rice paddies. The body count was staggering, and as Imperial command and control fell to pieces, separatist coordination mounted in a flurry of blows that left hillocks of corpses behind, and ripped apart Imperial logistics in ambushes, harrassing skirmishes and hit-and-run attacks.

As ever more starving Imperial Guardsmen turned to desperate looting, desertion and cannibalism, unit cohesion largely broke down. Imperial high command eventually realized that they could not remain in enemy territory and claw their armies together while constantly embattled and undersupplied. And so the retreat was sounded, in order to salvage as much as possible of Imperial manpower and materiel, and regroup for regeneration of forces in friendly lands. This step was absolutely necessary, yet even so the Imperial withdrawal played into the Kaichuan separatists' hands.

Column after column of soldiers, porter slaves, draft animals and vehicles found that their rearguards and screening forces were inadequate for the task of protecting the main body of retreating force from the traitors' shattering assaults. Entire divisions vanished in the jungle, never to be seen again, and plundered arms from the Departmento Munitorum's arsenals were swiftly turned upon Loyalist soldiers. Millions of Guardsmen and PDF troopers broke ranks and ran for the hills in a desperate attempt to save themselves, for surely the foe could not catch so many fleeing soldiers all at once? In some districts the retreat turned into a rout, yet worse yet was to come as small mobile groups of separatists on foot or riding mounts and dirtbikes hunted Imperial soldiers across the lush landscapes. Set traps were sprung, and civilians of all ages turned into militias laying ambushes for small groups of Imperial stragglers. And the screams of the damned could be heard everywhere across the verdant landscape.

Amid all this chaos, one infamous event took place when a veteran Guardsman sneered and remarked that the melting away of Imperial forces mirrored the worsening of His cosmic domains as a whole, only for the nearby Commissar to brandish his chainsword and angrily halt the march of his entire column in order to flay, abacinate, hang, draw and quarter the vile heretic corporal. This took place with an entire brigade of Haephosian Tritons watching the spectacle in order to take heed of the offender's grim fate, lest it befall them. This punishment, while not too extraordinary by draconian Imperial standards, was ill timed to the hilt. The halting of the column was meant to restore morale by setting an example, yet instead it allowed Kaichuan forces to focus on destroying nearby Imperial units in retreat, only to then turn in full strength on the lonely, stranded brigade and massacre every last Loyalist found there. All of the Tritons died, except for the captured Imperial Commissar and the half-dead Haephosian heretic, both of whom were put to use in Kaichuan vox-propaganda after some tortuous encouragement.

The prime example of human endurance and perseverance during the collapsing Fourth Scouring of Kaichu may be found threehundred kilometres to the southeast of the flayed corporal and captured Commissar. Here, we found the Hanxian 9677th Light Infantry regiment, hailing from a recently ritually purged society where all doubters and deviants from the Emperor's true path had been cleansed in fire and violence and famine. As per Hanxian practice, the light infantrymen had a reputation as good infiltrators and excellent fighters in mountains and forests, yet in the Kaichuan jungles they were overmatched by the highly experienced separatist guerillas, who utilized their knowledge of local terrain to the fullest. And thus the Imperial bushwackers attempted and failed to bushwack the traitors.

The Hanxian military was characterized by a pure adherence to the dogma of the Cult Imperialis, just as all of Hanxian society was permeated by an anxious wish to publicly profess and demonstrate your loyalty to the Throneworld of Holy Terra. In regiments teeming with hidden informants, the offworlder Imperial Commissars of the Officio Prefectus found company with local political officers in the shape of Zhengwei Watchers. These kept vigil over men and women armed mostly with the Valdessa Pattern Lasrifle Type-39R, with a collapsible bayonet. It was adorned with a faux wood handguard made out of bakelite, and this cheap weapon was the pride of the Hanxian Light Infantry, who praised trusty ironsights marksmanship over withering firepower. The use of optic sights had long since disappeared as standard kit due to cutbacks.

