The Poison Saint, or 'Poison God', is a strange creature that was discovered centuries ago.

According to the Iron Hand, in the year 769 of the 39th millennium, a nest planet called Thetis in the southwest of the Medusa sub-sector suddenly lost all contact with the Empire, and the decree sent by the star government received no response, and the Imperial ships that went to the planet to collect tithes were never returned.

Soon, Thetis's unilateral severance was declared an unforgivable act of rebellion by the Inquisition, and the Punishment Fleet, which was tasked with quelling the rebellion, was organized. As Thetis is a nest world with considerable industrial capabilities, the Iron Hand responded to the counterinsurgency, and about 50 Space Marines joined the retribution fleet against Thetis.

When the Punishment Fleet arrives at its destination, the Iron Hand discovers that the Inquisition's hasty decision to condemn the planet as treacherous was wrong.

The people on Thetis did not betray the Empire, they simply died.

By the time the Punishment Fleet arrived at Thetis, the 19.3 billion Imperial Hive World had been completely destroyed, the entire planet had been overwhelmed with deadly poisonous substances, the base of Adamantite had been eroded to the ground, and the Nest Towers had collapsed in a sea of poisons, turning the entire planet into a poisonous purgatory.

The Punishment Fleet remained in the orbit of Thetis for some time, and the Inquisition worked with the Iron Hand to investigate the cause of the planet's destruction, but found no clues.

An Inquisitor of the Order of the Holy Hammer had thought that the poison that polluted the entire planet into a Jedi Purgatory might be the work of the evil god Nurgle, but after careful investigation, they did not find any traces of large-scale subspace contamination on Thetis, and these deadly poisons belonged to the realm of the physical universe, not the strange forces of the subspace.

During the investigation of Thetis, at least 3 Iron Hand warriors were contaminated with toxic substances, forcing them to remove their poisoned and necrotic limbs and replace them with mechanical prosthetics. - Mechanical prosthetics can resist the erosion of toxic substances to a certain extent, but the effect is not significant, and the strange composition of the poison can even corrode the adamantite gold.

The Punishment Fleet's counterinsurgency journey was fruitless, and the destruction of Thetis was recorded by the Inquisition, and the Iron Hand obtained some samples of the poisonous substance and brought them back to Medusa for further research.

But just a few decades later, in the 799th year of the 39th millennium, another planet went missing.

It was an agricultural planet about 13.5 light-years southeast of Tethys, and when the combined fleet of the Inquisition and the Iron Hand arrived there, they saw the same scene as Thetis: deadly poisonous substances had polluted the entire planet, and the entire population of the empire on it had died, leaving not a single mouth alive.

Over the next nearly 2 centuries, similar events occurred frequently in the Medusa subsector, with planets contaminated by toxic substances falling into poisonous purgatory, and hundreds of billions of imperial populations being brutally slaughtered, which the Iron Hand regarded as a great disgrace, and they sent more forces to find the culprit.

Finally, in the 39th millennium, in 999, the Iron Father Heracross, based on the coordinates of dozens of planets that had fallen before, successfully predicted the location of the next pollution event - Medusa.

The Iron Hand Combined Inquisition and the Mechanic Order concentrated their forces in the Medusa system, so in the 001st year of the 40th millennium, the culprit who polluted 31 imperial worlds and caused massive tragedies appeared in Medusa and crashed into the encirclement network laid by the Iron Hand.

"It was a surprise to all of us." "We thought that this series of tragedies would be caused by some evil alien race, or a cult of chaos, or the remnants of a madman of the Dark Ages, but it turned out that we were all wrong, it was the 'thing' that appeared in Medusa and was not a warship or an interstellar fortress of any kind, it was a living, self-aware creature. ”

"It was a giant space creature resembling a Void Whale, looking like an asteroid-sized ...... A turtle with tentacles? Its carapace escapes highly toxic gases that corrode the hull of the battleship, and its mouthparts emit a sickly glow, carrying a large range of toxic radiation to wander in space, once our warship is close to a certain distance from its body, the mechanical structure of the hull will quickly rust and age, and the plasma engine will also decay into a highly toxic source of pollution. ”

"At the moment when the 'Poison Saint' appeared in the Medusa system, all the mortal soldiers in our fleet lost the ability to fight, either killed directly by the poisonous radiation emitted by the Poison Saint, or tortured to death by the pain of the festering body. Only the Brothers of the Iron Hand and the Mechanical Sages of the Order of Mechanics, who are highly mechanically prosthetic, can maintain a certain degree of combat effectiveness in such an extreme environment. ”

"But even a powerful machine can't hold up for too long in front of the powerful power of the Poison Saint."

The next thing was a little too much to be announced, and the leader of the Red Dragon Warband, Nabal, finally only learned that the Iron Hand was cornered by the poisonous gods at that time, and Medusa was about to be drowned by the poisonous stream. In the midst of the crisis, the Iron Hand struck a secret agreement with the Order of the Mechanics, using a forbidden weapon left over from the Dark Tech Age, and paying a huge price to finally kill the Poison Saint.

But what kind of means were used, what weapons, Iron Hand refused to reveal more details to the 5th Expeditionary Fleet.

Captain Nabal didn't ask much, the start-up warbands all have their own little secrets, which are inconvenient to reveal to outsiders.

"After the death of the Poison Saint, its body structure quickly dissolved under the corrosion of the venom it secreted, and we arranged a super giant static force field enough to freeze an entire planet before it completely dissolved itself, and sealed the remnants of the Poison Saint's body in a device called 'Clarks' Crystal, which is now hidden on Medusa, in the depths of the lava sea."

The Iron Hand Warband Leader Dolcas concluded, "The Chief Think Tank Master of our Warband dreamed of a revelation from the Golden Throne in a deep sleep, and he suspects that the reason why the remnants of Nurgle, instigated by the Tzeentch cultists, invaded Medusa so madly in order to rob the body of the Poison Saint. ”

Nabal wondered if the corpse of the Poison Saint meant anything to the Negrohs. Or is it actually the lackeys of the Lord of Change who want to get hold of this poisonous god and carry out their so-called grand plan?

(End of chapter)