Chapter 4

61: The Servitors are not playthings! I have enjoyed plenty of evenings off watch seeing Enginseers use load-lifters see how many gretchin they can punt in a minute, or watching 'sharpshooting' with gun-servitors, but when one breaks or gets misprogrammed...we didn't find all the pieces. Of either.

62: Don't take the Tactica Imperium to heart: The Tactica Imperium, contrary to popular belief, is not a single book but rather millions upon millions of tomes all dedicated to the same topic and it'd take the better part of your life to get through it, if you even last that long. Still, compilation editions of one form or another are commonly issued to officers and unlike the the Uplifting Primer they're good for something other than wiping your ass (And frankly wiping your ass with the Uplifting Primer is an insult to your ass). The problem is that there have been hundreds of thousands if not millions of authors involved in the Tactica Imperium so it can very easily end up contradicting itself. Take it figuratively and use it for inspiration, otherwise we'll just end up constantly charging at and retreating from a fortified Chaos cult that is getting increasingly confused but is still picking us off with long range weaponry. Because the officer in charge couldn't figure out that you can't combine Creed's supreme tactical flanking and ambushes with that asshole Kubrik Chenkov's suicidal charges.

63: Do not use the hoverpallets for your stupid frakking...whatever! You have a 10,000 year old tech-pattern using minerals mined from the heart of a star or something, and you are pissing off it while going up and down cliffs. It's going to eventually smack your face into the edge of the cliff and I can tell you right now that it's got enough force to take your head clean off!

64: Respect the Elysian drop troops: The drop troops get a lot of flak from the rest of the guard AND the navy for not being real guardsmen and infringing on their territory respectively. These people are both stupid. I mean seriously people, we're ok with the Chem Dogs but we just can't stand drop troops? Ugh. I was part of a unit that was pinned down by heavy rebel fire and the commander of a unit that was stuck with us refused to call down the Elysians because they "weren't real guardsmen." Fifteen seconds later, he was on the ground picking up his missing teeth, I was cleaning the stock of my gun and the Elysians were raining death on the rebels. This idiot with, missing half of his teeth, still tried to talk shit to the Elysian commander that saved our asses, even though the guy was way more polite than honestly he had to be. Anyway, that's how he lost the rest of his teeth. To me. Emperor's balls, I'm turning into an Ork.

65: The Sisters of Battle aren't interested: To all the men (And women) out there who have fantasies about screwing Sisters of Battle…forget it. They took an oath of celibacy and they take it VERY seriously. Granted I think I might have seen one fapping to an image of the Emperor once (I wasn't where I was supposed to be, don't ask) but I only got a glimpse. Anyway back on topic, there were a couple of guys and gals who got drunk and started hitting on this one Sorita. Half an hour latter there was blood everywhere, all but one of them were dead (And the one survivor's arm turned up on the other side of the city), and I have never seen a copy of the Lectitio Divinitatus be used in that manner. So yeah, that was my reunion with my sister. For the record the one guy who survived tragically died when I was bringing him to camp to get medical attention. He accidentally fell on my knife multiple times.

66: The Sisters of Battle are not to be underestimated: Look I have no idea if this bullshit about Sisters being killed for blood by some undocumented Space Marine chapter are true (I asked my sis and she refuses to give me a straight answer, but she starts swearing under her breath and grinding her teeth whenever I do, so I'm a little worried) but they're still heads and shoulders above the rest of the guard. They have bolters when we all have our lasguns (Well YOU have lasguns, I have a hellgun) so maybe don't alienate the ladies with the big guns. Because I'm just going to point and laugh when you're pinging away at a Chaos Space Marine all by yourself. I've done it before and I'll do it again.