The Hanxians had a phrase of their own to describe the prized virtue of persistence: Chi ku, meaning to eat bitterness. Said as a compliment to hardy folks able to bite away pain in silence, these dirt soldiers were leathery dog faces mired in suffering and endurance. In the neverending misery that characterize soured human cultures in the Age of Imperium, man may at least aspire to duty and sacrifice. Imperial soldiers tend to be lean, solid dogs. Most of them are short due to malnutrition, and a great many are constantly infested by parasites. The Hanxians were certainly no exception to this rule. As light infantry, they sported a high degree of aggression and initiative, a combination that always draw suspicion from Imperial authorities, who prefer regimented corpse discipline. The Hanxian Light Infantry trained constantly for stealth and persistence, both of which qualities would be put to the test by the Kaichuan separatists.

The Hanxian 9677th Light Infantry regiment was tasked with covering the withdrawal of the 18th Imperial Guard Army on Khuc Nghe. They were supposed to give the retreating Army breathing room to bring the main troop body and baggage train safely back south. This screening force got strung out, and then chopped up into sections akin to a log cut into handy firewood pieces. Thereupon the Hanxian 9677th Light Infanty regiment was thoroughly defeated in detail by the separatist forces, all the time bleeding groups of Guardsmen booking it for the sticks.

In the field cook Tanlung Xiaoyuan's case he ended up in a body of thirty Guardsmen who had gotten isolated from their comrades. They were taking mortar fire that kept them pinned down and sleepless through the night. This group of Hanxians had good cause to believe that in the morning they would be overrun by an enemy attack. Thus, shortly before the rosy-fingered break of dawn, the Hanxian soldiers were given orders to fold out bayonets and launch a desperate breakout attack.

By this anticipated move, the Imperials unwittingly played straight into the hands of the traitors, in a scene repeated all across the warzone. The breakout attack did not even get underway before the Hanxian Loyalists were jumped by the Kaichuan separatists, who had bushwacked them expertly.

In the tumult of battle, Tanlung Xiaoyuan became involved in melee combat. The Hanxian military prided itself at proficiency in hand-to-hand combat, like so many other Astra Militarum regiments, and Tanlung the cook proved good enough to survive. He evaded one bayonet thrust from a man who charged at him, and managed to throw a butcher's cleaver into the thigh of another Kaichuan combatant. Tanlung then tried to angle off and make his escape, only to turn and run into an autogun butt that knocked him out cold.

By the grace of His Divine Majesty, Guardsman Tanlung was left for dead among the corpses of his fallen comrades. When he eventually came to, the hardy Loyalist was able to slip away under cover without being observed by enemy looters and mutilators. In the ensuing hours, he linked up with several other stragglers, including his platoon lieutenant Murong Jian and company Zhengwei Watcher Qifu De. This gaggle of Loyalist survivors attempted to escape and evade. Their hope was not to creep alone through the bushes all the way back to friendly ground, but to join up as soon as possible with the main body of the Imperial column heading back south in supposedly good order. Such desire for finding strength in numbers became their undoing.

The separatist forces pursued all surviving Imperial stragglers with ferocious energy, hounding them and beating the bushes with blades and sticks and rifle butts for hiding Loyalists. The sneaking survivors in Tanlung's group became witnesses to how there was barely any difference between civilian men, women and juves out in the villages on the one hand, and separatist militia fighters on the other. Hiding in the woods, the Hanxians saw how villagers, including children, brought down and tormented lone Imperial Guardsmen to their deaths.

At one point, the Imperial survivors needed to make a decision. They could either break cover and make a dash over open land to try to get to the muddy road, where they were hoping to still find the rearguard of the 18th Imperial Guard Army, as argued by the Zhengwei Watcher Qifu De. Or they could try to escape and evade on their own and navigate their way south into Imperial-held territory, keeping to concealment and just depending on their own wits to survive, which the lieutenant Murong Jian meant was the best path for them to tread, and also in spirit with the independently improvizing light infantry traditions of Hanxi. The political officer overruled the junior officer, and thus the first path was chosen. After all, if the Enthroned One willed it, then they would live.

