Chapter 12

So. Cadia. Yeah. FUCK! Well, we were always fucked to some degree, but I didn't think I'd live to see things get this bad.

221: Don't give someone a gun so they can "do it themselves.": You may think you're being noble. You found a deserter, a traitor or just a plain old heretic. They ask you to give them a gun so that they can be the ones who end their own life. You pat yourself on the back, think that you may be stern, but at least you have a good heart. And then that heart gets three bolt rounds in it because you gave the local murderer a bolt pistol. Then he kills two more people and blows my foot off before my daughter-in-law can bring him down. The asshole was lucky it was the foot I had already lost.

222: War is the last place for political warfare: What is wrong with people? We have enough enemies outside the Imperium trying to murder us all, why are so many leaders in the Imperium trying to make their job easier? I could write a separate book about the number of times nobles, guild leaders and rich merchants were fighting among each other while the local murder party of the week was knocking at the front door. It's quite a feeling to be holding the front line against Chaos, keeping them from getting anywhere else on the planet, and you're left wondering why the hive city behind you WENT UP IN ATOMIC FUCKING FLAMES! And it turns out it was because Lord Whocares and Lady Notme were setting their soldiers on each other due to them fighting for control of the assets of a third noble who had died without a will when both of them were related to him by marriage. Things apparently escalated quickly. The things people waste their time on while other people are bayonet deep in someone else's guts.

223: Don't trust a word of Ultramarine propaganda: Emperor on his Throne, he must be weeping at what these twats have become. I know I said that you should accept their help if you could, but that doesn't make them any less full of shit. If them saying their scouts were better than veterans of other chapters weren't a big enough giveaway, I'm fairly certain they just make things up to stroke their infertile/nonexistent/whatever's going on down there dicks. Hell, it's so bad, I honestly didn't think that Guilliman had returned until I had an Inquisitor swear it to me (Well, I was in the crowd that she was swearing it to.) Still, I'd recommend healthy skepticism, because thinking ten Ultratwits can turn back a million Eldar is what gets people to make suicidal frontal charges. Suicidal charges that even Cato isn't stupid enough to take. (Also yeah, Guiliman is back. Some good news for a change. Also apparently he made a deal with some sort of Dark Angel…just…just remember 12.)

224: Necrons are not your friends: Why. The fuck. Do people. Think. This. Is. possible? Some bullshit about the Blood Angels being best buddies with them? First of all, whoever started that rumor is probably having their genitals slowly inverted by the Inquisition right now. Second of all-NO! 99% of the things are mindless automatons who will vaporize you at the atomic level on the basis that you need to maintain homeostasis. It doesn't matter how pretty the cake you bake is, they're going to blast it, and you, all over the room.

225: Plants can kill you: I still think plant grenades are one of the most worthless things in existence, but plants are still deadly on some fucked up worlds. I just think that anything a plant grenade does to a plant can also be accomplished by an incendiary grenade, and they incendiary grenade tends to be more flexible. But yeah, when stepping onto a planet, particularly a death world, there's a chance that the plants can shoot needles, strangle you, impale you, or sometimes just fucking blow up. So no picking flowers for your significant other. That one time all four of the above happened…yeah, we promptly abandoned the planet after that. Fuck it, let the Tyranids have it. They actually ended up losing more biomass to the flora than they managed to get back.

226: Don't assume Eldar are automatically friends now: So, apparently there's this thing called the Ynnari all of a sudden. I've never seen them directly, but apparently it's Harlequins, Craftworld Eldar, Dark Eldar and Corsairs all marching under one banner, and apparently they've been helping out Imperial units. I can't comment, as I say, I haven't seen them. What I CAN say though, is that there are still plenty of Dark Eldar running around the galaxy with their dicks and/or twats out and I imagine Corsairs are still stabbing contractors in the back, and the Craftworld are still arranging the deaths of planets so that one squad of theirs won't die. So try and make contact if the Eldar army looks like a rainbow vomited all over them, but otherwise shoot to kill, same as always. Some people think we're on good terms, walk right up to them, and then get shredded into bite sized pieces by their psykers.

227: Warfare is more than just bombing the shit out of everything: There was a ten year long rebellion that happened somewhere in the far reaches of the Imperium at one point. Three star systems that came together and promptly rebelled. The general in charge of putting it down barely had anything to work with (because of the thousands of wars actively going on in the Imperium at the time, his was near the bottom in terms of importance) but he was still making progress. Managed to firmly secure one of the systems and had taken a couple of planets in the second. Then he died and his successor (murderer) was a lot less competent. Lost nearly all of her predecessor's gains and got pushed back to one planet. I got sent in around the point where she just started ordering orbital and air strikes on everything. One rebel in a city block? Bomb it. One platoon somewhere in that collective of plantations? Bomb them. That city is in enemy hands? Bomb it until there's nothing left. So, she "defeated" the rebels and handed those systems back to the Imperium. Those systems whose infrastructure, ecosystems and population were now utterly gone. I think the Planetary Governors that were sent in to rebuild still have to keep her a part of her body in their offices as a reminder.

