Clash at Kharons Wake- Grimm omens campaign

 

The Debut of the Grave-Tithe Colossus

The Ossuary Fields of Kharon’s Wake

The war had already been lost.

Not by the servants of Chaos—but by reality itself.

The sky above Kharon’s Wake had split open into a cathedral of screaming brass. Rivers of molten blood fell upward into impossible clouds while skulls rained like hail upon the dying.

At the center of the carnage stood the daemon that had ended worlds.

A towering Bloodthirster.

Its wings eclipsed burning ruins. Brass armor dripped with fresh gore, trophies rattling from chains across its scarred flesh. In one hand, an axe large enough to sever battle tanks in half. In the other, a whip of living fire that split the earth open wherever it struck.

Around it lay the broken remnants of three armies.

Imperial armor burned.

Aeldari constructs smoldered.

Even Chaos warbands—those foolish enough to mistake allegiance for mercy—had been reduced to butchered offerings.

The daemon roared to the heavens.

And the Warp answered.

Thousands died merely hearing its voice.

Yet amidst the slaughter, there was something strange.

No retreat.

No countercharge.

Only stillness.

The dead were too still.

Bodies littering the battlefield did not bleed freely.

Their blood crawled.

Like rivers running backward.

Toward something unseen.

Toward the fog.

The Bloodthirster stopped.

Its molten eyes narrowed.

For the first time since manifesting, the beast hesitated.

The battlefield had gone quiet.

Too quiet.

Then came the sound.

CLANG.

A metallic impact.

Heavy.

Ancient.

Far too large to belong to any tank.

CLANG.

The fog shifted.

CLANG.

Something moved within it.

Not marching.

Dragging.

Stalking.

The earth trembled.

A silhouette emerged.

At first, only limbs.

Too many.

Towering mechanical legs unfolded from the mist like the skeletal remains of some impossible predator. Serrated claws the size of transports dug into ruined ferrocrete, crushing corpses beneath them as if the dead were nothing more than ash.

Then the torso rose into view.

A nightmare of daemon-fused machinery.

The silhouette of a Defiler—but wrong.

Far larger.

More predatory.

Its front chassis hunched low like an execution beast preparing to spring, while massive bladed limbs spread outward in grotesque symmetry. Bone trophies and soul lanterns swung beneath armored plating etched with funerary scripture.

The armor was grave-black.

Cracked silver.

Warpfire glowed through fractures like baleful moonlight beneath rotten stone.

Its cannon assembly hung over its body like the head of some carrion god, smoke pouring from exhausts shaped like cathedral spires.

And behind it—

Dragged in chains—

Were the dead.

Hundreds of corpses.

Not trophies.

Cargo.

Harvest.

The daemon engine stopped.

Silence.

Then every corpse behind it sat upright simultaneously.

A thousand dead mouths opened.

And spoke with one voice.

“THE TITHE IS DUE.”

The Bloodthirster laughed.

A sound like worlds breaking.

It spread its wings wide.

“YOU DARE?” the daemon bellowed. “A MACHINE COMES TO CHALLENGE KHORNE?”

The answer came not from the engine—

But from above.

Upon a broken ridge overlooking the battlefield stood Grim.

Motionless.

Cloaked in funeral smoke.

Staff planted into soil made soft by slaughter.

He did not raise his voice.

He merely spoke.

“Collect.”

The Grave-Tithe Colossus moved.

No warning.

No roar.

No challenge.

One moment stillness—

The next, annihilation.

The colossal Defiler lunged with horrifying speed.

Its segmented legs slammed into the earth, hurling tons of daemon-forged metal forward like a predatory beast finally unleashed.

The Bloodthirster swung its axe.

The strike that had shattered Baneblades met—

SCREECHING ADAMANTINE.

A titanic claw intercepted the blow.

Sparks exploded like artillery shells.

The Colossus twisted unnaturally, spider-limbs folding and snapping with predatory precision impossible for something its size. A crushing siege claw slammed into the daemon’s ribs hard enough to crack brass armor.

The Bloodthirster staggered.

Impossible.

Nothing staggered a Bloodthirster.

The daemon roared and lashed its whip.

The flaming chain wrapped around one of the Colossus’ forward limbs—

—and immediately the limb tore itself free.

Not destroyed.

Detached.

The severed appendage crashed into the battlefield—

Only for dozens of corpse-servitors to crawl from beneath the Colossus, dragging the ruined limb back toward its underside like insects returning meat to a nest.

Fresh bone.

Fresh metal.

Fresh flesh.

The engine was already rebuilding.

The Bloodthirster snarled.

The Colossus lowered itself.

Then the battlefield changed.

Every corpse nearby rose.

Not living.

Not dead.

Harvested.

The fallen clawed at the Bloodthirster’s legs. Imperial guardsmen. Chaos marines. Orks. Astartes. Enemies and allies alike.

All equal in death.

All claimed.

The daemon hacked through them with fury—

Too late.

The Colossus struck.

Its massive cannon erupted.

Not shellfire.

A storm of screaming souls.

The impact staggered the Bloodthirster backward.

And in that opening—

The siege claw descended.

One colossal talon drove through brass armor.

Another pierced flesh.

The Grave-Tithe Colossus lifted the greater daemon bodily from the earth.

The battlefield froze.

Even daemons paused.

The impossible 

The impossible had happened.

A predator had found prey.

The Colossus leaned forward, its furnace-face inches from the Bloodthirster’s roaring maw.

Then from within the engine came thousands of voices whispering at once:

“YOUR SKULL IS CLAIMED. YOUR SOUL IS TITHE.”

And for the first time in millennia—

The Bloodthirster felt fear.

Above the battlefield, Grim finally smiled.

The harvest had begun.

This battle report including Ai image was created by Travis Jensen based on a recent game I had with him.