The Emperor protects!

This mad dash across open terrain to try and rejoin with the main body of retreating Imperial troops proved a high risk plan that fell flat. The troop element got cornered, and several Hanxians fell dead before the rest found cover. In keeping with Hanxian Light Infantry doctrine of volunteering for danger, Tanlung told the lieutenant and Zhengwei Watcher that he would make a break for it to create a diversion. He would draw the foe's fire and try to link up with his brothers in arm again later. The officers had no chance to even object, since Tanlung bolted as soon as he had spoken, disappearing through bushes with enemy lasbolts and slug shots whipping after him.

Tanlung Xiaoyuan broke cover and ran as hard as he could through rice paddies, bounding through a smattering of incoming projectiles and jumping over rickety fences to the astonishment of labouring villagers. One lead shot hit home in Tanlung's right buttock, drilling in with eye-watering pain. The field cook stopped for nothing. The Hanxian ran hard and zig-zagged frantically until he made it to cover, while his comrades crept away discreetly.

Tanlung crawled and hid and made his way through the jungle undergrowth in a direction that he guessed might let him rejoin the other stragglers. In the dark of the night, his guesswork proved correct, as he stumbled upon the slaughtered corpses of his comrades in a small glade. Realizing that he would have to make it back to Imperial lines on his own, Tanlung rummaged through the gear of the fallen Imperial Guardsmen. The enemy had obviously plundered the corpses of all lucre, weapons, ammunition and rations, yet trinkets did remain about their mutilated bodies. Tanlung the cook festooned himself with amulets and votive charms for luck and divine protection, and then covered their bright colours and shining metal parts in soot and watery mud to make them blend somewhat into the jungle foliage. Lastly, Tanlung cut off the head of the political officer Qifu De and bound it to his waistbelt.

With a pounding heart, Tanlung cleared up his own blood trail and crept into a small cave in a hillside, where he could rest during daylight and tend to his wound. The first thing that met Tanlung in the cave was a frag-grenade about to go off, making his heart skip a beat, but fortunately it turned out to just be a dud. Since Tanlung was harried by searchers looking for him and other scattered Imperial soldiers, he stayed hidden in the small cave for two days.

And searchers did enter the cave, looking for Imperials like Tanlung. The Hanxian cook had camouflaged himself as best as he could according to standard light infantry training. He fully expected to be discovered by the separatists. Since Tanlung was certain that he was going to be found by the foe's search team in the cave, he thus sat ready to sell his life dearly with weapon in hand, but fortunately the enemy scouts were not thorough in their search-work and therefore missed him. Tanlung was surprised to have gone undiscovered, and he mouthed a silent prayer of thanks to the Master of Mankind and the judge of our souls.

Ave Imperator.

When he felt certain that the enemy search party must have long since left the area, Tanlung started ripping his clothes to bandages as he tried as best as possible to patch up his buttock wound, which is indeed a hard place to bandage. Like most Imperial Guardsmen, Tanlung lacked any medical supplies in his Munitorum-issued kit such as disinfectants or anaesthetics, yet the crafty Xiaoyuan knew of an old folk cure.

Tanlung unpacked a can of salt, which was part of his issued supplies as the field cook of the mess squad, namely a Hanxian unit charged both with growing, procuring and cooking food for the company, including keeping and feeding swine. Packing wounds with salt was an old school technique for first aid, meant to cure the tissue akin to salt curing ham. Pressing salt into wounds produced acute pain and dehydrated many infectious microbes, yet was also of dubious use since certain bacteria could become stronger due to their resistance to salinity. Tanlung instead mixed salt with precious drinking water and used it to cleanse the buttock wound, grimacing quietly in the cave as he did so.

