The Dark Ages [Dark Data]

[Okor]

Okor shouldered his septic sword, the corroded cleaver resting heavy against his pestilent pauldron as his exposed hide gently writhed, a maggot that had grown fat by feasting upon his festering flesh breaching leathery hide, squirming under the sun's light, beneath the Plague Marine's notice. "Either we sever the head of this serpent, or..." He coughed, near-microscopic jaws slowly gnawing through his own lungs, the parasites that once lived in harmony with his own blighted biology continuing their ravenous consumption, despite the disappearance of his regenerative abilities.

Yellowed, cracked teeth split open in a smile beneath his weathered helm, flecked with diseased blood. "We steal its own fangs and drive them into its eyes. We've assembled a suitable stock of these devices. If you are confident in your strength, I say we go for the throat." He lifted his bubonic blade, driving its tainted tip deep into the soil, the rot and corruption inherent in his favoured weapon seeping into the earth. "We are no weaklings. We are the Chosen, sent to scour this damned realm. We have been baptized in darkling blood, and now our foe starts to fear us. They seek to deny us our abilities, so that we will think ourselves... weak." The Plagued Paladin stepped away from his blade, raising two claws to the sky, black clouds riddled with bruise-coloured lightning hanging overhead, watching and waiting, soul-hungry vultures. "The fools! We are blood-drenched, battle-scarred, and death-sworn. And do you know why we are here, standing at the edge of oblivion?"

"Because we are the hardest gods-damned bastards in Omni's creation, and it's time these Darkling beasts remembered it."

He reached down, pulling his caustic cleaver from the freshly infected earth.

"Now let's go kill some darkspawn."