Chapter 7
121: Do not insult a soldier who is pressing a gun to your face: Hey all budding commanders, here's a pro tip. When you've gotten a soldier mad enough that he's got you at point blank range, a few things. First of all, you're a failure of a commander if you let it get to this stage. Second of all, you do not further antagonize him, you try to get him to stand down. Third of all, you do not say his family will die if he does anything. Because that directly translates out to "Kill me and make sure no one ever finds out." And that's exactly what happened.
122: Do not give a person a position of power just because they're a good lay: There was this one utterly braindead Inquisitor who gave a position of power to her boytoy. She was on thin ice already, there was another Inquisitor shadowing her, waiting for a reason to have her branded a heretic, she kept shooting her bolter when other people were trying to talk, and she kept limiting her troop loads because "I can't go over 2000 points". But her fuck toy, OH MY EMPEROR he was the worst. Tried to sleep with everyone with a XX chromosome, though thankfully none of them were interested. And then he tried to sword fight with an Ultramarine scout. I know right? So yeah, his neck got snapped and his girlfriend got killed after she took a shot at Uriel Ventris and her babysitter lost his temper.
123: Do not threaten a soldier's family: No this isn't a personal one, but with me the point still stands. Stupid pompous blue blood prat says that he want's a soldier's eldest daughter as a servant. And when I say servant, I mean he was licking his lips and leering at a nearby woman when he said servant. I'm not even sure the guy had a daughter, he might've looked mad on principle. The prick seemed to act like everyone else would side with him in his quest to enslave another human being. Surprise surprise, humans aren't monsters and filled him with bayonets. I was pretty sure he was already dead when I got to the head of the throng, but I didn't care. This was a good chance to show my little girl how you make sure the bayonet doesn't get stuck in the ribs.
124: Don't play at being detective if you don't know what you're doing: I got stuck with an idiot trying to investigate the disappearance of a noblewoman. We turned her room upside down and found an Eldar artifact. The dumbass thought it had nothing to do with it because the Eldar weren't around anymore. Hey dip shit, you know who else isn't around anymore? THE WOMAN WE WERE LOOKING FOR! And then he goes and arrests the girl's parents! Why? Because there was a secret passage in the girl's room. I am not making this up. Actually he just said there was, we never actually FOUND them. And they were nobles. So yeah. Death by Iron Maiden for him. I threw him under the Land Raider and I don't regret it
125: Felnids are not cute, cuddly or sexy: 99.99% of the people of the Imperium have never and will never see them, but are convinced that they're sexy cat-girls. You know what they are in reality? Part mountain cat. IE, vicious predators and carnivores. They're kind of aware of how sexualized they are by the Imperium and they've gotten sadistic about it. They love saying, just out of sight, "I could just eat you up," before getting very literal about it. Goodie, they took humor lessons from the Kroot.
126: Know how armor works: I've said it before and I'll say it again, our armor sucks. But it's still ARMOR! You're probably still going to be bleeding after you get shot by an Ork gun, but your flak armor could be the difference between life and death. YOU DO NOT GO ONTO THE BATTLEFIELD WEARING A HOODIE! The braindead moron who did this, and I WISH I could make this up, said that there was Adamantium in the hoodie and that a Tech Priest had put it there. ADAMANTIUM! Because apparently this kid never knew that Adamantium is damn near unbreakable, and we are not getting it in thin layers. Go figure, someone was fucking with him and he ended up being impaled on a Farseer's spear.
127: You being a noble doesn't mean jack if you have no lands or titles: Oh blue bloods, they will never stop being my favorite punching bag. Because they keep doing so much stupid shit. See, there was this guy acting like he was a big deal, even though he had absolutely nothing. He got uplifted for some stupid reason (I think the braindead Inquisitor from 122 had a hand in it) but no one gave him anything to make it worthwhile. Even the other nobles thought he was pathetic. Probably why they didn't help him when he tried to claim his superiority to some Savlar Chem-Dogs and they beat him to death.
