Chapter 9

161: Playing peek-a-boo with a Navigator is ill advised: That thing where you go up behind someone and cover their eyes? Yeah, don't do that with a Navigator's third eye. Best case scenario is that they panic and burn your hands off. Worst case scenario is that SOMEBODY does it while we're in the Warp. So when we get thrown hundreds of light-years off course, stranded in the middle of nowhere and half a year from help, we're blaming you. And when we inevitably resort to cannibalism , you're first on the chopping block. At least her liver was good.

162: There is no practical purpose to gold on your armor: Oh I know what you're thinking. "But the Emperor and the Custodians-" yeah well you're not the Emperor, nor are you a Custodian. They can get away with wearing gold armor (Though I'm getting mixed reports on whether the Custodians actually wear armor anymore) because they're gods and demigods of war respectively. We're not. We are fragile little things, and it only takes one or two good shots to take us out. And gold is crap at protecting you, weighs you down, and the shine can give you away. So if you're lugging around a gold plated suit of armor (Fucking Blue Bloods) I'm not acting that sad when it gets pierced by a Gretchen's pea shooter.

163: They are not doing it just to get attention: You'd be amazed how many stupid boys (And I call them boys because many of the ones who try have only seen a battle or two. Older veterans know better. They've been around enough to read the signs) still flirt with my daughter and her sweetheart. They think the kissing is a show for them. Oh, that's cute. You think because you killed ten cultists you're a war hero. Try doing that when they aren't Slaanesh cultists, drunk and high on I don't want to know. Anyway, when you get touchy with one, particularly if you keep going after no has been said, the other is going to be quite mad. If the one you're touching inappropriately doesn't take off your nuts, her special other will. Thankfully most of them wise up after the "no", but there's always the stupid outliers.

164: They still aren't doing it to get attention: Ladies, see 163. Those two men are not kissing in the hopes that it will flood your panties. They either genuinely love each other or just find each other hot and want to fuck. Either way, you're the last thing on their minds. Do not touch their special areas, people do not like being touched there without permission. I'm in the same boat. And no one likes it when you threaten to tattle to a commissar when sodomy is evolved (WE WERE EXPERIMENTING! But the little twat just had to open his mouth. Thank Emperor there was a volcano.) So I'm on their side when they retaliate. Sadly women don't have dicks to cut off, and the tits just aren't as satisfying to go after. So those two had to just go old school and impale her on a drill. Hey. She did say "Fuck my brains out." And they did shove something in a hole until her brains were out. Her mouth for those wondering. So at least she died quickly. And messily.

165: You cannot fight a Chaos Space Marine in melee combat: There is exactly one type of melee combat that will work on a Traitor Marine. An attack from behind, preferably aimed at the power backpack, but even that doesn't always work. As six of my poor ribs found out a few seconds later. Still, it slowed him down enough for my sister to cook him inside his own armor. After my wife had blown a hole open with her heavy bolter. Yeah, see, these things are hard to kill. That one had taken out a tank platoon before we managed to bring him down. And you do not want to be in convenient stabbing range of them, even if they're sorcerers who don't use melee weapons. They can still grab your head and pop it like a loud, annoying boil. And the noblewoman who did it certainly was red enough to be a boil, even before her head was dripping through armored covered fingers.

166: Retreating is not a inherently bad thing: I'd say that members of the Death Korps should put the book down now, but I'm not sure if any of them actually picked it up. And those who did probably wanted to murder me by the end of chapter 2. Anyway, sometimes you just need to retreat. Sometimes you need to regroup or fall back to more fortified positions, or even just throw in the towel when a planet is lost. Sometimes you can't or shouldn't, and there you need to stand your ground and fight. But when you refuse to move back a hundred meters in a barren wasteland to some better cover to avoid being seen as a "coward" then you might as well just drop trousers and wave your dingus at the enemy armies. Hundreds of men died defending a meter high wall of rocks. And the dickhead who ordered didn't. Well. Not for awhile. He got his legs blown off and I decided to ignore his cries for help. I mean there was nothing I could've done to save him, but I didn't let him know that.

