The Cannibal Wars of Old Foulnest Part 4: The Gathering

Madness, revolt and blood-thirst were burning their way through Foulnest like a fever. Domes and zones fell into ruin as Guild supply and maintenance withered. Gangers were driven to random murderous rampages by voices only they could hear. Shadows danced without lumenlight to cast them. Twisting shapes skittered in peripheral vision. In every downhiver's gut, like a lode of knotty slag, pulsed the constant urge: kill.

End times are fine times for a Redemptionist, and once again, the Middenmans were looking for converts. Salvation-Shall-Verily-Be-Paid-For-In-Blood took up his hammer of nails and led a crew of Cawdors into the wilder tunnels and domes, seeking lost hivers who might be won over to the faith. They didn't have to search long: above a yawning ,haunted chasm in the E-Sec badzones, a cluster of refugees, abject folk who'd fled the violence in Foulnest core, had set up a temporary camp on a network of walkways and platforms. Just the sort of desperate lowlives who might heed the holy word.

Salvation was accompanied by Inexorable-Is-His-Judgement, Revulsion-Is-Thine-Armour and young Abhorrance-Begetteth-Purity, and the Middenmans spread out, scuttling along the walkways and calling out to the hivers with words of faith and fellowship – best to make a good first impression at a distance, before getting close and inflicting the Cawdor stench on the hivers' noses.

'Hear this, ye lost and ye damned! Devils do gnash at thine ankles, and the House Imperial offers nowt but false hope, but the Holy Redemption can save ye yet!'

Revulsion fared well, as two of the hivers rushed to his side, gabbling thanks. But, as always in the Underhive, there was a complication: screams rang out across the chasm, along with the snap of fine-tuned gunfire.

The Middenmans looked across the gap and saw figures in sleek blue armour, moving with measured grace: the Inglorious Bastards, a Van Saar crew, accompanied by two ammo jacks. They looked to be advancing on the hiver refugees and liquidating them with brutal precision – was this some calculated cull, a cogitator-born, strategically-advantageous action? Or had the Van Saars succumbed to the madness afflicting Foulnest? Hard to say, and, in the end, of little import. The Bastards were slaughtering the hivers, and all the Middenmans could do was lead as many as possible to salvation.

Inexorable and Abhorrence had split off from their fellows and were attempting to round up hivers on one side of the chasm.

'Come, brother! Ye shall find sanctuary in the Middenkirk!' cried Inexorable at a nearby dreg, but before he could say more, a burst of bolterfire from one of the Bastard ammojacks took him out of the fight. Abhorrence panicked and dropped off the walkway, clinging spiderlike to the support struts below.

Back at the chasm edge, Salvation was guiding one of the hivers to an exit tunnel, where he was met by reinforcements from among his brethren, but the veteran saw little value in prolonging the fight. 'Nay, brothers! Stay thine arms and take these converts back to the kirk! Yon Van Saars fight without mercy, and live converts are worth more than dead Middenmans!'

As if to underscore the point, on the far side of the chasm, Abhorrence-Begetteth-Purity had traversed the support struts and clambered back onto the walkway to strike at the foes from behind, but the Bastards' spex-net was tight: one of the ammo jacks, alerted to the juve' presence, turned and shot Abhorrence dead.

Salvation hammered out a code-beat on the walkway before him, and it resounded across the chasm. Pity-Not-The-Recidivist muttered a curse – he'd just set the second ammo jack alight with an incendiary bomb – but he knew to obey the Middenmans' retreat signal, and backed away to join his fellows, ducking Van Saar gunfire as he fled.

The road back was uneventful; never mind the uncanny chittering and inexplicable whispers that echoed through the transit shafts and ventways. But none of the Middenmans – not Salvation, not Pity, not Revulsion nor the rest – could have anticipated the scene that awaited them at the Middenkirk.

Unstinting-Is-His-Vengeance lay smouldering before the kirk entrance, his ragged robes blackened. He was face down, laughing, blood and spittle dripping between his jagged teeth. Above him towered Torment-Eternal-For-The-Unworthy, brandishing his scrap-built flamer like a holy relic.

'By the Throne!' gasped Salvation, 'What's all this?'

'A vision was gifted unto me,' growled Torment, grim-faced, 'while I squatted at the privy. I carry this holy flame, do I not?'

There was muttered assent from the assembled Middenmans.

'And is not the holy flame the most blessed tool of Redemption?'

Again, mumbles of agreement.

'Then by Holy Terra, it falls to me to lead the Middenmans, and this I made plain to Unstinting-Is-His-Vengeance here, speaking unto him with a tongue of fire.'

