Etoch’s Ledger of Pain and Improvement

Struk is always complaining.

"Your fist smashes hard," he says, "but what it doesn't kill, kills it fast."

Always this. As if death were a failure instead of data.

I told him the truth, as I always do. "Then more-more emberstone, you must bring. And more-more bodies. Strength is not found. Strength is made."

So we went hunting.

The ash-wastes whispered underfoot, hot and soft with old burning. I smelled minerals. I smelled rot. I smelled promise. When we reached the emberstone seam something else was already feeding there, of course.

They were beautiful. Too many limbs. Too much speed. Flesh stretched into impossible shapes. Beasts that did not apologise for what they were.

"So many claws," I breathed. "So much fast meat. I could learn much from these gor-kin."

Struk wanted territory and machines. I wanted specimens.

He gave his orders, clever as always. Tunnels. Distractions. Flanking. But plans are bones - only useful once you put meat on them.

The first gnawhole collapsed in screams and rubble, crushed by charging beasts. A pity. Still, the Ash-Gnaw slipped past while the enemy wasted violence on dirt. That amused me.

Struk muttered about speed. About need. About Kret. And as always, the bell-rat came when spoken of.

Kret arrived riding his blasphemous engine, mocking Struk as he tore open a new gnawhole directly atop emberstone. He even conjured a Krondspine, just to show he could. I dislike his methods. But I admire his results.

Then the prey revealed more of itself. Not only beasts. Men too.

Men wrapped in arrogance, shields glowing, weapons humming with sensation. Their nerves sang. I could almost hear them from where I stood. Their formation was careful. Afraid of our guns. Good. Fear makes muscles tense. Tense muscles tear better.

Struk whispered my name. "Etoch, erupt." I love that word.

We came up inside their space, bursting from the earth like an exposed organ. For a moment they stared. Perfect moment. Shock is the truest anaesthetic. The Surgeon's Dream screamed and blasted warpfire. The Stormlash howled beside it. Slaangors melted, flesh sloughing from bone in beautiful sheets.

To the southwest more beasts danced just out of range. I signaled the Fist.

Charging is a blunt tool. But effective.

My ogors hit them like falling buildings. The beasts burst. Not died: burst. Pressure, velocity, anatomy. The air filled with parts and guts and claws and bile.

I recorded everything. Then my attention was drawn elsewhere.

More Slaangors had reached the clanrats. And with them came two men who were not beasts at all, but something worse - focused.

One bore a Sparking Shield. The other carried a mace that sang to my teeth. Clanrats drowned the shield-bearer. They died well as their blows bounced back from the shield onto themselves. Many died. The man still stood.

The other swung his weapon. And the Ash-Gnaw mob ceased to exist. Pulp. Smoke. Fragments.

The mace— oh the mace!

The mace was emberstone. Worked. Shaped. Tempered. It rang when it struck. It wanted to be taken apart.

"Struk," I breathed. "That mace. Solid emberstone."

"Ours-mine! Take-grab!" he shrieked.

The Surgeon's Dream answered before any order reached it. Its scourger howled and green fire swallowed the mace-bearer whole. When the emerald flames died, Thaa'ris the Painbringer, Lord of Pain was no more than a burning outline, and his weapon sagged from fingers that could no longer feel.

At the same moment, warp-bolts, needles, and warpfire tore into the shielded one and his escort. I added my own fire, carefully, precisely. When the smoke cleared, Rhi'ol, Lord of Hubris lay broken, his radiant shield flickering and dying as his blood cooled in the ash.

But their Slaangors still stood; until the Grinder Pack slammed into them, shredding mutated limbs from mutated bodies.

Silence returned.

My ogors regrouped around me, dragging wounded brothers, reloading syringes, cracking bones back into places they mostly belonged. They were hurt.

But they were alive. And alive means editable.

Struk laughed and clapped my shoulder, already thinking of engines and conquests.

"Heh, plenty of bodies and emberstone for you now, Etoch."

Yes.

Bodies.

Emberstone.

A perfected pool of emberstone, made from a mace.

Living ogors to improve.

Dead men to open.

And so many new ways to make the Fist stronger.

The battlefield had cooled. The remnants of Tha’ris the Painbringer and Rhi’ol, Lord of Hubris still lay in twisted heaps, their weapons scorched and cracked, their essence leached by warp-energy. Etoch knelt among them, scalpel and warpfire in hand, and examined the mace. Emberstone, yes-yes, perfectly tempered by the hands of a master—painful, elegant, and far too durable to be left in the hands of mortals.

“This… will serve better,” Etoch hissed, smelling the residual warp-taint. “More-more power… more-more flesh… more-more chaos.”

He dragged the mace back to the gnawhole. The Fist of Etoch waited, crouched and twitching, limbs coiled with anticipation. The ogors’ eyes glimmered with a mix of fear and loyalty; they trusted Etoch to make them stronger, not just larger.

First, Etoch melted the emberstone down, careful to preserve its inner resonance. He injected a mixture of warp-fluids and rat-bone powder, murmuring arcane calculations under his breath. The stone pulsed, vibrating with energy as if aware it was being repurposed.

Next came the incorporation. One by one, he welded and grafted the emberstone shards into the Fist’s natural limbs, each piece a conduit for both power and survival. The ogors flinched at the sparks and the hiss of superheated warp-metal—but they did not resist.

“This… is not just a weapon,” Etoch said aloud, almost to himself. “It is life. It will strike… and it will reproduce.”

With a final twist of his warpsyringe pistol, he injected the Fist with a dose of warp-bonding serum, fusing emberstone and flesh into a single, resonant unit. The Fist roared as new strength surged through its muscles, the emberstone humming with contained energy.

Now the Fist could channel the essence of the emberstone mace in combat. Each strike carried the latent ability to spawn more of themselves, an uncanny Skaven trick known as More Where They Came From. Wherever the Fist struck, the energy left behind whispered into the ground, seeding potential for new ogors—mutated, emboldened, hungry.

Etoch stepped back and observed. The Fist flexed its enormous fists, stamping the ground, feeling the embedded emberstone, sensing the promise of replication in every strike. Its claws scraped the soil, leaving faint glows where future war-constructs might emerge.

“Perfect,” Etoch murmured. “Strong… fast… many-many… unstoppable.”

Struk arrived then, his claws twitching with anticipation. “It is ready?” he hissed.

Etoch grinned. “Ready, yes-yes. Now, wherever it falls, wherever it smashes… there will be more. Many-more. Fodder, body, power… all mine, all ours.”

The Fist bellowed, testing its new strength, and the emberstone thrummed in harmony with its heartbeat. A single swing could now cleave foes and seed new soldiers, multiplying the Conclave’s might in ways that were both horrifying and elegant.

Etoch wiped his claws clean on the Fist’s hide, satisfied. The mace was gone—but its essence lived on, inside the ultimate war-machine.

The Fist of Etoch had become more than a monster. It had become an engine of endless creation, a walking testament to the Skaven philosophy: “More Where They Came From.”