Snaga crouches down low in the deep shadows of the giant trees of Drenai, he sniffs the air carefully, for if he is out here looking for prey the other predators of the jungle are as well. He cannot see them, but he can sense his brothers are around him, ghosts in the trees, their own predatory instincts screaming as they wait for the first sign of their prey.

A low rustle amongst the trees gives it away before the trees start to bend as the massive form of a Bodarch forces it's way through the forest. It stands easily twenty feet tall with large ten foot barbed tusks sticking out from under it's jaw. It is covered in thick fur and tough skin forming a tough natural armour.

It's four legs make the earth shake as it pushes it's way towards the creek that Snaga and his clans warriors have staked out. Silently he pushes himself to his feet, the shadows of the trees obscuring his movement and rendering him almost invisible. But to his clansmen the signal was clear as day, begin the attack.

Four of his clansmen burst from the trees far above him heavy spears clutched tightly in their hands. They fall rapidly towards the back of the Bodarch, three spears slam deep into it's armoured hide drawing thick droplets of blood that coat the entire warriors in crimson. The fourth warrior is not so lucky as the Bodarch thrashes wildly, it's tusk smashes across his torso smashing his ribs to dust and throwing his lifeless body against one of the thick thousand year old trees.

Snaga nods one more and several warriors come screaming out of the trees bellowing a loud war cry. They bring their great axes down on the rear two legs of the Bodarch. They begin to hack through the tough armour of the creatures legs. One of the legs kicks back and three men are thrown through the air, from the sound of the low moans coming from the foliage they are still alive. Although they will probably be regretting that fact in the coming days.

Finally one of the axes buries deep in the creatures muscle and it falls to one of it's knees. Seeing his chance Snaga breaks into a sprint aiming for the crippled leg. Grabbing large handfuls of thick tough fur he hauls himself up quickly before he sits astride the massive beast.
Snaga stands up carefully and keeping his balance runs towards the creatures head, it thrashes wildly trying to dislodge the massive man but Snaga is nothing if not tenacious. Finally he reaches the neck of the massive creature and draws his massive great axe. He brings the weapon down ferociously against the side of the Bodarchs throat.

Once, twice, three times the axe bites deep with a sickening crunching sound as it tears through protective ridges of bone and thick bloody fur. Snaga swings once more and the axe buries deep in the creatures throat severing the jugular sending thick arterial blood spraying through the air.

Snaga grins and leaps from the back of the creature tucking and rolling as he hits the ground. He waves his men back as he watches the creatures death throes staring intently at the terrible wound he inflicted on the creatures neck. Ruptured bones burst from the gaping wound, thick blood now falling in a steady torrent to the earth as the creature gives it's last thrash.

Snaga walks over to the creature and gives it one final kick to make sure it is truly dead before turning back to his clansmen.
"Gather the wounded and treat them as best you can. Fetch the bodies and wrap them with their weapons in their hand, lay them in the clearing."

Snaga turns to his command team and speaks in his common low growl.

"Once they have collected our brothers prep the Bodarch for transport back to the village. I will do a sweep, make sure we are still alone here. The scent of that blood is overpowering, the vultures cannot be far away."

The Bodarch takes the entire hunting party and two of their beasts of burden to drag back to the village. but a creature like this properly rationed and preserved should last the village for a month. Several invading predators are beaten back from the fresh kill, turned away by the primarch stalking his way silently through the trees.

The beast is skinned efficiently and cut into quarters to hang up to drain, the blood falls into large cauldrons. None of this creature will go to waste. Tonight there will be a feast to celebrate a successful hunt, especially considering there are so few casualties.
The day falls into night and torches are lit around the perimeter of the stockade armed sentries patrol it's walls. The smell of the feast washing over them make their mouths water, they will be relieved soon and free to drink. Unlike the poor sods taking the next watch, their bellies at least would be full. But the punishment for being drunk on watch was death.

Snaga sits upon his high backed throne, a throne carved from a solid block of an ancient tree and draped with the many trophies of his successful hunts. His command team sit flanking him their own chairs descending in size but all cut from the same tree, decorated from their own hunts.

