Herd mentality

The Herd faction came into being when, faced with annihilation by the Order, human survivors flocked to the banner of one Colonel Hastings, who claimed to have received a vision of the Order’s god – Naruuk the Star-Eater, known to most of his victims only as “The Enemy”.

Grudgingly, when their own god spoke to the Abbots and confirmed Hastings’ story, the Order had to stop short of conquest and leave some power in the hands of this rag-tag band of ex-soldiers.

Within days, Hastings – now calling himself “Lord” following the example of Order leadership – managed to forge his desperate group into a fanatic cult of the Star-Eater, armed to the teeth and rivaling the Order itself in power.

His word was the law, and the Enemy’s worship became mandatory. The soldiers who had survived the failure of Operation Iron Shield were forcibly converted or put against the wall. Five days after the events at the portal, EUFOR attempted to bomb the excavation site off the face of the earth. They were unsuccessful. An advance into the site by an armoured division was repelled by what was deemed to be an unknown enemy force. A foray carried out by an intelligence squad ended in a complete loss.

Weeks went by. Inside the perimeter, among the eerie silence, propaganda graffiti are starting to appear, and not all of them are in favour of the Herd. Has the unthinkable happened?

There are rumours about a “Project Banshee”, and something allegedly called the Sisterhood. Other rumours concern “fraternization” with the Tribals, and species that dwell even deeper in the dimensional core. Some people claim to have had visions, not all of them of the Star-Eater. Some Herd subcommanders are said to have ambitions.

And then, of course, there is the matter of the Intruder. It seems increasingly likely that her continuing defiance is facilitated by others. All is not well in the Herd. Something is rotten, that much seems certain.