Not a Middenman there could fault Torment's line of thought, but they looked uneasily at their fallen leader.

'It is true!' grinned Unstinting, hoarsely. 'I have seen the light! He who holdeth the flame is the one to lead us!'

This was enough for the Middenmans, who erupted with cheers and salutations in honour of their new scrap-boss.

This was not the only change in leadership amonst the gangs of Foulnest that shift – rebellion was stealing its way into the hearts of gangers across the zone, borne on the unseen , insidious tides of the empyrean. Madness, revolt, blood-thirst were all burning their way through Foulnest like a fever. And when the fever broke, a new shift would ensue: pure, desperate survival. A war in the ruins. Perfect Chaos.

The Cannibal Wars of Old Foulnest Part 3: Possession is Nine Tenths of the War

Scandal ripped through the Middenmans' ranks when they discovered that it was business as usual in the drinking holes and shimmy-clubs of Foulnest. Didn't these damned downhivers know that the end of the world was nigh? A crew of true believers was duly dispatched to hit the off-shift spots and preach the temperant word of the True Redemption. Perhaps a few converts could be won over to the cause.

And so, Salvation-Shall-Verily-Be-Paid-For-In-Blood Middenman led three of his brothers into Foulnest core to Sumpways, the most infamous den of debauchery in the zone. What the Cawdors didn't know was that three xenos-tainted crews – the Guiding Claw, Kreel's Ascent and Doctor Nostrox and his twisted minions – had had the same idea, and were approaching the club at just the same moment.

The Middenmans paused in an access corridor outside the main club hall, grimacing at the pulsing bass notes thrumming through the walls. Salvation had Repent-Lest-Thou-Be-Truly-Damned work the nearest door, which scraped open, revealing the swirling revelry beyond. The lumens were dim, and a pall of chemmy smoke hung in the air. Drunk downhivers of all persuasions staggered and reeled to the grinding sounds being piped through on clusters of vox units clamped around the walls.

'Such sin! Wanton sin!' cried Repent, and brandished his blunderbuss-polearm. 'Yon foul folk deserve a burning!'

'Lower thy weapon, my brother,' said Salvation. 'We're here to redeem these poor fellows, to persuade them.'

'And if they don't listen?' asked Pity-Not-The-Recidivist, knowing full well the answer.

'Then we burn them,' confirmed Salvation. 'Forward, my brothers!'

The Middenmans stepped into the club, words of devotion on their chapped, sore-crusted lips. Those downhivers nearby who could hear over the music turned towards them – some stimm-addled and curious, others clearly intent on expelling these hooded killjoys.

Salvation strode to the nearest reveller – the Cawdor's heavy hammer of welded spikes deterred any resistance – and began preaching. Perhaps it was the drugs, perhaps this sorry soul really was ready for Redemption – he seemed well ready to listen to the good word.

But Pity-Not-The-Recidivist had clocked trouble.

'Brother,' he said to Revulsion-Is-Thine-Armour, 'Look yonder. There be muties in this house.'

The three xenos-cult crews were moving in across the murky hall, accosting revellers as they went. At the far end, it looked like a firefight was breaking out between two of them.

'Aye,' nodded Revulsion. 'Look at these nearest. Those Guiding Claw wrongbones we fought back at – Throne preserve us!'

This last exclamation as something uncanny happened to one of the Guiding Claw. He looked to be the leader and, as he'd raised a hand to his temple and bowed slightly, seemingly attempting some wychwork, his whole body had convulsed and an eerie red glow had blossomed about him. Now, he was rearing up, his eyes burning with infernal fire, tendrils of strange energy enveloping his twoste frame. He was moving, stroboscopically and with terrifying jerks, straight towards the

Middenmans.

It befalls the true servants of the Redemprion to battle the diabolical and daemonic in all its guises. But any Middenman will tell you that a battle cannot be fought if you've been rended limb from limb.

'Brothers!' yelled Revulsion. 'Yon mutie has been possessed by daemon foul! Retreat!'

His fellows needed no persuading, and scuttled back through the doorway. As the portal eased shut, they glimpsed the posssessed Claw tearing into the revellers. The music had cut out, replaced by panicked screams.

The Middenmans paused in the corridor. The screams continued, albeit muffled, and were accompanied by thumps, thuds, and the unmistakable sound of tearing flesh. An unearthly, polyphonic chittering accompanied the uproar.

Several clicks passed. And then a few clicks more.

The sounds subsided. There was still uproar in the club, but nothing more than the noise of a standard underhive battle.