After treating his wound with salt water, Tanlung bandaged it as best as he could, only to later discover that the wound had become infested by maggots. Ironically, said maggots may have saved the Hanxian Guardsman from septic shock and worse infections, and so the Emperor and His venerated Saints held their hands over the dogged Imperial soldier during his travails.

After two days of hiding in the cave, the thirsty Loyalist emerged after dusk and started wandering and crawling through the jungle and across clearings close to farming settlements. Hanxian Light Infantry regiments were well trained for long, tough overland marching, and crawling were a staple of theirs. Arduous movement over rough terrain and under concealment was a specialty of the soldiers of Hanxi. One of the first things recruits were put through after basic military indoctrination was to be loaded with rucksacks and heavy gear, and then marched around for weeks in order to get accustomed to rucking in the wilds. This training occured well ahead of any weaponry practice. A light infantryman who was unable to conduct long marches was a useless soldier in the eyes of the Hanxian officer corps.

The ideal Hanxian Guardsman could make his own way, as an army of one if necessary. He received training for cover and concealment, and became inured to rucking and forced marches, becoming used to suffering and grinding on despite the pain. Accordingly, Tanlung Xiaoyuan made his way mostly by night over the course of a week, moving under cover of darkness, and he crawled for a large part of his strenuous journey. Tanlung gritted his teeth as skin was bit, pinched and flayed off his legs and arms by all the irritants and dangers of the tropical woods. He remembered enough of the planetary briefing prior to worldfall on Khuc Nghe to follow the southern pole star, which was of critical importance for his survival.

And so cheap Munitorum clothes rotted away to scant rags in the jungle. The last time Tanlung had eaten a meal was together with the late Imperial stragglers, before he had run off as a diversion. When he could, he would eat edible plants, grubs and immature fruits, but his body's nasty reactions to much of the local Kaichuan flora, fauna and microbial culture soon turned the Hanxian man cautious with his roughneck food experimentation.

Many times did Tanlung observe from afar how the enemy was ferreting out Imperial stragglers, hunting fleeing Loyalists and uncovering hiding Guardsmen left and right across the landscape. The local Kaichuan population joined in the pursuit enthusiastically as they avenged recent Imperial atrocities, and every single peasant man, woman and child could be assumed to be part of the separatist militia, or at least sympathetic to it. Impaled corpses and maimed body parts hanging from trees could be seen every day during Tanlung's hellcrawl south.

Tanlung Xiaoyuan was too afraid to approach enemy farming settlements, and so he starved for a week. His field cook baggage contained a can of salt, which proved crucial in sustaining the sweating man on his arduous journey back to Imperial lines.

Guardsman Tanlung quickly ran out of water. The crawling Hanxian had listened attentively when the Imperial soldiery had been told that the Kaichuan guerillas would have poisoned clean water sources across the warzone in order to kill Imperials fleeing or infiltrating through the jungle. A such, the tenacious man drank only rain water from puddles and rice paddies, and thus became scourged by dysentery which emptied his guts. For all his hunger pangs and for all the filthy water running straight through his body, at least Tanlung had blessed salt. And he praised the God-Emperor of Holy Terra for it, prostrating himself in the mud whilst making the sign of the Aquila over his chest. There he knelt, mumbling mantras in adoration over the bountiful protection afforded him by the Master of Mankind seated in radiant glory upon the Golden Throne of hallowed myth, from which He judged the sinful and craven souls of mankind with harsh justice. Hallowed be His name.

The escaping field cook crawled through thorny bushes and alien dropstalks. He was harrowed by irritant mosquitoes and strange fauna alike. Sometimes, his scratched skin or raw flesh was pricked by blood-sucking fangplants, and he became infected with all manner of parasites and harmful microbes. He struggled to contain his coughing when his lungs became annoyed or outright poisoned by fungal spores and bloomemyst.