67: Ditch any scavenged Tau weapons before you get back to camp: Look I know, this one is really painful to do. I'm not a big fan of the Tau, but they make damn fine weapons. Back in my first enlisted year, when I was still wet between the years, we were fighting the Tau and captured an armory. We helped ourselves to the weapons and dug in. I can't remember the last time I had so much fun, those weapons were accurate, powerful and above all satisfying. We racked up one hell of a kill count were still riding the high all the way back to camp. Then everyone in my squad was executed for using heretical alien tech. They only didn't do me because I actually lost my pulse rifle on the way back. Yeah. That was a fun first mission.

68: Force feeding a Carnifex soldiers is an ineffective way of killing it. Yes. This happened. I imagine the guy who tried it was a fan of Kubrik Chenkov. Sadly the Carnifex had been killed by more conventional and rational means by the time we got our hands on him, so the obvious route of giving him an ironic death was out of the question. So we got uncreative and just clubbed him to death. Starting from the bottom and working our way up.

69: Don't pick on Psykers: This just doesn't end well for anyone. These guys have Daemons constantly yapping at their heels, which I imagine would put even the most calm and level headed person on a state of constant edge. I think Astropaths have it better but even then they still have to be careful. Because if you push these guys too far, they're going to snap and they'll get the last laugh when the ceiling becomes a floor and the floor grows a dick. With spikes on the top. And let me tell you, when you see three guardsmen who have been impaled on a giant Daemon dick's head spikes, you're at the very least going to spend a month trying to destroy the memory (Unsuccessfully) with alcohol.

70: Cut the PDFs some slack: No seriously, lay off. You know how bad we have it? At the very least we have reliable equipment, experienced and almost always take part in combined arms tactics with other regiments. PDFs have none of that. They have their own wit and whatever weapons the bumblefuck nobles on that planet gave to them. Which is the bare minimal for the Imperial Guard, if they're lucky. So when Tyranids invade theyhave to single handily fight them off with their crap equipment until the Guard gets there, which might take awhile because the Administratum forgot where the planet was (AGAIN!). As such, when we finally push them back and are making patrols with the shell shocked survivors who turned the thousand yard stare into a thousand light year stare, the last thing they want to hear is a smart ass saying that this was just the barely surviving fraction of a splinter feet that had been destroyed a few months ago and that they should try being in a REAL fight. I never saw the woman who said that again but I can guess what happened to her. Most of my theories involve sharp objects, the PDF on that planet had a thing for swords.

71: Make sure there's air on the other side before you open the air-lock: I would honestly be surprised if anyone reading this is shocked by this at this point, but just in case someone is trying to hold onto their sanity, yes this happened. It was especially dumb because everyone else was wearing void suits and he was the one that pushed the button. At the very least I can now confirm the explosive decompression is a thing. First hand experience there.

72: Don't even bother picking fights "Champion" warriors. I'm not talking about Chaos Champions here, I'm just using a generic term here. You now how it works, you've got the rank and file canon fodder, the guys worth a bit more, the elite troopers that can put up a fight but still go down, and the people whose names you actually learn. These guys are scarily competent and you should only bother if you're aiming at them with an anti-tank las-canon. I don't feel sorry for the lady who thought she could take on,Archionan the cracker of worlds and the fucker of skulls, but she tried and predictable results followed. I didn't really see how it happened, I was getting the hell out of there so I wouldn't get to see how literal the name was.

73: The battlefield is not a frakking fashion show: Enough with the fancy dresses, the puffy tunics, the feathered jock straps and anything that puts appearance over practicality should be tossed on the fire. That stuff gets in the way, it tends to be flammable, and Emperor's sake it looks tacky. I still haven't forgotten the time this one regiment of blue-bloods all had these long and stupid looking stuffed up collars that gave them serious tunnel vision. It was so bad that they actually got flanked by Orks. ORKS! When you get flanked by an Ork that isn't a Kommando, you have to do some serious soul searching.

