Snippet #2141722

"By the way lad, fer future reference.... My feet ain't hairy an' Rattlings don't have beards!" the Squat said to Varn, after having singled him out.
"Well, pardon me, last time I met anyone that short he robbed me of everything I had. I'm just cautious next time I come across vertically challenged people," Varn responded. "I've only seen Ogryns, Ratlings and normal people. They don't exactly tell you about every variation of mankind there is."

Varn felt extremely uncomfortable with what he had heard. He had lived and worked as a middle Hiver, and liked the life he had, the idea of venturing in where influence and contacts mattered seemed... Dangerous. Though the talk of daemons, cults and whatever other types of Xenos there were out in the dark universe, made him much more uncomfortable; he had seen first hand how terrible war could be. He couldn't imagine how secret wars were fought, especially those by the Inquisition.
He shivered. Memories of how he had created bio-chemical weapons for the Penal Legion rushed back like a nightmare… The results had been terrifying.

He looked down at the Squad. “You seem to know a lot about the Imperium’s enemies. Would you mind explaining to me what… Tyranid is… exactly?” Since Varn had been educated by Imperial standards, he was largely ignorant of the true enemies of Man. On Malice he had fought Rebels and traitors whose leaders were unfortunately competent, and most talk about Xeno encounters were dismissed as incompetence or just plain nonsense.