167: Ratlings are little vindictive little pricks: Ugh, be polite to the little freaks of nature and they're decent snipers and good cooks. Get on their bad side, and they have ways of torturing you. I had to sniff my soup for a year to make sure no one pissed in it. But sometimes there are the psychos of the species, the one that try and snipe your kneecaps off because you said the grox was overdone. You do not want to be killed by something that doesn't come up to your nipples, ok? Do what I do and bash their heads in with the stock of your rifle the second you realize if they mean you harm. I mean I wasn't in danger, but sticking your cock in my alcohol while guzzling dirty water is where I draw the line.

168: Everyone is not a Lacrymole: Look. I don't even know if these things are real. The Inquisitor who claimed to find them has been discredited, and the records that do talk about Lacrymoles say they were wiped out in the Great Crusade. But if they are real, assuming every last person is one helps no one except them. So drop the paranoia act before you end up like the last person who was convinced they were everywhere. Attempting to assassinate the Warmaster who was tasked with stopping that almost Black Crusade I told you about last time. Yeah, that ended predictably. She put her dagger in his gut. Then dragged it all the way up. She had a major offensive to retake three star systems the next day, with five fortress worlds scattered over them. She was a little on edge and I think appreciated the outlet.

169: Do not make non-tank crews drive tanks: A thousand times, a thousand fucking times I told her. "I do not know how to drive a Leman Russ. I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DRIVE A LEMAN RUSS!" But she stuck me in a tank anyway. I drove as slowly as I could to avoid getting friendly soldiers stuck in the tracks and I was still cleaning guts out at the end of the day. They might have been dead already, but I'm pretty sure I heard someone screaming when the bones were crunching. Anyway, after I got hit by the third rocket I was pulling back when I heard someone calling me a cunt before everything went quiet. I told her that I couldn't drive a tank.

170: Jump Packs are for Space Marines only. Remember when I said that Space Marine bolters shouldn't be used by regular humans? That applies to all Space Marine equipment, but I want to give special mention to the Jump Pack. See, when a Space Marine uses it, it's to bring several tons of metal and muscle down on an unfortunate Ork's head, before a Thunder Hammer caves in the chest of a Nob. Humans are not that durable. So when someone takes one off of a dead Ultramarine (It can happen, amazing right?) it's going to end badly. When he breaks both of his legs on takeoff it's only going to go downhill from there. Though to be frank, him screaming before he smeared himself on the rock face was actually pretty damn hilarious. He got off easy. Chapters don't like it when you steal their war gear. I hear some of them are working on their own version of the Nine Actions, and I don't think he would've liked to be the one who confirmed the rumors.

171: Do not feed the delusions of the Xanthists: Get this. There are Inquisitors who think that we don't use the Warp enough. That's like having a knife stuck in your gut and thinking that the solution is to push it in until comes out the other side. I know that I said that you should not get in the way of Inquisitors, but when a Xanthist Inquisitor is requisitioning your services, do the bare minimum effort. Do what you have to do to technically get the job done and then stop there. Trust me. Anything that the Inquisitor can do to you for being insubordinate pales in comparison to doing what they want and suffering through the resulting fallout

172: Power swords that are off are still swords: You know that sharp edge underneath the power field? Yeah, that's still good for killing people. Apparently whoever invented the power sword wanted the wielder to still be able to fight if the power supply ever ran out. Actually really good design. But the downside is that it isn't idiot proof, as someone snuck into our room when my wife and I were sleeping and decided to take my power sword and play around with it. I had woken up half an hour later and was about to go on the warpath when he snuck back in, trying to clean the blood off of it. He had accidentally decapitated the XO and was trying to pin it on me. Needless to say, I didn't take the dive for him, and the CO demonstrated just how sharp a power sword can be.

173: Defective explosives can still go off at any time: Did the Uplifting Primer not spoon feed you this one? Explosives are finicky things, and the makeshift ones even more so. Sadly I've seen makeshift explosives used more often than I'm comfortable with. On fronts that drag out, sometimes soldiers need to get creative and work with what they have. Never thought I'd see spoons used for shrapnel spread. Hey, it worked. Sadly, soldiers used to proper Forge World mines aren't so good with these less stable explosives. Most of them have the decency to die because it went off when they were trying to plant it. And some people are stupid enough to demonstrate how crappy the explosives are by dancing on it.

