I don't really talk about my wounds that much in general. Mostly because they generally involved also losing some of my men at the same time. The wound over my heart is a fairly good example of this, but... it was a long time ago.
[ He looks over at her, his blue cybernetic eyes unreadable. ]
The Tanith 1st was assigned to help defend the hive-world of Verghast from... what looked to simply initially be a civil war amongst the various cities, but turned out to be a Chaos incursion, commanded by the Daemon Prince Heritor Asphodel.
There was a lot of treachery, a lot of loss of life by my regiment, and the others under the command of various other leaders of the guard, such as Corday, Grizmund, and the like, and of course, Lord-General Noches Sturm, the damned coward. The circumstances would take a while to relate, but the end of it is what is important to the tale. The final assault was made on the Spike, Asphodel's mobile fortress which had smashed through the gates of our stronghold, Vervunhive. I led a force including some Volphone Bluebloods, my own tanith troopers, and some local partisans who had joined us for the last attempt at victory. We had to jump aboard it as it passed nearby to some of the higher buildings of the city, and we managed to jump aboard with only a single loss. [ Though somehow, Mach bonin survived falling off the side of a huge war machine with only a damaged spine, the lucky fellow. ]
We fought our way to the command room of the Spike, and used a piece of ancient and arcane technology entrusted to me by the head of house Chass, one of the nobles of the Hive-city, and one of the few people who wasn't a self-interested bastard. He had died earlier in the siege attempting to stop an insane.... well, nevermind, he died, is the thing. [ Gaunt closes his eyes, moving back to the main part of the story. ] I brought the weapon with me, to the controls of the Spike, and we managed to not only deactivate it, but every war machine and major piece of cogitator-driven technology in a wide area throughout the city. If the energy shield hadn't been blown apart earlier in the siege, this surely would have taken it down as well, but that was immaterial at this point.
[ He halts, blowing out a breath. ]
It was only after we'd disabled his war machine that Asphodel came for us. He was a monster, six meters tall, carrying a huge bolter and a tremendous sword. A daemon. He killed a lot of us, several partisans, a few of the Blueblood stormtroopers, and pulped one of my heavy weapons troopers, Genx, he had been hit so hard his chest was just a mist.
[ Gaunt shakes his head as he goes on. ]
Now previous to the final Siege, Lord Chass had given me a steel rose, grown in his strange technological gardens to wear for honor, as a sign of my alignment with his house. It saved my life, because while I was able to kill the Heritor with a lucky thrust of my power sword, [ Which chall has seen, a well-balanced saber that produces a molecular disruption field that makes even a beam saber somewhat wimpy-looking in terms of sheer cutting power, though with a lot less incineration of the target. ] he shot me in the chest, right over the heart with a bolter. The rose took the brunt of the bolter shell, fragmenting and pushing some slivers into my chest and aorta, but if the rose hadn't been there, the bolt-round would have punched right into my chest and blown me apart. I spent a month on life-support in a hospital bed after that fight, and it wasn't the last time I'd be so crippled either.
[ He goes quiet, looking away from Chall and towards the floor. Up close, the subtle suture-scarring on his face and chest can be seen, as though someone had to literally sew all his flesh back his torso after it had been torn away, and the quiet click-whirr of his augmetic eyes can be heard as well. </small.]