'Fie, brothers,' intoned Salvation, mustering his resolve. 'What are we, scared sumprats?'

His words inspired his companions. The Middenmans hit the door and re-entered the club.

Inside the carnage had only intensified, with chemmed-up hivers either bleeding out on the floor or staggering about, this time more through injury than inebriation. Small blessings – the possessed Claw was burnt out and had collpased to the deck in the middle of the chamber. Beyond that, Kreel's Ascent and Nostrox's crew were locked in bloody combat, bullets and blows flying desperately even as both sides tried to coax hivers to join them in the fight.

Revulsion took a direct hit from a Guiding Claw sniper, and went down, but, with their leader out of the fight following his untimely possession, this mutie crew's appetite for battle was waning. They withdrew from the club with a handful of converts.

The Middenmans set about putting the good word to all in the vicinity, hoping to make the most of the Nostroxians' and Kreelites' mutual distraction. Repent and Pity did what they could, but Salvation's preaching proved most effective – soon, he had a cluster of five bombed-out hivers gathered around him.

'Look ye!' he cried. 'Look at the wages of sin! Carry on with thine evil ways and ye shall be beset by the daemon and made a puppet of the Wrong Gods! Only True Redemption can save ye! The end of the world is upon us, and thy mortal soul is in-'

'Uh, my brother,' said Repent, tugging on Salvation's ragged sleeve. 'Look yonder.'

Across the hall, Doctor Nostrox and his twisted crew had driven off Kreel's minions and were advancing, bolstered by a crowd of glassy-eyed hivers.

Like any son of House Cawdor, Salvation knew full well when to settle for the scraps in hand and run.

'With me, my new brethren! To the Middenkirk, and True Redemption!'

The Middenmans fled the zone, escaping the looming clutches of Doctor Nostrox.

By the next shift, five new converts knelt before the altar of the Middenkirk and swore alliegence to House Cawdor and the Holy Redepmtion. In time, perhaps some of them would be entrusted to take up arms as full-blooded Middenmans. The more, the merrier with dark times afoot.

The Cannibal Wars of Old Foulnest Part 2: Burn, Burn, Burn

Abhorrence-Begetteth-Purity Middenman's finger was twitching on the trigger of his autopistol. There were heretics to be killed, just beyond this door. Worse than heretics – these Carrion boys were recidivist Cawdor, house traitors who'd renounced the Holy Redemption for unspeakable idols. The Middenmans' ambush was an act of righteous glory.

'They're just yonder, I feels it,' yapped Abhorrence. 'When do we strike?'

'Be calm, lad,' said Scourge-Thyself-For-Thine-Sins Middenman, clutching his longrifle with reverend care. 'The purging fire's best bestowed with a cold heart.'

Abhorrence bit his lip and nodded at his elder's words. Scourge addressed the third of their company, Repent-Lest-Thou-Be-Damned Middenman.

'Repent, I shall open yon door. Once I've done so, scurry forth and fire upon the first traitor thee sees.'

The ganger nodded with a grimace. He'd just finished stuffing purgation shot down the barrel of his pole-mounted blunderbuss. Scourge stepped to the door and raised a grime-gloved hand to the access panel.

'Remember, brothers – whatsoe'r haps next is the Emprah's will.'

He activated the panel. The door hissed open.

Across the dome, Blessed-Are-The-Abject Middenman, a juve newly initiated, clutched his rusty stub gun with trembling hands, and his two ganger fellows took note.

'Fret thee not,' said Redeemed-Are-The-Abased , 'We'll blast these sinners down to the sump.'

'Aye, or die trying!' said Inexorable-Is-His-Judgement, brandishing his pistols. He winked at the juve, which didn't have much of a reassuring effect given the ganger's rictus-grin mask and missing eye.

This trio of Middenmans were at another blast door. The space around them showed signs of extensive scrap-stripping: what once must have been a network of tunnels beneath the domefloor had had its ceiling torn away and was exposed to the open space above. They'd had to creep stealthily to avoid being spotted by the Carrion's snipers in a mid-dome tower.

'Are ye ready, then?' said Redeemed, polearm-autogun in hand. His comrades nodded, and he reached for the door control.

Meanwhile, the last of the gang were in position on the far side of the dome, having worked their way around to set a noose-like trap for the recidivists. Here, Shriven-Are-The-Rancorous Middenman checked and re-checked his stub pistol. The juve was determined to acquit himself well as he'd be fighting alongside the underboss himself, Unstinting-Is-His-Vengeance, and Torment-Eternal-For-The-Unworthy, carrier of the holy flamer.