228: Scythes are not practical weaponry: Have you ever actually held one of those things? I have, it ended with me on my ass a lot and everyone laughing at me. Nearly took my own head off. See, these things are farming tools. They're kind of crap when it comes to killing the enemies of man. I know that Mortarion used one, but we don't copy the forces of Chaos for a good reason. I'm not going to judge a desperate farmer who's trying to defend his home with whatever he could find in the heat of the moment, but members of the guard should know better. And it's kind of sad that, when Chaos came calling, the farmer was smart enough to switch to a shovel (with sharpened edges no less, thing was pretty good at snapping necks) while a dozen of the Emperor's finest panicked, raided the tool shed, charged, and promptly got massacred. Still, at least the farmer ended up joining his local militia afterward because it turned out he was actually pretty good in a fight. I think he made lieutenant.

229: Look before you jump: Often dropships have you land you in hot territory, particularly during the opening days of an attack on a hostile planet. Those things are big, fast and powerful, and pinpoint maneuvers are damn near impossible to pull off when you're under fire. So you may want to double check to make sure that you're actually going to land on solid ground instead of, say, thin air because you're nowhere near the cliff. Or deep water in heavy combat gear when you were supposed to be landing on a beach. I'll never forget the one time when I was young when I was about to jump, realized that I was about to jump into a fucking volcano, and spent the next five minutes trying to scramble back into the dropship, hanging on for dear life.

230: Avoid melee frontal combat if possible: I'm not saying that melee combat is unavoidable, nor that you shouldn't train for it. Heck, melee combat from behind on an enemy that is mainly using ranged weaponry can be devastating. But do you know what two forces clashing in mainly melee combat is? Hundreds of people viciously trying to jam bits of sharp metal into everything they can reach. In the panic, you can get blindsided by something you didn't see, stab a friendly by mistake, or just get buried under a pile of corpses. It's a clusterfuck where skill goes out the window in favor of frantic person to person combat and split second decision making. I swear, every single time i've been in one of those situations I almost died and I think I killed maybe two people that I was supposed to kill. That's still better than the lady next to me, who tried to run forward and accidentally impaled herself on someone else's spear. The guy was just as shocked and surprised as I was.

231: Keep your fucking hair short: This is a gender neutral topic, I've seen plenty of men who grow their hair out and it ended just as badly then. It's particularly popular among some more tribal civilizations in the Imperium, and it never stops being stupid. It's a perfectly good handle for enemy soldiers to grab and pull on. So unless you want an Ork to twirl you like a pocket watch until your scalp gets ripped off, shave your damn head.

232: Honor bets made in the guard: Look, we don't have a lot going on when we're not killing and dying, and betting and gambling are two of the few things we have to keep us busy. One prick made a bet with me that he could kill two dozen men with one shot. I called his bluff. Then he shot the power cell to an enemy plasma cannon with a hot shot round. Fifty enemy men dead. He drank all of my booze rations for a month. Why? Because I honored that I lost that bet. People get pissy if you don't. I've seen people knifed over bets with lower stakes than a month of alcohol rations. Fifty-two times to be precise. Wait a minute, something's going on in the other room, I'll finish this chapter tomorrow. Well, sorry about that. It's fifty-three now by the way.

233: Fuck honor among brothers and sisters and arms: If someone does worthy of snitching on, then snitch on them. Ok, this deserves a little bit of clarification. If it's something minor that isn't really a big deal, like sneaking a pie from a civilian windowsill. However, if someone in your unit is a MURDERER who slit the throat of a civilian, then you fucking report them. No, I don't care if that person is your brother in arms, fuck him, either turn him in to the commissar or do the job yourself. Because guess what? Murderers are bad people and tend to kill people who know too much about their crimes. Like that idiot. I told him to turn him in, but he wouldn't listen to me. Didn't want to be a snitch. Didn't want to be a snitch…oh grow the fuck up. That whole mindset was probably started by a selfish cunt to guilt trip his friends into not turning him in after he stuck his cock in the Emperor's ribcage anyway.

234: Only take prescribed drugs, and even then be smart about it: I already talked about Dark Eldar drugs, and the only practical use for them is loading them into a trebuchet if you're defending a feudal world. However, I need you people to use your brains for three seconds and to not inject yourself with whatever depraved happy juice you managed to get your hands on. This includes Tranq, Obscura, Grinweed, Spook, Gladstones, Frenzon, Psychon, Spur, Fury, Somna, Opiatix and Kalma. Yes, these are all real. Some are illegal, some are combat stimulants, and you should be taking none of them unless you have to. If you need to scratch an itch, smoke a fucking Lho-stick. Yeah, it'll kill you, but only decades down the line and if you smoke them obsessively, so at least you won't get other people killed.

