Compared to the sluggish inefficiencies of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the sheer production speed of the Men of Iron had always been nothing short of terrifying.
Within the span of a mere three Terran days, micro-starports had sprouted across a third of the Imperium's sovereign territory. Three Terran hours after the deployment of each starport, the surrounding Imperial worlds beleaguered by the daemonic incursions of Slaanesh were immediately delivered from destruction.
Yet, while these human worlds were being systematically liberated, the shockwaves reverberating through the Warp left Slaanesh struck by an utter, ineffable dread.
Ever since the Dark Prince had launched this campaign of retribution, everything had initially proceeded with flawless precision. Her foolish, mortal disciples had submitted completely to her decadent will, indulging their desires on a catastrophic scale. In doing so, they had successfully torn open countless webways and Warp tears across the length and breadth of the galaxy.
The myriad daemons summoned in Slaanesh's wake had long been gnawing with ravenous, unrequited hunger. As these warp-spawn successfully breached the veil and spilled into the material universe, the reality-rupturing rifts continued to expand exponentially. Profane sacrificial rituals sent a torrential, cascading tide of stolen mortal souls flooding back into the Immaterium to feed the Dark Prince. Every single soul was glutted with raw, exquisite desire and the sickening terror of their final moments, a vintage that tasted utterly sublime to the Prince of Pleasure.
Yet, before long, Slaanesh detected a sickening anomaly.
Every daemon of Slaanesh was, fundamentally, an extension and a localized fracture of her own cosmic essence. And yet, the Dark Prince suddenly felt a wave of unprecedented, hollow weakness washing over her immortal form. She had never endured such a sensation in all her existence.
As her multi-faceted gaze pierced through the churning, iridescent folds of the Warp veil, the grim reality of the material universe unfolded before her eyes.
"The Ultramarines?"
"No... the Dark Angels?"
"Mortal auxillia?"
Her sight cast down upon every single theater of war where her daemonic legions held sway. Resistance forces of every conceivable faction were locked in desperate, bloody meat-grinders against Slaanesh's depraved cults across scores of Imperial worlds. Bloodletting, slaughter, death, and exquisite, agonizing torture played out across a thousand battlefields. The emotional feedback of these atrocities continuously converged upon Slaanesh's consciousness, yet the pervasive sense of weakness within her did not abate in the slightest.
She could feel her foundational power evaporating at a catastrophic rate. This was no mere expenditure of warp-energy; it was the agonizing, definitive sensation of being permanently hollowed out.
Then, during a fleeting glimpse of a heavily contested warzone, Slaanesh finally beheld the true, familiar architect of her ruin.
The mechanical chassis of the Iron Men were advancing in lockstep, unleashing bizarre, esoteric weaponry that systematically purged the daemonic hosts. The foul entities struck by those ominous, pitch-black beams were not merely banishing them back to the Immaterium, their very spiritual essences were being utterly shattered, atomized within the dark radiation.
Because these daemonic souls were irrevocably laced with Slaanesh's personal blessings and divine essence, that very foundational power was being permanently erased alongside her minions. As the mechanical silhouettes of the Iron Men materialized across an increasing number of battlefronts, Slaanesh realized that the bedrock of her divinity was beginning to fracture.
While she despised it when the Iron Men force-fed her an overwhelming deluge of calculated, clinical "delicacies," she feared the reality of them taking a razor to her immortal flesh infinitely more.
Yet, just as Slaanesh frantically issued commands ordering her daemonic hosts to sever their tethers to realspace and retreat into the Warp, an entirely different cosmic force seized the initiative.
The gluttonous festival of slaughter unleashed by Slaanesh's daemons had not only sated the Dark Prince; the cascading torrents of gore and violent death had naturally aroused the gaze of Khorne.
Unlike Khorne's overtly brazen, crimson-drenched massacres and unapologetic, butchering rituals, acts of simple "entertainment" and sensory indulgence were a mundane reality within the Imperium. Consequently, vast swathes of Imperial personnel had completely failed to recognize the horrific, insidious conspiracies festering beneath seemingly benign invitations.
Countless administrative functionaries and even scattered elements of the Inquisition, all fiercely loyal to the Throneworld, had found themselves unwittingly ensnared within Slaanesh's massive sacrificial configurations. The unholy, reality-warping will of the Dark Prince made these profane liturgies almost impossible for mortal minds to resist, driving the heretical cultists into ever-deepening frenzies of devotion to pleasure their dark patron.
But now, Slaanesh was retreating, yet she could under no circumstances allow her brother-deities to sense her profound vulnerability.
Eerie, discordant whispers began to echo within the minds of her mortal cultists. As the ecstatic, sadistic torments slowly mutated into mindless, industrial butchery, the warp-spawn drawn to these increasingly bloody rituals began to shift in alignment and form.
The corrupting tides of Chaos continued to metastasize across the galaxy, but the nature of the daemonic vanguard was twisting. Slaanesh's delicate, slender horrors were systematically replaced by the brutal, brass-clad butchers of Khorne.