128: Sniper rifles are for killing, not showing off: Whatever form they come in, be it an old fashioned solid projectile rifle or a long-las, sniper rifles have an age old philosophy. One shot one kill. Simply put, you should only be pulling the trigger if you intend to end someone's life, or are practicing to end someone's life. But you get the occasional fuckwit who can't just put a hole in someone's head/throat/chest and needs to savor the moment. We had spent the last three days being harassed by an Eldar Ranger, dozens dead. Our sniper finally gets a bead on him. What does she do? Shoots directly in front of the Ranger so he'd look up at her first and see his killer before he died. Except he didn't do the dying part and blew her head off. As it turns out, Eldar Rangers are faster than cock sure dumbasses.
129: You do not need three pistols: Two should be the most you ever need provided you aren't some three armed mutant. I have seen some of those, so they can safely ignore this one. The stupid woman I saw do this was a Catachan, which sounds about right. Even the women on that planet seem to be stuck in a permanent dick measuring contest. But back to pistols. My daughter's sweetheart only carries two, and she's been training to dual wield them since the age of thirteen. A third pistol is just dead weight, and in the hands of stupid people it's downright deadly. You ever watch a woman try to draw a third pistol while still holding the other two? I have. It ends with a misfire to the throat. I wonder if all Catachans misfire like that, it would explain the overcompensation.
130: You cannot disable a Tau stealth suit with a flag: Before we get going on this one, standard banners. An utter waste of men and resources. A person that could be shooting a gun is now waving a flag around. For morale? Yeah that'll help us. When I've got an Ork's axe in my side, a flag with bullet holes and burn marks really keeps me going. Anyway we all know standard bearers are usually the bastard kids of nobleman whatshisface, who want his stupid kids to feel like they're contributing, but the position is known by most to be overblown. But some stupid people think that they're important and have to prove themselves, so this one woman tried to use it to stab a Tau stealth suit. After it had just massacred a squad. Yeah, it bounced off its arm. Then the Tau backhanded her head off. I think he got half a kilometer is terms of distance.
131: Do not use a Space Marine on a stealth mission: Ignore this if the marines in question are Raven Guard. Uh, in case you haven't noticed people, Space Marines are about as twice as big as you and several times as heavy. They attract attention. A sniper will get in position and start taking shots. The Marines will be fine, you won't be.
132: You cannot boss around Space Marines: When you want something from a Space Marine, I don't care who you are, you say please and thank you. Even the damn Inquisition knows better than to step on their toes. No one told this twat though. Thought he could order around, a pair of Ultramarines just because they were scouts. Now I'm not saying they killed him. I'm just saying he threatened to execute them if they told their Captain about the mission he gave them, and he turned up dead the next day when the Marines left. And there were twelve eye witnesses. They just didn't say anything to officials. Guy was an asshat.
133: You cannot use a chainsword without training: Oh dear lord those things are a nightmare to use. I risked execution and looted by power sword just so I could get away from them. First of all, they're multiple times heavier than a normal sword, so fancy flourishes are out of the equation. Second of all, it kicks like hell when it's revving. So you train before you use it in combat, and that way you can avoid slicing your own face off, unlike the wonder brat I got stuck babysitting. Was hard to explain that to his commanding officer.
134: When someone doesn't want to talk about their homeworld, drop it: I "guess" I have a reputation now. They call me "The Veteran of a Hundred Wars", even though I only ever fought in eighty-seven. Ninety-one if you count those ones that never got recorded, either through cover ups or the Administratum forgetting to. Anyway, people want to know where I'm from. Stop. Asking. It's none of your fucking concern. For your own good, just shut up. It's one of the few scenarios where my temper is even worse than my sister's. And she set the last person who asked on fire. Granted we learned after that he had been planning to blackmail her into being his mistress, so he had it coming.
135: Push your kids too far and they'll kill you: This is sadly common. I've seen hundreds upon hundreds of idiot mothers and idiot fathers who fucked and then treated the kid as an afterthought. They did horrid things to the kids that I don't feel comfortable repeating, and the kids always hit back. Finding daddy's gun, poisoning mommy's stew, or just taking out mob loans in their names. Parents think that they're just kids. No one's a kid when they're fighting for their lives. And it turns out even a five year old girl can cook up a molotov cocktail. Isn't that right Dad?
