Franchise Fiction
HARI WILLIAMS
Montulax burned .
This world had first entered the Imperial fold some 7,000 years ago , if the venerable and decayed records of the Adeptus Administratum were to be believed , conquered in the God- Emperor ’ s name by His armies . With the screaming coruscation of orbital bombardment , and the relentless campaigns of the Astra Militarum on the planetary surface , the world ’ s original xenos inhabitants were crushed beneath the onslaught of the Imperium ’ s full military might , their world cleansed of the alien infestation , and the ruins of their settlements cleared away for Imperial settlement , dubbed ‘ Montulax ’ by its conquerors .
For long millennia , only the pockmarked ruination upon the planet ’ s surface that marked Imperial warfare remained as evidence of the violent genesis of the world ’ s settling , until time wore away even these fixtures ; then , it was an Imperial world , much as any other . Great manufactorums took in raw materials and from them , with the efforts of skilful guildsmen and indentured labourers , produced armaments for further Imperial expansion , thrice-blessed weaponry that would serve mankind ’ s warriors well . Immense Hive Cities housed Montulax ’ s teeming billions , tightly packed strongholds of poisoned and polluted humanity that dwarfed even the mightiest of the forgotten xenos structures that had so long ago been obliterated . And the Ecclesiarchy , loyal heralds of His glory , preached the Imperial Faith with a zealotry and
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fervour rarely seen away from Shrine Worlds ; the priesthood of Montulax were righteously proud at the single-minded devotion of their billionsstrong congregation . It was , in short , the truest ideal of an Imperial world in all its glory .
Which made the world ’ s sudden descent into heresy all the more damning . Over just a few nights of bloodshed , the world had gone from a paragon of Imperial order to a world in open revolt , the corruption seemingly spread to every stratum of Montulax ’ s society ; the Planetary Governor had been throttled in his sleep with his own silken bedsheets by his chambermaid , the Enforcer Precincts burned to a cinder by crowds of maddened revolutionaries , and the planet ’ s Ecclesiarch suffered a gruesome public execution at the hands of his own guards . Even the Planetary Defence Force proved tainted ; when what remained of the loyalist government attempted to call martial law , they found their own defenders swiftly slaughtered by their turncoat comrades . The speed and fury of the uprisings caught the world ’ s defenders idle , and Montulax passed into rebel control swiftly ; it was only the escape of a merchant vessel that alerted the Imperium , bringing Montulax ’ s heresy to light
HARI WILLIAMS
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