Chapter 11

201: Let Dreadnoughts sleep: You know that saying, "Only in death does duty end?" Dreadnoughts are Space Marines who said, "Meh, I can still keep going." As such, Space Marines who are still whole tend to not ask much of them, letting them sleep in until shit hits the fan. They do like to tell tales of their youth sometimes, but that's on their terms. They don't appreciate blue blood prats stamping on the door to their stasis chambers, demanding story time. I gained a great deal of respect for the Space Wolves that day. It turns out they don't give a flying fuck if you're a blue blood or not. You burn just as well either way.

202: You cannot take on greater Daemons with a knife: I really don't know why the Hell humanity has lasted as long as it has when people like this are allowed to breed. Maybe after ten-thousand years we finally ran out of smart people and now we're stuck with this. Anyway, remember the time I ran into a Lord of Change? And then ran as fast as I could in the other direction? Some lady wanted to stay and fight, saying that she had a dagger that had been given to her by a Space Marine and had been blessed by the Emperor. Yeah, she got her head shoved up her own ass. The Lord of Change turned her bones to mush first, then spent the next few minutes making balloon animals with her. Credit where credit is due, she did keep him busy long enough for the rest of us to escape.

203: Red ones do not go fucking faster: Why are we trying to copy the Orks? When has that ever been a good idea? Because needless to say, painting a Leman Russ or a Chimera red does very little to increase the total KPH! The most likely result is you getting in trouble with the Administratum for wasting all that red paint. Which usually results in all of your regular supplies getting cut off and with you being turned into an Ork hood ornament because you couldn't load your lasgun!

204: You have other war assets besides infantry. FUCKING KUBRIK CHENKOV! I sadly can't put him on this list because for some Emperor forsaken reason is still alive. People, let's take a look at what we have. Tanks the size of city blocks, Imperial Knights, Space Marines, APCs, regular tanks, artillery that can pound defenses into atoms, and a navy that can crack planets. USE IT! Don't just send a hundred-thousand people to smash against a wall, without even giving them demolition charges! Because, as it turns out, you kinda NEED those men when the enemy makes their counter-attack!

205: Rivalries are fucking worthless: This is really close to the whole pride thing, but it happens so often that it deserves its own entry. Rivalries between various units. They're stupid and they need to stop. Some people say that they help motivate people to perform at their best, to show up the ones they're competing with. Here's your motivation, living. Fight with everything you have and you live, that's all the motivation that you need. This isn't about maximizing efficiency, it's about dick measuring. And more than once it has ended with things turning violent, usually resulting in deaths. If we're murdering each other on the ship to the battlefield, we're making the enemy's job easier. Think. Think and put your cock away.

206: Explosions hurt: I remember when I was young. Thinking I could just watch with a smirk as I detonated the charge on a rebel Leman Russ. I had snuck around behind their lines and wanted to watch the show when I pulled the trigger. Two seconds later, I was lying on the ground with both of my eardrums ruptured. I was deaf for half a year. As it turns out, explosions have shockwaves in addition to plain old fire, and it's usually more powerful than it looks. So be careful when using that shit people. I know some suicide bombers don't care if THEY die, but the idea of suicide bombing is to hurt the ENEMY! Not your allies!

207: You are not above kissing ass: I have a ton of shit to say about Inquisitors, blue bloods, Ultramarines and Emperor knows what else. I pretty much never express it outside of this book and private conversations. Because usually when you're dealing with someone that has a great deal of power over you, the best thing you can do is get on your knees and kiss ass. It sucks, I know, wash your mouth out afterward. I've gotten a handful of licks in over the decades, but those are few and far between and only when I was sure no one would learn about it. So don't tell an Inquisitor to go fuck themselves. It will not end well.

208: Do not write heretical stories about the Primarchs: I do not want to know who the hell wrote these. But stop. No, Horus didn't do Robert in the ass. Rogal Dorn and Perturabo did not spend the three weeks and six days of the Iron Cage viciously doing each other on top of a Space Marine orgy! Alpharius Omegon DID NOT FORNICATE WITH HIMSELF! The Adeptus Ministorum is getting pissed about this people! Stop giving them a reason to set things on fire! Or at least hide them like you will this book.

209: Speed is a life saver: Do you sometimes walk slowly for dramatic effect? If so, please kick yourself in the balls for me. If you lack them, punch yourself in the tit. If you lack those, just bang your head against the nearest wall. Speed is of the essence! No fancy formations, you're not the Mordian Iron Guard, don't pretend that you are, no pausing, no posing, NONE OF IT! Snipers seem to love picking off these people, and I can't blame them. If I saw someone dropping to one knee and holding his rifle over his head just to look cool, I'd blow his brains out too.

210: Fully grown adults make better soldiers: I know, I know, everyone needs to contribute at ties, but you do know that kids are shitty soldiers right? They never stop whining, they eat too much, sleep too much, can't aim straight, what's the point of it? All it does is make us rely on sub-par soldiers, of which we have way too many already! How many men did we lose to Tyranids because we were giving them a junior feast when we needed someone to defend our right flank!

211: Do not underestimate Vanus assassins: Of the six assassins, the Vanus are easily the least intimidating. They can't fry the brains of psykers, they can't put a shot in your heart from five kilometers away, they can't assume the appearance of your best friend, and they aren't murder machines on Emperor knows how many drugs. Hell, even the Venenum assassins are more intimating, seeing as how they can kill you with a scratch. That being said, these guys are hardly pushovers, even if they are more number crunchers than fighters. So I'd like to remind guardsmen that this isn't the Schola Progenium where the rich jocks pick on the scrawny nerds. Three guardsmen thought that they'd pick on the bookworm. He later complained that the ten seconds it took to slit all their throats could've been better spent calculating the probability of my right ball recovering. Ok, he was kind of an asshole.