174: Drink responsibly: Yes I am talking to you like a teenager, because the target audience for this book seems to be around that mental level. I enjoy a nice stiff one but I'm not an idiot about it. I drink enough to stay sober, only getting fully drunk far from the front lines, if you'll recall the Ork toga party in 52 and my desire to prevent that ever happening again? Alcohol wasn't the sole catalyst there, but it didn't help. And even then I don't really ever get drunk nowadays, because you can't get away with that when you're a father and a husband. Anyway, the guy who died. Let's just say deaths with booze involved tend to be the least dignified deaths, and he died with his ass in the air, naked as the day he was born.

175: Deathstrike launchers should only be used against very distant targets: You don't see these things that much anymore, but they still pop up every now and then. When used properly, these things can decide the fate of battles. A vortex missile hitting a Chaos Titan and sucking it into oblivion has got to be one of the most satisfying things I've ever seen in my life. But these things are hard to use because they have such a wide area of effect, and sometimes you can do more damage to friendly forces than enemies. At the very least don't use it to take out tanks that are only a stone's throw away. I was five kilometers away and I was still in a field hospital for three months after with third degree burns. Thank Emperor that one didn't have a vortex missile.

176: Hive gangers are crap soldiers: These guys are pathetic. They're only really good for walking up to someone with an intimidating look, showing off the gun they stuck in their pants. I'm waiting for one to shoot off his prick. Anyway, when we were rounding up gangsters for the PDF during a rebellion, and they were a sad lot. One tried to intimidate me with his dick gun, so I shot him in the face. The others fell in line after that, but they were a waste of munitions. Couldn't shoot straight, couldn't hold a line, couldn't even reload effectively. The best they could do was soak up shots. So needless to say we aren't breaking through any Eldar lines when these guys were spearheading the assault.

177: Orks do not take human teeth. Also don't bargain with Orks: Turns out the Orks are elitists. They don't want "Punee umen teef" because they aren't good enough for them. I actually saw one puff out his chest and stick his nose up at a handful of human teeth. Like he was a freaking nobleman. And here I thought the Orks were too stupid to have classism. Great. Well at least I can kill these ones. Oh right, and then the woman who was trying to buy a salvaged Leman Russ got her head split open with an axe. I don't know how she expected it to go any other way.

178: Make sure you don't get caught breaking stupid relations regarding trading supplies: This isn't so much a stupid death as it is an embarrassing death. There's nothing stupid about trying to correct a typical Administratum cock-up and getting the supplies that you need. Like the time I needed a dozen grav-chutes and hundred pounds worth of anti-tank charges and got three barrels of acid instead. It was not fun trying to trade that for what I needed. I had to swap around with a dozen different units, and finally I got it. And the Lieutenant who I had given badly needed rifles to was executed. For trying to make sure his men were armed when they went into battle. Like I said. Not a stupid death. Just embarrassing.

179: Ork cybernetics do not work with human bodies: I know Commissar Yarrick did it, but you aren't Yarrick. By all means that scrap metal arm of his should be drooping like a flaccid cock, but somehow he's snapping greenskin necks with it. Maybe he got lucky and got the only arm in the galaxy that the Orks made that works properly, I don't know. The point is, he's the only one who has ever managed to pull it off, every other time has been a complete disaster. As it turns out implanting Ork cybernetics is effectively taking metal shards and hammering them into a stump. Most people die around that point for obvious reasons. The few that were lucky enough to make it off the table...well let's just say that they're defective.

180: Do not imply I am romantically attracted to my sister If you make ONE MORE FUCKING JOKE ABOUT THAT I WILL PERSONALLY FIND OUT HOW MUCH FORCE IT TAKES TO RIP A HUMAN HEAD OFF! Everyone thinks that they're a smart ass. "Oh, you keep spending all this time with your sister, you must be fucking her." Well maybe I don't think with my genitals the way a troglodyte like you does. I imagine I just shattered your world view.

