Listen up, you worthless grox-brained fools!
I have reports that you imbeciles are heading toward Catachan!The Catachan! That Emperor-damned planet was likely made by a god who got dared by his peers to create the most deadly world he could muster—and the bastard won by a landslide! That's how utterly, completely, apocalyptically lethal this nightmare is!
I've been to Caliban, the frozen hell of Fenris, even bloody Krieg! The Warp itself is a pleasant vacation compared to that place! During the Great Rift, a warp storm actually gulped up the entire planet, swirled it around for a bit, then spat it back out in absolute disgust. The locals didn't even feel different! That's how maniacally insane this hellscape is!
DO NOT—and I cannot stress this enough—GO THERE!
If you crash-land on it, you are already dead. If you hesitate and think, you are dead. If you don't hesitate and don't think, you are dead anyway. If you see a frog, congratulations, you're dead! If some poor sod kilometers away from you so much as boops a specific frog, you and everything in a fifty-kilometer radius will be atomized!
So just get the frak out of that entire sector if you must, you absolute imbeciles!
YOU ARE NOT SLY MARBO! NONE OF YOU ARE NOT EVEN CLOSE TO MARBO!
And don't you dare think that jungle training on some backwater agri-world makes you ready for this! I've seen entire regiments of so-called "jungle fighters" get eaten by the Emperor-damned trees before they even made planetfall! The Catachan Jungle Fighters? Those aren't soldiers—they're survivors who crawled out of hell itself and decided to make it their day job! They were BORN in that nightmare, raised by it, molded by it! You? You'll be mulch before you can spell "biodiversity"!
Let me tell you about the 47th Mordian Iron Guard—Emperor rest their souls. Elite jungle warfare specialists, they were. Bragged about clearing the death world of Ghenna Prime in record time. I sent them to Catachan for "routine patrol." ROUTINE! Within six minutes of landing, their vox went dead. When we finally found the wreckage of their Valkyrie, it had been converted into a bloody greenhouse by some carnivorous vine that was using their helmets as flower pots! The pilot's last transmission? "The trees are screaming at us in High Gothic and they know our names!"
That's what happens to "jungle fighters" on Catachan, you mewling groxlings!
Anyone caught filing deployment requests for Catachan will be shot for stupidity. Maybe that way we can raise the average IQ of the guard.
That is all.
- Lord Commander [REDACTED], still alive because he stays the hell away from Catachan
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"Let this ship sail then. You ready, Bruce?" I couldn't help but grin at the thought of what was coming. This was going to be absolutely hilarious. I couldn't even imagine how much fun I'd have with this one. All of these trials were designed using the most heroic and absurdly competent man in the vast Imperium. Bruce was formidable, so I was expecting him to die only a few hundred times. Clark would be the real entertainment later.
"I am," he said simply, while Alfred brought snacks to Damian, Barbara, and Tim. I'd be streaming this for them—they could try the trials themselves later if they wished.
I patted his shoulder as he found himself transported into a void.
"For the first trial, just kill that guy."
A crimson-red Khornate Berserker materialized before him in all its ferocious might. The Dark Knight readied himself as he found himself on a burning battlefield. The deafening explosions and screams rendered his ears useless as he spotted his target.
The Berserker was charging through the Imperial lines like they were made of paper, its chain-axe shredding every guardsman who dared engage it. Its corrupted armor remained spotless despite the heavy lasgun fire pounding against it. Bruce immediately scanned the battlefield for weapons that could prove useful against his superhuman foe.
A commissar fell nearby, cut down by enemy fire, his power sword clattering from his grip mere feet away. Bruce sprinted to the blade and activated it. The disintegration field hummed to life as he moved to engage the Berserker.
The Chaos champion was more powerful and significantly faster than him. Its experienced, brutal attacks began cornering the Dark Knight when suddenly an artillery shell screamed overhead, passing dangerously close to both combatants. The concussive blast filled Bruce's mind with agony as he felt his consciousness fade.
"Seven out of ten—excellent for a first attempt," I announced as Bruce materialized back in the void. "Primary flaws: You're too self-centered. You had an entire army at your disposal, yet you didn't utilize them. You knew the enemy was superior to you physically—you could have found teammates and overwhelmed him with numbers. Overall, very good performance. You accomplished your objective. Ready for another trial?"
Bruce pulled himself together, analyzing the battle from his own perspective. It was a rare opportunity to gain combat experience without the genuine fear of permanent death. The pain was inconsequential to him. He nodded curtly.
This time he materialized in a dense jungle alongside several Rambo-looking soldiers. Catachan. He immediately raised his guard to maximum as his movements slowed under the planet's heavier gravity. His squad belonged to the Catachan 12th Regiment and were planning to ambush an Ork force—his job was to ensure their success.