He grins slightly at the warriors assembled below him in the grand hall, all of them feasting on the meat of the latest kill. They all have large tankards of Skoll in front of them and several of them have obviously already indulged heavily as they laugh loudly and pull the serving ladies into their laps as they pass by.

All in all it has been a fine day.

The suns never set, here. It span around the sky, brushing against the horizon every so often, like it was taunting the people down below in their little tents with the promise of sleep. Janus tried not to let it bother him, as he folded his arms behind his head and lay down on the sand, waiting for sleep to take him. The wind was always quiet here. It spun lazily, chasing it's own tail like a thing the Elder had once talked about in one of his mad rants before the drink and the juice had claimed him away in the night. He took a moment to think back to those days, when the grains of sand had seemed so much more bigger, and the men so much taller. He smiled fondly, awash in childhood nostalgia.

Well, he certainly wasn't going to get any sleep, soon. Not with this perpetual sunlight. He sat up, and took stock of his surroundings. Just like every day on Vindaugr, the horizon was the same. Sand. Great piles of the stuff, sculpted and molded into slow waves, some dunes unfathomable metres in height, casting the closest thing this area ever received to night with their bulk. This place was nothing but that. Oh, and Janus. And his project.

The project lay in a comparatively flat part of sand. It was only a couple of centimetres high, but the thing took up a large amount of horizontal space. It lay across a dune, splitting it in half. Perhaps from above one might be able to see some pattern, but from ground level, all that could be seen was a thin pane of glass. And, at one corner, a piece of newly-forged anneleation crackled and smoked at the sand below it as it solidified. It fused with the rest of the piece, the liquid glass fusing with each successive layer of craftwork. If you put your ear to it, you could almost hear the material squealing, happy to be whole again. But you'd also set your hair on fire.

It was Janus' masterpiece. It'd taken him months to smelt the kilns, to use the secrets of glass and dust in this way, to set up the design and enact it out. No where else on this continent did one find anything close to this quality, nothing that even resembling it. Nothing even close. He'd done it alone, since he didn't trust anyone else to do his work for him. But it was almost complete. All it needed was the last final touch.

Janus took his time while admiring the thing, the way it glinted in the light. He remembered when he'd had the idea, in a dream during a sandstorm. He'd done his best to remember it, to write it down and to somehow immortalize it, but when the only thing you have next to you is sand and tarp, it'd been a wonder he'd managed to draw anything at all. Or that it hadn't blown away. Or a million and one other things had happened since, that hadn't shuffled him into doing this almost directly after his dream. The shamen called it a divine vision and had more or less shoved him out here, where his mad idea wouldn't hurt anyone else, and for good reason.

Janus stood, at the far end of the glass rectangle, and bent down, grasping at the thing with both hands. He heaved. The thing shook, groaned a hideous moan of stress and pain, but lifted up, agonizingly slowly, remnants of sand pouring off of it. He went under the thing, and brought it further and further up. The stained glass of a thousand layers creaking, slowly rising further and further up, until it touched the sky. The sun shone through the thing, leaving the coloured shadows all over the dunes. It was a figure, all in gold, and for a moment, it shone.

Janus pushed on.

The thing collapsed the other way, accelerating all the way down. It impacted on the sand and shattered quickly, the shards of a thousand pieces of glass making a noise almost like rain as, one by one, they embedded themselves into the desert. Soon the wind would rub them down to grain, and then there would be nothing left to ever show that anything but sand had ever been here. He grinned, and stretched his hands up in the air. Then he gathered up his things and went home. He took the long way.

DAWN CAME UPON Rovato, the buzzing capital of Cogitatio, with only a slightly increased brightness in the air, and the chiming of the Cycle Tower, to alert its residents that it was time to wake. Watching his city from his study, Taranis was filled with disquiet. Despite the massive strides in science since his seizure of the Convention, the body of technocrats which ruled the world not a decade ago, and the resultant leaps in the quality of life for his people, the atmosphere was still damnably toxic and hostile. It was more than an aesthetic problem; it harmed the health of the people and reduced their life expectancy, and it wrecked havoc on travels to and from orbit. For Cogitatio to become prosperous once more, trade was vitally needed, and that was impossible as long as the raging clouds in the atmosphere posed a threat to shipping.