Second of all, yes. I am close to my sister. Life was hard, really damn hard growing up where we did. No I'm not telling you were that is, stop asking. She was the only consistently good thing in my life. She was the one who put that molotov cocktail in our cunt of a father's face. That was, and I'm being completely honest here, the best birthday present I have ever gotten. We had to fend for ourselves from then on out, and sadly enough it was a legitimate step up. But we still had each other.

We got separated at one point. For a decade. It happened when we were keeping that Chaos incursion from snowballing into a Black Crusade. Our frontline base was overwhelmed, sorcerers had snuck behind us and summoned daemons while their main force smashed into us. I saw their leader, an Emperor forsaken Chaos Lord, wadding into our ranks and slaughtering hundreds of guardsman all by herself. I emptied my hellgun's power cell at her while she was busy hacking away at a Space Wolf. Whatever armor she was wearing, whatever the Ruinous Powers did to her, I might as well have been shooting blanks. The only reason she didn't cleave me in half with a single swing of her axe was that she had spotted another Space Marine in the distance and had started a collection of their helmets.

Twelve hours later, that base was in ruins. A million of our soldiers were dead and we were pushed back hundreds of kilometers. We kept losing ground every day. I got separated from her in the first attack. I had no idea if she was dead or not. For five long years we were fighting long, hard battles. We either lost or won hollow victories. 47 planets fell to that Lord's rampage. Six of them we devastated ourselves to deny them to the enemy, four of them we turned to barren husks, two of them aren't there anymore. That incursion lasted five years. Five years without my sister. Five years where I didn't have her to lean on.

I went to a dark place in that time. A very dark place. There are weeks where I don't remember where I was or what I had been doing. I would wake up in a different base, sometimes we had moved up, sometimes we had fallen back. I was almost always covered in blood, sometimes I had burn and stab wounds I had somehow gotten, sometimes an empty bottle. I probably would've been executed if everything wasn't such a confusing mess all over the sector.

It finally came to an end when the Space Wolves arrived in force to break the enemy's back. Bombarding those planets had destroyed a good bulk of the Chaos Forces, and the 4th company had been helping us hold the line from the start. When the whole chapter arrived, we were finally able to push them back. It was the first and only time I had ever seen Logan Grimnar, the Old Wolf, and he was determined to repay a blood debt for the dead of the 4th company. He took the Chaos Lord's arm off and spent the majority of the fight wiping the floor with her. She set a small horde of Daemons on him to get away, and he was up to his armpits in corpses by the time he was done of them.

10% of original Chaos army was all that was left. That was still quite an army though, and the Lord herself was still alive. Apparently with a new arm from the Gods. She set up base on one of the planets she had taken. She's still there today, doing Emperor knows what. She's had a few clashes with the Space Wolves since then, there's a lot of bad blood between them now. I've ever heard some scattered reports that she's trying to form an alliance with Magnus the Red. I have no idea why she didn't turn into a Daemon, but each time I saw her she looked less and less human. I…think she's holding back her transformation. For just the right time.

Anyway, I was able to keep myself going with an enemy like that to fight. Afterwards, I didn't know what do to with myself. I was sent off to fight conflicts that just felt so pointless and small after that. Truth be told, when we were lined up against another damn Ork horde, a suicide charge, I was ready to let one of them bury an axe in my head. I was dead on my feet. But then another soldier freaking out and killed the Commissar. My wife.

Somehow, we ended up talking to each other after that incident. We managed to keep each other sane. Things kind of grew from there, we were leaning on each other. Then, one day, another five years after the Space Wolves ended that war, we managed to meet up again. Yes I cried hard, yes I hugged her for hours, and yes I punched someone who laughed at it. Until my wife came into my life, my sister was the only person I ever really cared about and who really cared about me. We watched each other's backs through utter shit shows. We have a special bond. Do not. Make. Fun. Of. It.

No one has actually died from doing this, but belittle the way we feel about each other and I can fix that.