🦌🛷 Twas the night before Christmas 🦌🛷

A Time of Wrath, and Revelation - BLOOD ANGELS SHOWCASE AND RETROSPECTIVE

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’Twas the Night Before the Black Crusade

’Twas the night before battle, when all through the void,
Not a bolter was firing, no daemon deployed.
The warbands lay dormant in warp-shadowed lairs,
In hopes that the Warmaster soon would be there.

When out in the warp there arose such a roar,
The Geller fields trembled—wards buckled once more.
Away to the viewports they hastened to gaze,
And peered into madness through empyric haze.

The tides of the Immaterium shifted and screamed,
Tearing open a rift carved by hatred long-dreamed;
When what to their ravaged senses unfurled,
But the flagship Vengeful Spirit, bane of the world.

With a figure commanding, dread armour ablaze,
They knew in an instant the end of all days.
More ruthless than primarchs his lieutenants came,
And he goaded and cursed them and called them by name:

“Now Khayon! Now Telemachon! Zaraphiston, rise!
On Iskandar Khayon—let lesser foes die!
To the heart of the Imperium, break every wall!
Now slaughter! Now terror! Now ruin to all!”

Then across every vox-net a signal was spread,
A promise of conquest, a prophecy dread.
The whispers grew louder, the battleships hummed,
And onto the bridge the Warmaster had come.

Black-armoured, colossal, his topknot unbound,
The Talon of Horus made crackling sounds.
A smirk split his features—if such he still bore—
For the Throne he had fled he now hungered for more.

His eyes burned like coals in a furnace of hate,
The scars of ten thousand years etched by fate.
With a growl he proclaimed as the fleets made their way:
“Another Crusade dawns—the Long War holds sway.”

He spoke not again, but his presence alone
Made the bravest Astartes feel ice in their bones.
And filling the void with his terrible might,
Abaddon the Despoiler strode into the night.

And they heard him command as the planets turned red:
“Merry doomsday to all—and let loyalists dread!”