136: Anti-plant grenades are as worthless as they sound, never bring them on a mission: I don't know why these things exist. Grenades designed to kill plants. Granted there's probably a Death World or two out there with killer plants, but for the rest of the galaxy, I'd rather have a frag or a krak grenade. The problem is that idiots can't tell the difference between normal grenades and those ones. Cue the award moment when a guardsman in a nearby unit losses her mind and suicide charges the Tyranid horde. And then successfully assassinates the grass they had been standing on. And a nearby shrub. I guess it was a heretic.
137: Only use weapons that are up to snuff: A mining colony was being overrun by Dark Eldar who we're trying to their usual thing. My unit was the second regiment to arrive on the scene. The first one had been completely wiped out. When we joined up with the local PDF and managed to push them off planet, I thought that it had been another reminder of how overwhelming the enemies we had to face were. Then I learned they had been recruited from a backwater planet and had brought their muskets to fight with, saying they didn't want to use the "Devil's arms" IE lasguns. Well, all three-thousand of them died and only five Dark Eldar were lost in the process. If lasguns are the Devil's arms, I want to see if he's got anything special in the back. The Devil is some big name hive ganger right?
138: Hand flamers are not as good as they sound: So we managed to get a flamethrower in the form of a pistol, sounds like a dream come true right? One problem. You can only shoot them twice. I'm serious, it's only one step above the muskets and the dueling pistols I mentioned before. And these things have a range of ten meters. So it's got a pathetic range and only two shots, so except as a desperate lass resort, it's good for nothing. In a nice change of pace, it was a Khorne cultist who got himself killed. Fired twice, (Killed his own people) and then kept trying to burn my face off, clicking away at an empty gun. Even when I had my sword in his gut. After that he banged it on a nearby barricade and kept trying to shoot me. I think this is why Khorne cultists mainly use melee weapons.
139: Servo-Skulls are not for riding: Ok, you do know that those things are damn fragile and only have enough thrust to lift up 5kg of weight? So you can't hang onto them and go flying with them. I tried to tell this woman that on top of a mountain fortress that we had just taken. It might've had been the alcohol in her system, but I only gave her one shot. I drank three that hour and I wasn't the one who had my face ripped open on a cliff before tumbling down the rest of the way.
140: When your host has invited someone into their household, they're probably family friends, so show some respect: I actually kept in contact with that noblewoman in 120. She and her hubby are working their way up to their eighth year of marriage and she invited my family and I to a party at her mansion. First time I had ever been to a Garden World, and I have to say, I was reluctant to leave.
It was fairly pleasant for the most part, as she isn't too friendly with many other blue bloods, so I didn't have to deal with too many pricks. Plenty of food and wine (Overdid it with the drinking, had to force myself to throw up in the bathroom) actually ran into a couple of old friends, and Zamora (Shit, I forgot to say, that's her name. No I'm not giving anyone else's name out, she was the only one ok with it) is the life of the freaking party.
The problem is that she had to invite a few twats out of obligation. Either that or they crashed the party. I forget, she mentioned why they were there when I was halfway through my fifth glass. Oh, they had such massive sticks up their asses, it was hilarious. They tolerated my sister (barely) because she was a Sororita, but the rest of us got nothing but glares. They finally lost it when Zamora gave the spotlight to my daughter so that she could propose to her sweetheart. It was honestly pretty magical. That gunslinger rarely lets anything pass that stoic expression of hers, but when my daughter pulled out that ring, there were tears in her eyes.
They, like me, had had too much to drink. Unlike me, they hadn't removed the alcohol from their system to avoid making asses out of themselves. Combined that with them being ass hates and the fact that there were strains between them and Zamora's family over them trying to take a moon they own. Despite that things still worked out all right. Only two of Zamora's family guard died, I learned my wife only needs two fingers to break a human spine, and I got to keep the booze they had brought over. There was one thing my daughter was a little bummed out about though. She had wanted to let her fiancé know a secret she had had while proposing. Not when sending a concentrated blast of warp energy into the face of a drunk nobleman.
Oh yeah, my daughter is a psyker. Zamora managed to pull some strings to get her sanctioned without going on the Black Ships and had a retainer teaching her.