'Wait for it, my sons, wait...' grinned Unstinting, 'When those filthy sinners are distracted by our boys, we'll rush round yon corner and bring hell to them...'

Shriven smiled and nodded. Torment, ever serious,grimly lit the candle mounted on the nozzle of his flamer.

Back across the dome, Repent-Lest-Thou-Be-Damned did as he was told: leaping through the open doorway, he aimed his blunderbuss at the only Carrion ganger in sight, who lurked atop a bulkhead wall. The ganger screeched and dropped, set ablaze.

Repent turned and called his gangmates onwards. Scourge was stepping forwards when a second door, leading to the dome centre, opened, revealing three more Carrion fighters. One of them levelled his pole-mounted flamer at the Middenmans and let rip with a torrent of flame that engulfed Repent and Scourge. Abhorrence dived aside and somehow managed to avoid the blast even as flames took hold of his brethren.

Hearing the commotion, Unstinting gave the command: 'Forward, Torment! In the Emprah's name!'

Torment-Eternal-For-The-Unworthy rushed around the corner and into the tox-tainted open space at the foot of the tower. He was behind the Carrion fighters who'd just ambushed Scourge and his crew, and had a fine shot. He squeezed the trigger of his flamer – the flameburst scorched the nearest Carrion out of the fight, but the two nearest Repent were merely singed. Torment heard an ullulating scream, a battle cry, and suddenly found himself fending off blows from a Carrion who'd been lurking in the shadows.

Unstinting, closely followed by Shriven, was rushing to his ganger's aid. As he rounded the corner, the underboss glanced around, his scrapper's eye taking in the scene in a flash. The top of the tower was shrouded in murky, ominous smoke, and Carrion boss Corvus had scuttled downdome, away from the action. No matter. Redeemed and his boys would cut him off and take him out. And there were more immediate matters to attend to.

Chainglaive roaring, Unstinting-Is-His-Vengeance charged towards the Carrion assailing Torment. The blade swung down and the teeth bit deep, taking the cultist out of the fight.

Shriven-Are-The-Rancorous looked on in awe at his leader's ferocity – blessed are the reclaimed weapons of house Cawdor! Unstinting, his jag-toothed grin broader than ever, turned to address the juve, but there was a sudden chatter of gunfire from the smoky tower. Shriven's awe turned to horror as Unstinting and Torment dropped to the deck, riddled with auto rounds. He took a tentative step towards his downed elders, but then clocked another Carrion on the steps below the tower. Perhaps it was pragmatic threat response, perhaps it was blind fury – Shriven-Are-The-Rancorous charged towards the Carrion fighter, screaming for vengeance.

At the far end of the central zone, beyond a massive, dark pit in the domefloor, Redeemed-Are-The-Abased and his crew were advancing. Inexorable-Is-His-Judgement squinted with his good eye, spotting someone lurking behind a rusty barricade up ahead.

'By the Throne! That's Corvus himself cowering there!' cried Inexorable, darting forwards. Blessed-Are-The-Abject followed, ignoring Redeemed's warning to hold back.

Inexorable got as close as he dared – Corvus was as famed as Unstinting for his skill with a chainglaive – and raised his stubber and autopistol. Perhaps he'd have made the shots if he'd still had both his eyes, but the shells rattled off the barricade.

Blessed's clumsy shot fared similarly, and the three Middenmans paid the price as Corvus stepped from behind the barricade, drew his hand flamer, and rained fire them all.

Elsewhere, the fight was going equally badly as the Middenmans' ambush turned into a blazing rout. Abhorrence-Begetteth-Purity looked on aghast as Repent-Lest-Thou-Be-Damned staggered to his feet, still smouldering, only to be cut down by swarming Carrion gangers.

Abhorrence at last got to exercise his trigger finger, but in his desperation missed wildly and hit the still-burning Scourge-Thyself-For-Thine-Sins with a shot that popped the veteran's kneecap open.

The Carrion cawed and hollered, breaking into a wild jig as they savoured the prospect of victory.

Even a Cawdor juve knows when to run. Abhorrence and Shriven did what they could to smother the flames and drag their comrades out of the dome. It was too late for Torment and Repent, who would bleed out before they could reach a doc.

Still, Corvus seemed content to let his rivals go, having done enough to appease his dark god. 'Run, corpse worshippers! Run and tell your fellows how the Carrion cut up! Our mistress is no stranger to waiting, and we'll dance on your entrails yet!'

The fires burned bright and bloody that shift, even as the shadows of Foulnest turned ever darker and colder.