At one time, the pious Loyalist almost ran into a couple of local peasants who herded a tame grox along. The peasants happened to walk straight for Tanlung's hideout, and surely the olfactory organs of the grox would have revealed the Hanxian offworlder even if human eyes might have missed him by inches in the undergrowth. Thinking fast, the Imperial soldier picked up a stone and flung it onto the scaly side of the grox, who snarled and changed direction. The chitchatting peasants did not see the tossed stone and simply followed along with the animal, thus missing the hiding Imperial Guardsman by mere metres.

By the grace of Him on Terra, Tanlung proved both fortunate and cunning enough to avoid traps. Every time before sleep came over him during the hellmarch, Tanlung would kiss his lucky charms and talismans and pray to the Emperor. The longer that the trek south continued, the less likely the Hanxian field cook seemed to succeed with his personal mission of survival, evasion, resistance and escape. Thirst and hunger and pain howled inside of him, yet Tanlung stoically ignored his own suffering. It was more important to live.

For the longest time, Tanlung Xiaoyuan avoided firefights in order to better his chances of sneaking out of enemy territory alive. Detection would mean death. Stealth and silence were his best shots at survival. Nevertheless, there was bloodshed after five days of crawling. As Tanlung crept out of the sticks to drink paddy water in the evening, he was discovered by a small guerilla patrol. The Imperial field cook grabbed his lasrifle and shot both of the enemy searchers, one of whom carried a lumen in the night. The light cone falling out of the dead man's hand illuminated a nearby family who happened to be bringing roasted food to the patrolling search team. Seeing the people freeze in fear, Tanlung the cook wasted not a moment on hesitation, but proceeded to murder all seven civilian witnesses, including four children, before making his escape into the jungle.

After more than a week of thirst and crawling, Tanlung found himself in a syphas field, glowing with bioluminescent capsules. Tanlung had been told by his captain that the syphas plant was not grown in the separatist region of Kaichu, and this made the sinewy field cook realize that he must have made it back to Imperial territory.

The harrowed man needed to make contact with Imperial forces without getting shot. After all, he looked terribly much like a separatist sapper. Tanlung waited with caution in the bushes for the next human being to pass by. It turned out to be a Hanxian Guardsman on patrol, to whom Tanlung hoarsely shouted over and over that he was an Imperial soldier from Hanxi. The startled Guardsman almost shot Tanlung on the spot, but held his nerve enough for identification at gunpoint to proceed. It turned out that Tanlung Xiaoyuan had long since been given up for dead by his own regiment. He was taken away for treatment by the Officio Medicae and was soon enough decorated by the famous Imperial Guard general Zhuang Wen with the Triple Skull medal, for having survived action as one of the last members of his entire company. God-Emperor above knew that the battered Imperial forces on Khuc Nghe dearly needed to hear an inspiring hero story.

Guardsman Tanlung Xiaoyuan was awarded the honorific title Warrior of Steel for having distinguished himself for the prized quality of persistence. This trait was was a cardinal cultural virtue, not only on Hanxi but on hundreds of thousands of planets, moons and voidholms throughout His Divine Majesty's astral dominion. Masses of Hanxian soldiers would flock around Tanlung and compliment him for his chi ku. He could really eat bitterness and tough things out. The cook had proved that he could quietly hang on doggedly through severe hardship. To be recognized for a feat of persistence in an army of persistence was indeed an incredible accomplishment.

Tanlung the cook embodied the Imperial ideal of a soldier able to endure any hardship. For all his travails he received a pustulous wound, thousands of insect bites, dysentery and undying fame in Imperial propaganda. Tanlung Xiaoyuan also received a week's worth of officers' ration packs during the hololithic and pict-capturing of a staged dramatized reconstruction of his heroic trek, produced for public consumption as a short reel to uphold morale and highlight the virtue of persistence and tenacity in bitter circumstances.

Both the reality and the pict-flick culminated with Tanlung being asked by his fellow Hanxian Guardsmen: "Why did you bring your weapons back? You of all people could have been excused for abandoning your gear to lighten the load. Why?"