212: Do not be within a ten kilometer radius of an Eversor Assassin: The Vanus Assassin was the only assassin I ever had a personal encounter with. I'm going to cover all of the major branches of the Officio Assassinorum, but the other five assassins are second hand references. An inquisitorial initiate who works closely with them was my source. I know the guy…moderately well. Anyway, if you can make eye contact with an Eversor, you're too close. These things are as close as the Imperium has gotten to creating "Murder in a Box." They pretty much kill everyone that moves and try to kill quite a few things than don't. Some people apparently really want to see this first hand. Yeah…don't. According to my source, it turns out that claw of theirs can stretch the human jaw farther than you think.

213: Don't screw around near Vindicare Assassins: I thought I made it clear that you shouldn't touch Chaos weapons way back when. Or Ork weapons. And that you should be careful with xeno weapons in general. But some people just think it's fun to play dress up with Eldar helmets or Chaos headdresses. And when they're doing a poor imitation of a Nurgle dance, the practically automate assassin, who has killed fifty cultists in the last half hour, will up his kill count to fifty-three. From what I heard, they were getting frisky, so the Inquisiton might be concerned about some bizarre Nurgle, Slannesh hybrid cult too.

214: Don't do anything to Culexus Assassin: These people can make heads explode. That should be enough for most people to leave someone alone. But because they're Blanks, (or Nulls, or Pariahs, or Untouchables or whatever the fuck you call them) some people want to pick a fight with them. Just this feeling around them. Look, my daughter gets physically fucking ill around Blanks, and she doesn't start shit with them. And Culexus Assassins are a cut above the rests. Non-psykers think they can gang up on them because they're immune. No one told them that they can make non-psyker heads just as well. All twenty-three of them. You think they would've learned after the tenth.

215: Be picky when Venenum Assassins are in the area: The Venenum Assassins, you don't hear much about them. They tend to poison enemy water supplies and watch as they die by the thousands. Nice, effective way of depopulating enemy armies, particularly when the poison is slow acting. That way, by the time people start getting sick, everyone in the area has already taken a sip of the water. The problem is that these people take their poisons seriously, and sometimes they can last for months, even years. So maybe, JUST MAYBE, you shouldn't drink water from the river surrounded by ten-thousand dead cultists! WHEN THE IMPERIUM TOOK THE CITY THREE DAYS AGO!

216: You cannot fuck Callidus Assassins: I swear, the female dominated units in the Imperium are mainly talked about in regards to sex, and it never ends well for the people who do it. It ends badly when you do it for the Sisters, and ends even worse for the Callidus Assassins. To be frank, I don't want to hear about how tight their outfits are at the best of times. Maybe it's because I'm an old pile of bones, but whenever I think sexy thoughts, I tend to keep them to myself. I don't really care what other people think of them, nor do I really want others to know how I picture my wife when I'm alone…don't you fucking read into that. Anyway, just remember this. One could be right behind you. And they don't like it.

217: If you can masterfully infiltrate a cult, you were probably a prime candidate: Kind of self explanatory. Was once part of a ten man team who was infiltrating a local cult so we could find their headquarters and bomb it. One lady got a LITTLE too into it. Was a little too good at making baby soup, was awfully quick to pick up painting runes in blood, and was disturbingly eager when the goat came out. Granted I don't know for sure that she was a cultist, but she was halfway through the goat ceremony when her nipples turned into tentacles. Yeah, the rest of the team and I got the frak out of there and called in the strike. I find it telling that no one questioned our decision to leave tentacle tits behind.

218: Use two hands for your weapons: You can ignore this if you have a recoil glove or a good cybernetic arm. Otherwise, two hands per weapon jackass. My daughter-in-law has to make use of recoil gloves half the time, and after years of training she is only just now figuring out how to effectively dual wield weapons without them. So please, no trying to hold a lasgun in each hand. Unless you're a Space Marine, you're going to look like you're just waving a pair of dicks around. Particularly when you slap yourself in the face with them and blow your brains out.

219: Look both ways before crossing roads: Yes, because apparently we've regressed that badly in the last ten-thousand years. Seriously. Leman Russ tanks can move fast, but not THAT fast. Make sure you don't get in the way of one, otherwise you'll get crushed, spat out, and converted into emergency rations. I talked to the tank crew after one dipshit did this while drunk, and apparently they're just used to it. Because half of humanity is apparently collectively blind and death. I think the Imperium may have failed in its mission to keep the human genome pure.

220: Don't get involved with the Black Templars if you can: The Black Templars do the Emperor's work and they do it well. But they are FUCKING INSANE! For some reason or another, my family got roped into one of their crusades. I honestly can't remember, I think that they were in the neighborhood and half of the local commanders volunteered us. The next eight years of my life after that were an utter blur.

I remember that we managed to get into battles with most of the Imperium's, although thankfully the Necrons were a no-show. That was about the only comforting thing about it. The Black Templars are great at carving through enemy territory, but it's hardly a cost free advancement. At least two members of my family were recovering from massive injuries at any given time. Again. I think.

The whole thing was such a damn adrenaline rush, with the Templars considering any time that they weren't killing the Emperor's enemies to be time wasted. All I remember was constantly fighting while the Templars kept doing crazy shit. I'm pretty sure one of them beat a Nob to death. With me. That's without getting into how one boarded an upper rampart by throwing my sister and wife up there, one tied Zamora to the front of his bike so that she could act as extra firepower, and the happy young couple actually got used as makeshift projectiles. They used a sling.

Look, we took back a lot of territory for the Emperor in those years. But it's kind of a thankless job and I think the Templars could've done it on their own. And more effectively without it thinking other people will solve their problems. After all, I was that Marine's fourth "club"