Thanks to his team's expert navigation and his own trained instincts, he managed to avoid the jungle's most lethal dangers and survived until the engagement. The trial had apparently equipped him with a lasgun and Catachan fighting knife.
As they arrived at the Ork encampment, the greenskins somehow detected their approach and charged like a verdant avalanche. Bruce fired repeatedly while the men around him fell one by one. He lost count of his kills, but the horde seemed endless as he continued the slaughter. While leaping between the massive trees, he suddenly felt his entire body growing numb, and he tumbled into the path of the green tide's stampede.
"That was just unlucky, Bruce," I said as he reappeared. "These trials are randomized, so don't let it discourage you. You inhaled neurotoxin that was released by a flower you passed by early in the engagement—it gradually impaired your judgment."
So that explained his increasingly irrational tactical decisions. Something had been affecting his mind, and he hadn't realized it until the very end. The thought of this being reality was deeply unsettling—even Batman felt a chill of terror at that possibility.
"Can we address this neurological vulnerability in future trials?" Bruce asked, his analytical mind already working on solutions.
"Oh absolutely. But let's first see what the path to victory looks like. This one belongs to the legendary Sly Marbo. One of the first missions that made him famous, actually."
The jungle scene materialized around them once more, but this time they were observers. Bruce watched intently as a lone figure emerged from the verdant shadows—Sly Marbo, the One-Man Army of Catachan.
Where Bruce's squad had moved as a unit, Marbo was a ghost. He flowed through the jungle like he was born from it, every step perfectly placed, every breath synchronized with the planet's rhythm. The Orks never saw him coming.
The first greenskin sentry simply vanished—one moment scanning the treeline, the next crumpling silently with Marbo's knife between its ribs. Then another. And another.
But Marbo didn't rely on his blade alone. Bruce watched in fascination as the Catachan warrior herded a group of Orks toward a seemingly innocent patch of undergrowth. The moment the greenskins stepped on it, barking toads erupted from the vegetation—and exploded in showers of caustic venom, their toxic spray dissolving the aliens into acidic gore within seconds.
Another cluster of Orks found themselves fleeing directly into the path of a Catachan Devil—the massive serpentine predator that Marbo had somehow agitated and directed with pinpoint precision. The creature's bone-crushing coils made short work of the panicked aliens.
Even the jungle's plant life became his weapon. Marbo used his knife to slice through the bulbous pods of a Venus Man-trap, releasing clouds of hallucinogenic spores that sent an entire Ork patrol stumbling blindly into a camouflaged pit filled with razor-sharp thorns.
When Marbo finally reached the Warboss's compound, he didn't charge like Bruce's squad had. Instead, he became death incarnate. Demo charges appeared as if from nowhere, turning the Orks' own fortifications into shrapnel storms. His ripper gun spoke in controlled bursts, each shot finding its mark with surgical precision.
The massive Warboss—the same one whose horde had overwhelmed Bruce—barely had time to bellow a war cry before Marbo was upon him. The Catachan fighter moved like liquid violence, sliding under the creature's power klaw and driving his knife up through the beast's throat in one fluid motion. The Warboss's head separated from its shoulders with surgical precision.
The entire engagement lasted less than ten minutes. Where hundreds of Orks had rampaged, only silence and a lone hunter remained.
"This is how you fight on Catachan, my friend," I explained as the scene faded. "Your fault was that you're so accustomed to humanoid enemies and having the intelligence advantage. The neurotoxin was emitted from a flower you trampled without realizing it. Marbo or any Catachan Devil wouldn't have made such a mistake."
Bruce had to agree. He was formidable, yes, but he was so used to being in the lead. He always had information superiority, and even when he didn't, he had means to prepare. When he had no time to prepare against an unknown threat, he fell. It was a humbling lesson—even the World's Greatest Detective could be undone by stepping on the wrong plant.
"I need to study Catachan's ecosystem more thoroughly," Bruce admitted. "I treated it like any other jungle, but it's clearly operating on entirely different principles."
"Exactly. Every flower, every insect, every blade of grass on that planet is a potential weapon. The Catachan Jungle Fighters aren't just soldiers—they're survivors who crawled out of hell itself and decided to make it their day job. They were born in that nightmare, raised by it, molded by it."
As Bruce and others gone to rest and think about the trails I decided to play some violin. What? I am a cultured man with cultured hobbies and my wife loves them and now I am sad. Well Farhrid Farjad it is. LEts go and cry a bit.
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Here is the next chapter guys. The trails will continue but we all know Bruce wont leave his house till he finish fixing his vunerability against neuro-alterations. Thanks for reading. Also any idea you want to see happen give it to me.