When asked why on crust he had not dropped his arms and equipment, Tanlung explained that at the beginning of his trek, he had made a vow to the God-Emperor to bring all his wargear with him back to friendly lines, for he would return as a retreating soldier with all grenades, ammo packs and weapons still on his person, and not come back as an unarmed and fleeing deserter bereft of kit. It was a miracle that Tanlung had survived and returned at all, much less stubbornly hanging on to all his wargear. The hard-bitten Loyalist would come back as an armed soldier, or not at all.

And he succeeded in his quest.

As to the question of why he had carried along his Zhengwei Watcher's rotting and decapitated head, Tanlung answered that the political officer Qifu De sported an Aquila tattoo on his forehead, making it in effect a lucky talisman to better draw the all-protective Terran Imperator's gaze and lend the beleaguered retreating soldier some ounce of divine protection. And Tanlung Xiaoyuan would rather die than risk damaging the two-headed eagle tattoo by cutting away the forehead skin, and thus risk offending his saviour and lord, Domine Noster. Upon proclaiming this, Tanlung the cook knelt and gave loud praise to the God-Emperor of all mankind, and thanked both his pure species and celestial lord for granting this lowly man such hardiness and good fortune.

Truly, this was the doing of the Imperator.

In honour of Tanlung's renowned feat of persistence, the Hanxian high command summoned an Astropathic choir to reach farflung regiments and the homeworld itself. The high command declared that henceforth, all soldiers found retreating from the battlefield must carry their weapons and wargear with them, even if faulty and out of ammunition, or be executed as deserters. This decree would not only stand for fellow Hanxians returning back to their lines, but would also mean death to any unarmed survivor Guardsmen from other worlds and voidholms encountered by Hanxian soldiers. Truly, Tanlung had been inspired by the Radiant Deity's heavenly light, and so we faithful sacrificers must follow the path enlightened to us by He who dwells on the face of Terra. After all, to throw away your weapon is to throw away your life. Doubt not, and slay the unworthy shirker and coward for the moral betterment of mankind. Only thus can virtuous eugenics be achieved. All in the name of our species and saviour on high.

Praise be to our glorious overlord!

Ave Imperatore Dei!

And so the constant degradation of technological hardware, knowledge and morals continue apace in the Imperium of Man, as human interstellar civilization remains locked inside a fortfied madhouse, where its stagnant decay is ensured by the strong arm that is simultaneously both Imperial man's guardian and saviour, and insane gaoler and torturer.

For under the wise guidance of the High Lords of Terra, who claim to lead humanity under the direct guidance of the lord of hosts and leader of the people, we find that man is plagued by woes. And for what? For mere survival, in eternal hardship and amid ever bleaker prospects. Certainly not for a rejuvenation of human civilization betwixt the stars. And not for man climbing to new heights. No. All the suffering and sacrifice and heroic endurance amounts to nothing more than a drowning man treading water, as his stamina is slowly sapped away before he is inevitably dragged into utter darkness.

How depraved is man?

Certainly degenerate enough to visit upon his fellow man yet more suffering, in an endless cycle of broken people breaking other people. And in the Age of the Imperium, breaking that destructive cycle may well see you bodily broken apart for malcontent and deviant weakness.

For the Imperium is not a selfless guardian of the human species, but is itself a monster on the prowl. Ever hungry for prey. Ever eager to devour its own brood. And so we find the state of man to be deranged enough to make a heart of stone cry. Ancient man was a great and clever crafter of wonders and a bold explorer of the stars, yet now we find senile man sunk into myopic rage and atavistic decay during the nightmare epoch that is the Age of Imperium. For man has thrown away all his great potential to become a sacrificial lamb of sorrow, fit for the slaughter upon the altar.

Such is the well-being of our species, in a time beyond hope.

Such is the state of mankind, in the darkest of futures.

Such is the end that awaits us all.

It is the fortyfirst millennium, and there is only hardship.

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Based on the survival story of Xiao Jiaxi in 1979.