Legacy of... - Official writing start

Legacy 13.4

Legacy of Fear

 Oh and yes, it is definitely a teaser. Maybe.

Surprisingly, there were a few incomplete truths in your ramblings, parasites.

I’m sure it was no accident.

This always was your favourite bait. You often tried to convince each and every of your future slaves that the galaxy was ever painted in shades of black, so that they will never notice there are spots of white and grey everywhere that you have done your best to snuff out.

I failed to be surprised by this once I was past my formative years.

You were liars, you are liars, and you will remain liars until your awful essences suffer the same annihilation Excess did.

You can stop these lies. I have grown used to ignore them, after all.

These new moves are not about the downfall of the Imperium.

This is not about vengeance, and it is not about underestimating or overestimating someone.

It is about the Legacy of Fear.

It is all about Fear.

It is one of your greatest weapons, one you unleashed for devastating outcomes since the dawn of Mankind and millions of years before that.

Fear after all will lead to panic, and if it lasts long enough, can birth Terror.

Of course, since you Four are not completely stupid, you did make sure to never go past that fateful threshold, didn’t you?

The Fear you controlled and created was more than enough for your purposes.

And to be truthful, it is not a bad calculus.

Fear was such a decisive weapon in past ages that it forced me to gene-forge the high psychic immunity the Adeptus Astartes are famous and infamous for.

Legionnaires of the thirtieth millennium, when they thought I couldn’t hear them, wondered what kind of flaws I had discovered in the Thunder Warriors that they thoroughly unsuitable for mass deployments away from Terra.

The arguments ranged from mental instability to the Space Marines being better soldiers and the Thunder Warriors being better warriors.

This was not completely false, but you, parasites, knew the truth.

The mental instabilities and the psychotic break-downs were not natural outcomes, but you trying to manipulate and destroy the Thunder Legions from the inside. You sowed Fear in their minds and souls, and little by little, you cracked down their inbuilt resistance to Chaos.

It is all about fear for you. It is how you convince your future slaves that you are the more tolerable evil in a dark galaxy.

It is the poisoned whisper that will collapse kingdoms and bring entire civilisations on the brink of precipice.

Fear of cowardice. Fear of stagnation. Fear of innovation. Fear of having your treacheries discovered. Fear of being bypassed for a promotion. Fear your superior will steal your achievements for himself. Fear of having your loved ones abandoning you. Fear of proving unable to fulfil your duties at the worse moment possible.

And then there is fear of Death.

It was never about the Imperium.

It is about your defeats, and how suddenly, the souls of the quadrillions of men, women, and children look at you, and have no fear in their hearts.

With every defeat and battle lost by your Warlords, the panic abates, and your baleful influence is weakened.

You want to crush the resurgent Hope before Fear is forever denied to you.

It is all the coming age of conflict is about.

You believe you can turn this status quo to your advantage, and progressively encircle the bastions of the Imperium in a suffocating tide of Fear.

But you have miscalculated.

Humans can assuredly still feel Fear.

This has never been in question.

But have you ever wondered why the same couldn’t apply to you, you malevolent parasites hiding in the hell pits of the Sea of Souls?

Tzeentch. Khorne. Nurgle. Malal.

You have forgotten what it is to feel fear for your existence.

I think a remedial lesson is in order.