The Cannibal Wars of Old Foulnest Part 1: The Augury

Behold the Middenkirk: a rustbound munitorum container unit whose contents are hallowed and untouched even though it has been dragged from one end of E-Sec to the other over the long cycles. Inside, sputtering, stinking tallow candles cluster on lopsided ossuary stacks, and shadows flex and twist around the empty skulls and yellowed bones of Middenmans past. Dry sump-muck cakes the floor, and rat carcases crack underfoot – the stench is foul even by Cawdor standards – but it is forbidden to remove from the junk-kirk any item that comes to rest there. In pride of place is the altar, a crude assembly of dead archaeotech that not even the Iron Guild will touch, crowned by a long-dead cogitator unit. Its screen is blank, but Middenman lore holds that the founding fathers of the gang there beheld a vision: the Emprah Himself spoke through the unit, and bestowed the holy mission of reclamation upon the gang.

Now, the kirk stands in a dank warehouse down at Dogsump Docks, and Unstinting-Is-His-Vengeance Middenman, Cawdor underlord, kneels before the altar and contemplates the events of the last shift-cycle. He is baring his jagged, gappy teeth in a lopsided grin, for the recent carnival of spontaneous violence - extreme even by Old Foulnest standards - is written in the scrap-divination that is laid out before the altar. He cast the scrimshawed bones and rusty junk trinkets, and spattered the fallen pieces with the throat-cut blood of a toxy rat. And now he sees what has happened, and what will come next.

At his left knee, the past: a speckling of blood across a twisted bolt, plans gone awry, denoting the ill-judged mission Unstinting had entrusted to Pity-Not-The-Recidivist and three of the brethren. They were supposed to preach temperance at a filthy drinking hole, but had instead copiously imbibed blindsnake and started a brawl with the Guiding Claw, who feign piety but tolerate the taint of mutation. Inexorable-Is-His-Judgement and Shriven-Are-The-Rancorous had lost an eye apiece in the fight, between them offering the a sacrifice of sight to the Emprah.

There also, a rusted corner of plating stamped with High Gothique, turned upside down. Here was the law in reverse, denoting the corrupt Enforcer who Salvation-Shall-Be-Paid-For-In-Blood and three Middenmans had ambushed. The lawman's bodyguards, more false-faith muties of Kreel's Ascent, could not save him from the faith and fury of the Middenmans. But the wrong-way plating signified another reversal: life and death, for Salvation paid a fatal price for victory. Unstinting commended his loyal follower's soul to Him-On-Terra.

Next, an overstretched coil of metal, now useless as a spring but surely signifying the overweening ambition of Pity-Not-The-Recidivist, who'd attempted to raid a storehouse belonging to C-Section, those grasping Enforcers who had so often claimed the choicest archaeotech from the Middenmans' salvage hauls. The curve of the coil reflected how the raid had gone awry, but Unstinting appreciated gangers' efforts, not to mention the head injury Pity had sustained, for which thanks must be given to the Golden Throne.

These emblems of the past lie close together, reflecting the sheer intensity of action during the shift cycle, but the bulk of the divinatory junk has fallen directly in front of Unstinting's knees, and speak dumbly of the present. The nuts, bolts, bones, teeth, rivets, nails – metal and finger – lie all in a jumble, piled up crossways and upended, spattered with a light shower of blood. Confusion and chaos. This confirms beyond doubt the rumours Unstinting has heard these past shifts: the fragile pax of Foulnest is fraying; unbridled violence is rising; incomers are stirring their gangmates to launch attacks unsanctioned by House overseers; other gangs new to the zone openly proclaim their loyalty to Wrong Gods; the Guilders are shutting their trading posts and retreating to fortified strongholds, or abandoning E-Sec altogether. An ill wind is blowing through the vents.

But it is when Unstinting turns to the scattered pieces at his right knee, which signify the future, that his heart leaps and he can barely stop himself from bursting into song with one of the old detritus devotionals. Here, the tox-thickened blood of the sacrificial rat rained down copiously, drenching the few trinkets that fell there. Even now, the blood is pooling and congealing in the crusty floor of the kirk, where it will remain forevermore as a marker of this blessed day. The future: lean cycles of hardship and meagre resources – so say the few trinkets. The future: a flood of violence and death – so says the abundance of rat blood. The future: suffering untold.

Unstinting-Is-His-Vengeance makes the sign of the aquila and bows solemnly, muttering a prayer, He carefully gathers up the tokens and trinkets and returns them to their rightful place on the altar. Then, he rises to his rough-shod feet and turns to leave the junk-kirk. He has good news for his Middenman brethren.

The end of the world is nigh.