This Is Our Warhammer Journey

Rameses felt down for a bit but quickly adjusted his mindset.

After all, he was an adult. A little complaining, a little venting—that’s about enough. Good bros are willing to listen to your inner pain, but the problem now was that they were all in jail together. No one was doing any better than anyone else.

If he couldn’t pull himself together and ended up dragging the other three into full emo mode, that’d be a f***ing disaster.

The priority was still figuring out how to survive in this world.

“Ahem, then let’s begin the Representative Council of the Second Empire, under the witness of our dear friend Chapter.”

Romulus saw the mood getting heavy, so he gave a little cough and broke the silence.

“Why not just call it the Third Empire? Makes it sound like Rameses is the outsider.”

Arthur couldn’t help but snark.

“Not a bad idea.”

“Sounds like someone’s asking for a bolter round.”

None of the four at the table had even a shred of reverence for the Imperium. After all, the Imperium now was basically just a sustainable failure of a corpse, with a broken political system inside and Chaos and Tyranids eyeing it from the outside.

If it weren’t for the countless heroes still dying for humanity’s future—and the one still sitting on the Golden Throne—the Imperium could’ve been buried and done with a long time ago.

If they had to sum up the Imperium and this galaxy in one sentence—

“The Imperium is a fermented pile of cr*p mashed together from countless awful bits, and the Warp is the toilet. It survives by slurping up that sh*t.”

Arthur offered his brutally honest take.

Even without Chaos messing things up, the Imperium was already a horrible political entity. At its core, it was something the Emperor had forcefully slapped together in a desperate final move for humanity’s future.

Now that the gamble had failed, he’d been turned into the ultimate Imperial weapon sitting on a toilet, thanks to the Ecclesiarchy, and what’s left was a brainless corpse that only got more rank as time went on.

“As for the few bright spots that do exist—well, pouring a cup of clean water into a sea of sewage doesn’t really change anything. In fact, the whole process is just an unmitigated tragedy.”

“And then there are the xenos. Leaving aside the fact that we’re wearing human faces and can’t really integrate anyway—Orks are just meme creatures, the Eldar are stalked by Slaanesh, and even if the Necrons have advanced tech, they’re still a slave society.”

“Next up is the Tau Empire... hmm. I’d say we’ll see when we actually run into them. I’m human, not a soul-light, after all. Their whole existence mostly just proves that a lot of the Imperium’s so-called ‘necessary evils’ weren’t all that necessary.”

“Well said!”

The other three clapped in agreement.

“So none of us have any illusions about this universe, huh?”

Rameses let out a genuine sigh of relief. “That’s a f***ing comfort.”

“If we’ve given up on hope, then the only thing left is struggle and grinding it out.”

Seeing the mood lighten up a bit, Romulus took the chance to lay out his plan.

“There are three things we need to figure out—what time and place we’re in, what the hell we actually are, and what we’re going to do next.”

He tossed a piece of mechanical data module onto the table.

“I dug this up from the warship logs. This ship entered the Warp in 740.M41, in Terran calendar, July. Its location is in the northern part of the Ultima Segmentum, in the Pierde Sub-sector. You might not be familiar with that name, but you’ll definitely know the neighboring Ghoul Stars.”

“Backwater h*llhole,”

Rameses muttered as he raised his hand, pulling over a Cogitator from the sanctum with psychic power. He input the data Romulus handed over, and a star map spread out in front of them.

“The Pierde Sub-sector, named after a Rogue Trader from the Great Crusade named Pierde. It has twelve Imperial civilised worlds, and only the core world, Pierde, has any real value—it’s like a half-forge world. Let’s see—”

“Right now we should still be somewhere within this sub-sector. I’m still sending out Astropathic messages. Could take a while for the Imperium to respond.”

Everyone knew how “efficient” the Imperium was. Even though this ship was using Deathwatch identifiers, because of hardware issues, they’d probably be drifting in space for a bit.

After all, the entire bridge had been sheared off by an Ork hunk of metal. Expecting this thing to move on its own was probably wishful thinking.

“This ship was responding to a distress call from Pierde’s core world. Supposedly a heretic cult had broken out there. Pretty much has to be Chaos—nothing else could’ve triggered a Deathwatch and Cadian response.”

Romulus added.

Everyone nodded, got it.

“Then onto the second issue.”

Romulus glanced at the other three.

“What exactly are we now?”

“Primaris Space Marines?”

Now that he knew what era they were in, Arthur thought this Mk10 armor looked kinda out of place.

It was still around three hundred years before ‘Undefeated Chaos Warlord’ Abaddon blew up Cadia, and if a bunch of PSMs were seen wandering around by some Tech-Priest, he might just start screaming in binary.

“Physically maybe, but actually, even our bodies aren’t fully standard. Otherwise I’d have been turned to ash by some Red Text spell a long time ago.”

Rameses said, tearing into a drumstick while eyeing Arthur, who hadn’t even taken off his helmet.

“Why aren’t you eating? It’s just us bros here—no need to be so uptight.”

“Arthur still isn’t entirely convinced about our abilities. Even learned Low Gothic on his own.”

Romulus explained, leaving Rameses blinking in surprise.

“...D**n.”

Rameses had just used his powers when he figured them out, no hesitation at all. His thought was, hey, I transmigrated into the Warhammer universe, already hit rock bottom, anything else is a step up. Even if Tzeentch was just messing with him, so be it.

But the more he used them, the more wrong things felt.

The Chaos Gods didn’t seem to have this level of finesse.

“That’s a good thing. Mad respect to Arthur for staying cautious in a situation like this. Unlike Garna—first time we met, he shot me twice.”

“I was in a fugue state, Black Rage was running the show—okay, okay, my bad. I’m sorry.”

Romulus glared at the one dude who, while the rest were analyzing stuff, was busy stuffing his face like he hadn’t eaten in eight generations.

“......”

Arthur, a bit embarrassed, didn’t know what to say.

Romulus immediately picked up that something was off.

“You weren’t also thinking of stabbing your bro a few times, were you?”

“Uh......”

Arthur stayed silent, trying to find the words.

He had, in fact, thought about it. When he first suspected Romulus of being a Tzeentch daemon here to fool him, he’d almost gone for it. It wasn’t until Romulus pulled out a bunch of Astartes out of nowhere that the suspicion eased a bit.

If the Emperor hadn’t manifested, giving him some confidence that he didn’t have Chaos gunk in his soul, he might’ve tried to trap the ship in the Warp until he figured things out—just in case it was some evil god’s scheme to mess up realspace.

If it really was a scheme, then the only answer was to fight.

“......”

Romulus looked at the silent Arthur, and could pretty much piece together what his childhood friend had been thinking.

Whatever lingering resentment he had, it just grew heavier.