Influenced by the raw, unadulterated frequencies of the Blood God, the brutalized Imperial citizens and beleaguered defense regiments found themselves driven into a state of hysterical, suicidal fury, hurling themselves into desperate, close-quarters melees against the encroaching warp-spawn. Only those who displayed uncompromising, iron-willed martial defiance could survive long enough to draw the calculating gaze of Khorne; the cowardly and weak were instantly torn limb from limb by the Blood God's expanding legions.
The sheer scale of the slaughter quickly drew greater daemonic cohorts of Khorne into realspace, who promptly collided with incoming Imperial relief detachments in a state of absolute, frenzied madness. The theaters of war widened exponentially. As legions of Khornate daemons materialized across dozens of Imperial worlds, the conflicts descended into unmitigated, apocalyptic insanity. Khorne's raw, kinetic power was vastly more terrifying than the subtle corruptions of Slaanesh, and his mortal and immortal thralls were far more numerous.
As precious Imperial defensive arrays and task forces were pulled from their strategic positions to evacuate aristocratic planetary governors, high-born nobility, and a parasitic horde of bureaucratic officials, other hidden heretical cults embedded within the hives saw their opportunity and joined the widespread anarchy.
Watching the unending stream of catastrophic tactical updates flooding the strategic holos, a High Inquisitor of the Holy Ordos looked close to physically tearing those parasitic, bureaucratic officials apart with his bare hands.
An emergency session of the Senatorum Imperialis was hastily convened. The high-level conclave was attended by the Lord Regent Roboute Guilliman, the High Inquisitor of the Inquisition, the Grand Master of the Officio Assassinorum, and a cadre of the Imperium's highest authorities. With countless brushfire wars erupting simultaneously across the galactic rim, even the peerless, cold efficiency of the Iron Men could not adequately address a total, galaxy-wide theater of war. Severe logistical and resource constraints were crippling the mechanical legions' greatest operational advantages.
As a mountain of grim intelligence was systematically synthesized, a cold, unyielding mandate was officially handed down to the war councils.
By Diktat of the Lord Regent and the Senatorum Imperialis: All Imperial military assets are to immediately abandon any rescue operations directed toward pleasure planets, garden worlds, or paradise worlds. All forces are ordered to fall back and fortify vital strategic hubs and forge worlds. No detachment may leave its designated defensive perimeter to secure non-essential assets without a direct, unified counter-authorization from the Departmento Munitorum.
Forces currently deployed in contested zones are authorized to execute independent situational analysis. Operating Inquisitors and Chapter Masters of the Adeptus Astartes maintain full discretionary authority to assess local conditions and, in instances of total strategic compromise, are empowered to bypass rescue protocols and subject the fallen paradise or garden worlds to the final solution—Exterminatus.
The High Lords of Terra initially fought with vitriolic, desperate resistance against the ratification of this decree.
However, Guilliman remained completely unyielding. The entirety of the Imperium was slipping into the maw of an all-consuming conflagration; if decisive, merciless strategic triage was not executed immediately, mankind would face the definitive collapse of the imperial apparatus.
During the heated debates, Guilliman proposed several alternative contingency vectors, such as transferring limited jurisdiction of specific mineral-rich mining worlds to the Iron Men networks to accelerate their mass-production protocols. This would leverage the machines' flawless manufacturing efficiency to rapidly and definitively suppress all daemonic incursions and destabilizing planetary threats, including, but not limited to, void-pirates, Chaos renegades, and hostile xenos incursions.
Yet, the deep-seated paranoia surrounding the Iron Men within the upper echelons of the High Lords had never truly dissipated, especially now that the machine legions had demonstrated absolute obedience to Guilliman's direct logic-chains and had integrated deeply into Imperial war zones.
The most vehement opposition to this logistical integration did not originate from the secular High Lords, but rather from the chambers of the Inquisition. The Holy Ordos, alongside elements of the Adeptus Custodes, harbored an eternal, simmering dread that this peerlessly loyal Primarch might ultimately reenact the catastrophic, ancient tragedy of the Warmaster Horus.
The Legio Custodes and various clandestine monastic sub-sects expressed profound structural anxieties regarding the concentration of power. Meanwhile, the Officio Assassinorum remained characteristically neutral. It was abundantly clear that regardless of who stepped out of line, the Assassinorum would unfalteringly execute the ancient, bloody legacy of Malcador the Sigillite.
Ultimately, after grueling hours of multi-factional political maneuvering, Guilliman issued a final, biting ultimatum: either the council immediately grant him the mandate to stabilize a war that was rapidly spiraling into total madness, or he would personally drag his brother, Lion El'Jonson, back to Terra and leave him to govern the crumbling carcass of the Imperium.
Faced with the terrifying prospect of the Lord of First's wrath, the High Lords of Terra and the representatives of the Chancellor of the Estate Imperium ultimately capitulated, signing the decrees and yielding to Guilliman's absolute authority.