"WE BRING THE WAR TO END ALL WARS"
-Necrocyte
Across battlefields strewn with metal shells and craters of blood, across planets ripped asunder by the
horrors of war, over the bodies of allies - or enemies - , the Imperium marches. Do they march for glory,
for power, for God? Or do they march because they have been marching so long, for such dreary eons,
that they no longer know anything else? Has the drumming of iron-clad boots, the pounding of bullets and
the sour, choking taste of gunsmoke been washed into their very being? Have they been saturated with
the lifeblood of war?
Only those who have met them and lived can say. And yet, they won't; their eyes staring blankly as if
they had looked into the jaws of death and seen no mercy, no sweet paradise. Some say that the Imperium
soldiers themselves have the same look. That all soldiers are of kin, a kin formed not from blood within, but
blood without. That two soldiers would be brothers for all the foreign blood they have bathed in.
But within the heart of the Imperium, one might live a hundred lives and see not a mote of the abject theatres
that lie scattered across the galaxy. One might live peacefully, given only to the sowing of seeds and passing
of days. One might give their lives not for some throaty call of "Throne's Glory!", not for the tattered remnants
of a flag, not for the titter-tat of war drums, but for the praise of an idle sun and for a happy existence.
It is for these happy folk that the blood-soaked legions of the Imperium fight. They fight knowing that they
are the paper-thin barricade between the valiant men and women who make the Imperium their home, and
the rabid hordes of those who would shatter these homes like glass.
So, my soldier, polish your sword, string your bow, and set your gait to the tune of the marching song. War
lies on the horizon.