235: Once again, no writing heretical texts about the Primarchs, even if they're traitors: Look, I know all nine of the traitor Primarchs need to die in a fire, but this is getting absurd. Now I'm getting some word about how there's a rumor that Fulgrim was anally penetrated as part of a torture session. Now look, we need to have standards, even if it is Fulgrim we can't…oh…oh…I have just been informed that that DID actually happen. Oh…huh…..WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THIS GALAXY!?

236: Do not believe the latest Imperial propaganda campaign: Emperor's balls, I know the Historical Revision Unit is lousy at the best of times, but this is a new low. Apparently it was penned by someone called C.S…something or other. It was mainly in regards to Eldar and Emperor's mummified testicles it was idiotic. It included such gems as a Fire Prism being disabled by rocks (I have seen them take a direct blast from a Leman Russ Executioner and keep going) Fire Warriors not being able to punch through a shitty barricade (One shot at me when I was on the other side of a fortress wall and I was in the hospital for months with third degree burns afterward) and them being killed with sharp sticks (just fucking no.) Also, it got really creepy. I have no love for Xeno and think the Eldar are twats, but there was a deeply detailed description of one being tortured to death that made me queasy. We're not Slannesh cultists for fuck's sake, we have standards. If you aren't interrogating an alien for information, just put a las bolt in their head and call it a day. And underestimating the Eldar the way C.S. what's his face did is a quick way to get vaporized. Also, according to him Tyranids make donkey like noises. Fucking what?

237: Stop spreading bullshit about Ciaphas Cain: So some people have been suggesting that Ciaphas Cain is secretly a coward. HAHAHAHAHA! HAHAHAHAHA! HA! HA! HAAAAAAAAAA! Yeah, the guy, dueled Chaos Space Marines, survived fighting Genestealers and Hive Tyrants, that blew up an entire Necron tomb world, is a coward. Yeah. Good one. I'd recommend you drop this one guys. His girlfriend is an Inquisitor. I don't think she'd appreciate you spreading this bullshit about him.

238: Suicide is a last resort only: I know plenty of people say you should save the last shot for yourself when it comes to fighting Dark Eldar and Slannesh. This is true, but the key part of that sentence is "last shot." You're supposed to fight as long as you can first, only turning the gun on yourself at the last moment, when all hope is lost, to avoid a fate worse than death. Not before then. Jumping the gun leads to stupid moments like when there's an explosion at the center of our base, we think the Dark Eldar have finally cracked out defenses, and a hundred people form and carry out a suicide pact before it turns out that one of the reactors was just faulty. It was premature, to say the least.

239: Make sure your disguises don't suck: Infiltration is something that's semi-common in the Imperium, although it tends to take a backseat to all out invasions. That being said, when you do end up doing it, put a little bit of fucking work into it. Don't go into a mob of Chaos soldiers and loudly talk about heretics, that never ends well. It's even worse when you're in a Tzeench crowd and you scream "praise Nurgle." Turns out Chaos can be just as preachy, judgy and violetnly insecure as the Imperium. Go figure.

240 Mixing different regiments together can't be done idly: The general approach to forming regiments is to have them all be from the same planet. The problem is that, once they're deployed off world, they're pretty much never getting reinforcements from that planet again. We just can't afford to send reinforcements halfway across the galaxy every time it happens. So units that sustain heavy losses commonly recruit from local worlds, but in extreme circumstances, they're merged with another unit. This only works if you put a lot of thought into it.

See, after the Horus Heresy, Imperial Guard regiments were made highly specialized so that one commander couldn't say, "Hey, I need more tentacles growing out of my asshole,"and take an entire army with him. As such, most regiments are good for one role and that's it. We can't really slap heavy infantry in with guerrilla fighters and expect it to work out. Either the heavy troops are going to hang a bright neon sign over the others that say, "shoot here" or the guerrilla fighters will be meat shields, low quality ones at that. Now if the heavy infantry had been paired up with, say, a tank regiment, that would've been a nice combo. The tanks could act as a spearhead to deliver heavy infantry behind enemy lines where they can do the most damage. Yet people keep jamming regiments together without thinking about it it. In fact, some people take it even further.

Imagine a regiment where, after every major engagement, they absorbed soldiers from weakened or broken regiments. Even if it's just three shell shocked amputees, they take them. Now imagine this regiment gets kicked around from front to front, in order to experiment with how a random mishmash of shellshocked rejects go up against everything the galaxy has to offer. That's what life for me is like now.

Of the hundred experimental regiments created, 20% are still in operation. (In actuality anyway, the Administratum says that 60% are still going. In other words, they're rebuilding them from scratch.) I was lucky enough to be stuck with one for the last few decades. There's enough of an influx of fresh blood to keep it going. "Good" old 23rd EDR (Experimental Deployment Regiment) got enough people that could mesh reasonably well together. We were part of the luckier ones. And I would just like to remind you people that I got a third of my examples from within the 23rd EDR. Even after that, I consider us luckier than most of the other EDRs. At least we didn't have to deal with getting thrown into the middle of a Ork/Tyranid murder orgy to see if we could come out on top. The 81st through 100th EDRs did that. They never came back.