The current season of Kill Team is coming to a close, as a doughty band of Leagues of Votann pioneers battle with disciplined Brood Brother operatives in Kill Team: Termination. Alas, Bheta-Decima is falling apart around them, and it won’t be long before the entire planet is lost – so how did it get this bad?
The Beginning
As Kill Team veterans may remember, the previous season ended when a colossal space hulk known as the Gallowdark tumbled towards a planet as its knotted mass of ancient ships finally started to unravel. That planet – the ill-fated Bheta-Decima – was once a paradise world rich in natural resources and untouched beauty, but the greed of the Adeptus Mechanicus soon saw it transformed into a vast industrial wasteland feeding the fires of multiple forge worlds.
It was those Tech-Priests who caught wind of the Gallowdark’s passing and hungered for the technological secrets it might contain. They turned the planet’s array of orbital giga-graviton cannons on the space hulk to draw it into range for salvage, and while they technically succeeded, the havoc this caused split the ad-hoc superstructure of the Gallowdark into dozens of pieces that rained down onto the surface of the planet.
The first large fragments obliterated entire forge-cities, falling like meteorites and turning prosperous complexes into steaming craters before their denizens realised their doom had come. Strange engines and fuel sources from millennia-old ships detonated and scoured the land for miles, while smaller morsels rained hails of superheated debris on unprepared populations and warp-tainted fragments infected land, sea, and air with deadly corruption.
As apocalyptic as the initial damage was, the worst was yet to come. Whether by the influence of the warp, long-slumbering technological safeguards, or sheer dumb luck, many shards of the Gallowdark survived their impacts and disgorged tides of deranged cultists, frenzied xenos, and mutant hordes, all of whom now set their sights on the Imperial colonists.
Each impact site that did not eradicate its entire local area became a hotspot for Chaos corruption and violent raids, causing order across the planet to break down. Soon, bands of dishevelled survivors fought bloody wars over dwindling supplies while enclaves of Adeptus Mechanicus survivors jealously guarded their resources. Years passed.
The End
Throughout this anarchy, kill teams of elite operatives struck out into the lawless wastes. Space Marine Scouts of the Raven Guard responded to the distress call of a Magos Biologis, only to discover that the Tech-Priest’s Aeldari test subject – a subdued Farseer of Craftworld Biel-tan – had been located by Striking Scorpions seeking bloody revenge.
Elsewhere, gangs of Drukhari painbringers revelled in the chaos and misery that gripped Bheta-Decima, where the wanton slaughter was so bad that their sinister Mandrake allies slipped from their shadowy realm seeking sport. They were met by the Nemesis Claws of the Night Lords, pitting two masters of fear and brutality against each other in a cutthroat fight to the death.
Then, in the span of just a few short months, the true threat emerged. Hidden within mining gangs, dredger communes, and other groups of downtrodden labourers, the Cult of the Chittering Verse had festered for years before the arrival of the Gallowdark, and the Genestealer Patriarch finally called for their great work to begin.
Uprisings tore through the remaining Imperial strongholds and seized control of resource dumps in vicious, short-lived wars. As the Cult steadily grew in numbers and power, their forces became more organised and well-equipped, and sprawling campaigns raged across the surface as dozens of hidden shadow wars turned the planet’s tunnel networks into charnel pits.
Before long, Bheta-Decima belonged to the Cult of the Chittering Verse. What few Imperial forces remained shrank into the shadows to fight a guerilla war while the Genestealer cultists prepared their world for the Star-Children.
To find out how a passing vessel from the Leagues of Votann was shot down above Bheta-Decima, and what the Hernkyn Yaegirs find as they search for a way off the doomed world, you’ll have to read the gripping narrative inside Kill Team: Termination. It’s up for pre-order this Saturday, so you won’t have long to wait.