He sighed, and turned away from the view, the heavy steps of his augmented legs making audible clanks against the polished metal floor as he moved. He was tired; he was always tired, to tell the truth. His augmentations meant he required little sleep, only a few hours a week, but his damnably organic brain was still convinced that its physiological functions were not being fulfilled. Sleep was inefficient, a wasteful expense of his time. He made a silent note to himself to look into technologies permitting its elimination completely as he sat back down on his chair and began reviewing the previous day's reports.

Since his assumption of power, he had established a firm network of agents and informers, who reported to him all that he required to know. These reports ranged from the dramatic plots against his rule, to the mundane production levels in factories. A normal man would be swamped by all this information, but he was never a normal man to begin with, and with his extensive augmentations his capacity to retain and analyze such things was great indeed. Nevertheless, he had arranged set up a program that filtered the reports according to importance, and that day the most urgent missive was one from the observers who scanned the cosmos with their powerful sensors. They had detected a large force entering the system from the warp, it seemed; upon further investigation they identified it as an orc WAAAGH. And it was heading straight for Cogitatio.

Taranis stood up abrubtly, and left his study, passing the marching forms of his personal guard, and entered the relay center. He inputed the appropriate override code at a console, and at once, all radio communicators, all televisions- in short, every form of electronic media- interrupted their regular projections, and displayed instead their leader.

"People of Cogitatio," he began, booming in his voice, which rang louder and deeper than any other man's, "Two hours ago, a fleet of at least thirteen vessels, of unkown origin, entered our system. Since then, they have been positively identified as orcs."

In the metropolitan square of Rovato, the people gathered in their thousands in front of the giant projector, in spite of the sulfurous air. In manufactures across the world, and the settlements beyond, their kin did likewise, listening with creeping dread. "This is the largest such force we have seen on our world since man first walked it. Have no illusions; we are now in a crisis. We must deploy every means at our disposal to survive the coming storm."

"Keep calm, prepare, and follow all official instructions to the letter," he finished firmly, "And we shall overcome it. The future beckons."

Ludwig awoke with a start. His glanced around the room, his study was just through the door to his left. The dream wouldn't leave him... a golden eagle... great wings spread and glowing. He stood and walked to his study, and attempted to busy his mind with the menial tasks of leadership. Court summons, mine damage reports, output of the mines, productivity loss and gains, and a myriad of other papers and data slates stacked high upon his desk. Just across the room sat an empty canvas, a huge painting yet to be painted. Ludwig dive into his work.

Ludwig was supernatural in his speed, dealing with the menial work was easy for his blazingly fast mind. He was threw with days if work in a matter of ours, but the dream never left his mind. He was called to the PDF headquarters to inspect the new trainees and deliver a speech to them. He made his way there, the eagle still shining in his vision, as he g ax be the speech the image and feeling from the dream lingered in his mind.

As he left for the debates of the courts he could not focus on the petty squabbles of the nobles. Hundreds of problems were addressed and solved or moved to another date for discussion. Possibility of rebellion in the mines, lack luster deposits, familial fights and issues of mind ownership. None of it mattered to Ludwig, who sat looking into the glass ceiling of the courthouse to the sky.

Ludwig had long since solved any real problems the planet had. Primus was firmly under control, the mines plentiful, peace and prosperity rained, and he couldn't care less. The vision was all that mattered, all that he saw, all that he thought. It haunted every waking moment, the day flew like a dream, and it felt he had only just left his study when he returned.

He opened the large window in the room and sat, watching the rapidly falling sun turn the sky red. He watched as it fell, and the sky went from gold to pink to red and orange. Suddenly, he stood, and turned to face his empty canvas. He moved quickly and began to paint furiously. For hours and hours he painted, the sun fell and the moon rose and still he painted. His dream drove him, it was as if he were possessed by it. When finally he finished, the sun had again begun to rise, and he stepped back, amazed by what he had painted.

For, when Ludwig saw what he had painted no golden eagle sat before him, but a great, glowing man, bedecked in golden gilded armor. He fell to his knees, and simply wondered... Who was coming? Who had he seen?