Dramatis Personae: Orlok, Bringer of Darkness
[//Allegiance: Flesh Eaters/Pentarchy+]
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| [//Orlok+] [//paul_h/@the_midnightmare+] |
"There is a saying on Old Karpathia: 'When you turn from the light, the darkness envelops you.'We are the darkness of traitors."
Defiance? Bravado? An invocation? I could not tell you. All I can say is that I heard myself cry out:
“The Lamassu comes!"Even as the words left my mouth, the monster stopped.
Slowly, it – he – dropped Anzar to the floor. The otherworldly light faded from the air around him; and while the strange sensation of pressure, alternately gripping and releasing, remained in the moist jungle air, it became less insistent.
The warrior turned to face me. I felt my bowels clench as he looked at me and laughed. Matching that maddening background pulse, his laughter struck me as hollow and mirthless.
I lay, frozen, as his irisless eyes bored into me. The blood stench was palpable, overwhelming. Beloved Anzar lay, still twitching, on the ground before him. He wiped the gore – my squadmate's blood – from his chin.
He moved in a flicker, too fast for my eyes to follow, wrenching me from the pile of Marines Saturnine like a rag doll. My broken arm made me cry out. The fear made me quake, which made the pain worse – but even over the agony I still remember those words, so heavily accented.
‘Little one, do you have some secret to tell me? Or will I, Orlok of the Bloodline Sanguine, extract it myself?’
I... I am sorry, Lord. I am sorry, I told him everything I know...”
[//Elias Tang, formerly of Guardian House of Phuba Gomnh, upon his interrogation post extradition from Pao Fung+]
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Bringer of Darkness
A notable personality of the war on Pao Fung, Orlok of the Flesh Eaters would go on to demonstrate his worth to the Pentarchy still further during the fall of the Myrean League.
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| [//The triangular 'dag' markings at the hem of Orlok's cloak are a common feature of the Flesh Eaters' decorative language – they are commonly known as 'Teeth of Desmodus', in reference to a particularly prominent and valorous member of the Chaplaincy.+] [//paul_h/@the_midnightmare+] |
Little specific – and no direct – evidence can be found for Orlok's actions on Pao Fung in the Flesh Eaters own Librarium, the Vault Stileto. This is surprising, given that the Flesh Eater's after-action reports were extensive and thorough – at least, so we can surmise from the sheer quantity and length of the documents.
Alas, as with so much of the Flesh Eater's records, the huge amount of physical redactions renders most reports that might relate to the war either hopelessly obscure or altered so cryptically that they amount to a hidden code, today decipherable only by the highest-ranking Librarians of the Chapter – and perhaps not fully understood even by them.
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Lost records of the Vault Stileto
What can be pieced togther makes it likely that Orlok did not have overall command of the Flesh Eaters' expeditionary force on Pao Fung, but was notable for his unlikely rise to becoming a rallying figure for the Orthodox forces on the planet and its satellites, and – perhaps more understandably – a figure of terror for the shaken Partisans.
Working alongside hand-picked strike forces, the Librarian was seemingly ever-present during the dense jungle warfare that characterised the war against the Marines Saturnine – though whether this was due to precognitive powers, excellent intelligence work or simple exaggeration on the record-keeping is unclear. It is even possible that Orlok referred not to a single entity, but was a generalised term misused by the terrified Partisan population to refer to any Flesh Eater officer; much as the mysterious 'Dialogus' was played up by the Storm Tyrants and Marines Mendicant for the purposes of Partisan propaganda.
***
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| [//Epistolary Orlok of the Flesh Eaters+] [//paul_h/@the_midnightmare+] |