74: Remember that we're somehow still in M41: This is something that has been such a mindfuck that it's best just to not question. It's M41. Not M42. Even though the 13th Black Crusade happened a decade or two ago and that happened in 999.M41, it's still M41. I have no idea why or how this is a thing. All I know is that people have honestly been threatened with summary execution for claiming that it's M42. So just don't bring it up. No real reason to anyway. It's not like M40 and M39 were that different from M41 in how soul crushingly brutal and hopeless they were, why would M42 be any different? (Granted this only makes people insisting that we haven't moved to the new Millennium even more confusing)

75: The Marines Malevolent are essentially the spawn Nurgle's bloated ballsack: Marines Malevolent. Malevolent. MA-LEV-O-LENT! When you get a name like that you're pretty much doomed to be a douche guzzler the size of a small star, and for the love of Sanguinius' magnificent long flowing bright golden hair, they live up to that name with pleasure. I honestly think at one point they actually made their mission harder for themselves by placing themselves in a heavier fire zone, because otherwise they would be expected to save people's lives. If they show up in the same system as you, consider desertion. You're more likely to survive that way.

76: The Lamenters are essentially the lost children of Sanguinus, so respect them: Emperor…the Lamenters. Easily the most tragic Space Marine chapter in existence. Their words are "For those we cherish we die in glory," and sadly they've been doing quite a bit of it. They've been shunned by the Imperium for the most trivial of things, the Ultrapricks hate them because they didn't get down on their needs to suckle their taint, most people distrust them for being part of the Cursed Founding, and blah blah blah. They never, EVER, stop fighting to protect the people of the Imperium, no matter how much of their own blood is shed. Millions of people owe them their lives. You have a problem with the Lamenters? You answer to us.

77: Artillery is to be manned by trained personnel only: You know how hard it can be to reliably shoot a target at a hundred meters? Imagine shooting a target at ten kilometers. Except you don't have a direct line of sight, you have to shoot up into the air and calculate the trajectory so that your shot hits the target on the fall down, and it's an explosive shell so you have to make sure you don't blow up friendlies. This takes a great deal of training to do with accuracy. So please, no trying to be heroes and blast a Vampire Raider out of the air. And if you do it anyway, don't shoot directly up! When the shell comes down we don't lose a valuable artillery piece in addition to your stupid asses.

78: Better equipment does nothing if in the hands of people who can't use it: Ok, this one isn't from me but from my better half. She was from a planet under heavy influence from the Iron Hands. They were getting annoyed by us dying all the time so they had an idea. Augment several million soldiers to make them better fighting machines. And they did not half ass this. Cybernetic limbs, eyes, several organs and mental enhancers were all standard issue, and this stuff was top notch. Just one little problem. They gave all of this to fresh recruits. Who had never seen a fire fight before. Hundreds of thousands of them all died on their first mission and plenty more on the ones after that. My wife is one of the few who actually lived long enough to use the implants properly. HOW!? How do you frak up that badly!? If we had millions of Veteran Sergeants with stuff like that (I am one so I'm a little biased) we could've done some serious damage! But nooooo, the Iron Hands were more concerned about how "the flesh is weak" and not "These people don't know what the FUCK they're doing."

79: The mounts of the Death Riders are not cute horseies: Do you know the first thing about the Death Korps? I mean it's in their frakking name. They're from a radioactive hellhole and I think they like it that way. Their horses reflect it, because someone as batshit as a Kriegsman wouldn't be happy if the thing they were riding into battle wasn't as fucked in the head as they were. Simply put, if you try and pet one of them, expect to lose your hand. And wrist. And the rest of your arm. And then your head. Those things have big appetites.

80: When you execute everyone in a squad except one, expect the survivor to murder you: I don't know what he was expecting. I remembered his face, his name his unit. Everything. I bided my time, waited years. I pulled enough strings to get sent to the same planet where it all happened, where he was stationed. I blew his brains out all over the illegal graves I had made for them. And thanks to all the evidence I planted in his room, he's now remembered as a traitor and a heretic. He's dead, his reputation is gone, and in his last moments he was begging for his life. If anyone ever tells you revenge is hollow, I say, only if you're stupid. If you're smart, revenge is the best feeling in the world.