Gaunt's Ghosts/Awesome: Difference between revisions

* The ''[[Warhammer 4000040,000]]'' novel ''The Guns of Tanith'', where Scout Sergeant Mkoll survives getting his ship blown up, climbs across a half-meter-wide span over the course of a day (in ''acid fog'' and with mutant predators hounding him every way) up the side of the hab-dome which is containing the Chaos Champion he's being sent to assassinate, sneaking into his mansion, and shooting him. When the Chaos Champion reacts with disdain at the attack due to his shields, Mkoll's only response? "This is just a distraction." Followed by six tube charges blowing up in the Champion's face.

** Mkoll got another one in the earlier ''[[GauntsGaunt's Ghosts]]'' entry ''Ghostmaker'', when he survives run-ins with multiple squads of Chaos through [[Guns Akimbo]] action despite getting increasingly wounded. This is followed up by another CMOA for the Ghosts present in Inquisitor Lilith's kill-team when they take out a Chaos force so much larger that the incident was written out of the record for being impossible.

{{quote| ''"I am Imperial Commissar Gaunt. I am known to be a fair man, until I am pushed. '''You have just pushed me.'''"''}}

** Abnett seems to favour Mkoll getting these. Even earlier in ''Ghostmaker'', an [[A Day in Thethe Limelight]] section reveals that he destroyed a [[Humongous Mecha|Chaos Dreadnought]] singlehandedly and then tells the trooper accompanying him not to tell the others. Then in ''Sabbat Martyr'', he out-stealths a Dark Eldar Mandrake. To quote the [[Scarily Competent Tracker]] page: "who is essentially a psychic master assassin space elf who's been tracking down and killing others like himself for ''centuries''. Mkoll, in turn, makes him look like an ''amateur'' right before he blows his head clean off."

{{quote| ''"Come, Ibram. Let us educate the archenemy of mankind."''<br />

''"What shall we teach them?"''<br />

*** A short-lived [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] for this troper is Culcis of the Royal Volpone. His first appearance is in ''Ghostmaker'', where, despite being wounded, he takes it upon himself to be the [[Cold Sniper]] in Dorden's defense of the farm. He doesn't miss, and Mkoll thinks that his eye is as good ''as Larkin's.'' He turns up again, now a Major, in ''Necropolis'', and, during the First Storm, gets hit by the heaviest of the enemy assaults. Despite 70% casualties and the ''loss of his hand'', he stills beats them off. Then he gets his injury seen to.

{{quote| '''Larkin''': (after shooting Heldane in the neck) "Now we're leaving, right?"}}

{{quote| “That’s it,” Brostin grinned. “Guess what’s cooking.”<br />

He took one last, long drag on the lho-stick, exhaled a sigh, then flicked the butt away.<br />

It circled twice in the air.<br />

Then two hundred metres of causeway went up in a wall of fire.<br />

''Scouts are impressed by Brostin's [[Heroic Sacrifice]], then he stumbles out of the fire, blackened and singed, but alive. Scouts ask how he's not dead.''<br />

Brostin hesitated before replying. There had been a drum of detergent gel on the back of the bowser, retardant material carried in case of spills. Just like the stuff Brostin had used back in his days on the fire watch in Tanith Magna. He’d poured it over himself just before his trick with the lho-stick. It wouldn’t stop him burning, not in an inferno like that, but it would protect him long enough to get clear. Brostin considered explaining this to Mkoll and Mkvenner, but he realised that, for the first time, he had shown skills and secrets that impressed the unimpressable scouts. He wasn’t about to waste that moment of superiority with a mundane explanation.<br />

He said: “I know fire. Been waging war with it for years. It wouldn’t dare harm me, not after all we’ve been through together.”<br />

The scouts looked at him, suspecting they were being hoodwinked, but lost for an answer. Brostin clambered on up the slope.<br />

* The tankers from Pardus also get quite a few CMOAs in the Gaunt's Ghost novel ''Honour Guard'', showing that there are many, many Imperial Guard regiments out there that are competent badasses. In one battle, one company of Pardus tanks (numbering about 20, none of them super-heavy tanks), attacked a village held by a Chaos tank force. They expected only an equal number of enemy tanks. They ended up fighting a "division-strength" Chaos tank force (100+ tanks), plus a Baneblade super-heavy tank to boot. Nonetheless, the Pardus tankers utterly annihilate their enemy using superior tactics while only suffering moderate casualties in return. Even the Baneblade is destroyed by the company's two tank aces (each with over ''sixty'' confirmed kills) working together. As the Pardus Company Commander thought to himself at the outset of the battle: ''"Forget "major engagement". This is going to be '''historic'''".''

** Major Kleopas, commander of the Pardus tankers, would later be killed in a battle where they faced over ''three hundred'' enemy tanks. His tank was hit by an anti-tank shell, killing his crew, setting him and the tank on fire, and severing his spine below the waist. He burned to death, but not before firing one last shot that destroyed the enemy tank that had hit him.

* [[What You Are in Thethe Dark|"Nineteenth [Platoon] lasted seventeen minutes from the time the gates closed. They accounted for one-hundred and eighty nine enemy casualties. No one witnessed their heroism."]]