Doom Eagles - Chapter Recruitment: The Neophytes of the Doom Eagles are not chosen primarily because of their strength, their courage, the depth of their soul or their physical appearance, but on the basis that every single one of them shares a feeling of total loss, grief and desperation.They regard themselves as already dying, just like their homeworld of Gathis II. The tests which the future Space Marines must pass are intended to illustrate to them that they have nothing to lose and that it does not matter where and when they die.Only a very few of the Doom Eagles' Aspirants survive these tests, and only those who have recognised the fact that they are already truly dead in the Emperor's service are allowed to survive their Aspirant's Trial and join the Chapter as Neophytes.By Imperial command, every male of 13 standard years is to be present at Table City, Gathis II's capital, upon the thirteenth day of the thirteenth lunar month of every local year. Every year is the same: the gliders will come to the various outlying villages and tribal communities to collect the youths.And sometimes, once in every solar decade, not all of them will return. Inducted into the Imperial Navy, the rumours go, or sent as cannon fodder to fight the Orks.Some of the people of Gathis believe that the youths are offered as a sacrifice to the Emperor's glory or any one of a thousand different possibilities, all of them rich with uncertainty and legend. Some of the natives even believe that the selected youths are sent to appease the angry mountain ghosts.The potential Aspirants are brought to a stone building at the skyport. Once gathered, the black-robed Chapter Serfs who ferried the boys from the gliders will begin to choose. Directed by an unseen presence (a Chapter Librarian whose physical presence is hidden by a psychic veil) a hand will reach out and tap at a selected boy, and then three or four ebony figures will close in, dragging away each victim.The boys will then be brought to a rocky plateau, somewhere amongst the colossal crags of the Razorpeak Mountains, before a cave. They will be confused and unsure of how they have arrived there. A disembodied voice will inform the selected youths that they have been chosen.Chosen not for their strength or their courage, nor their souls or their bodies. They have been chosen because each in their way have already understood an immutable truth: they understand that they are already dead. They each share memories of disaster, loss, injury, a lifetime of exclusion and isolation.The disembodied voice will then order them to enter the cave, where they will surely die. Despite their aching minds, the youths will enter the cave, desperate to obey the Librarian's commands. But not all the youths will succeed in this task, for some can not bear the weight of the sadness that they have experienced all their lives.The Librarian will explain to the selected youths that millennia ago, an object had fallen from the sky amongst the Razorpeak Mountains. Its impact shattered the crust of the planet, destabilising it forever.The world of Gathis II, like its people, was dying one second at a time. One day its core would solidify, its oceans would freeze and its people would starve. Standing within the cave, the youths will then notice the growing puddle of boiling water at their feet, now continuously rising unbidden.Once every year, lava-flows beneath the Razorpeaks vent into the tunnels beneath the youths' feet, filling them with scalding water. Within a solar hour, the cavern, and all those above it, would be submerged. They would breathe boiling water, gagging silently as the air burnt from their lungs. The chamber has a single exit.The youths are offered the choice of making use of it or accepting death. Either way, they have only solar minutes to live. With nothing to lose, the youths will scramble from the chamber and make their way to another cavern which is bisected by a living cobweb of mossy lichen. This web, glowing with bacterial luminescence, bears thorns, as long as the youths' fingers.They sprout like butcher-hook talons, curved like scimitars and equally as sharp. This forest of daggers reaches from cavern wall to cavern wall, from stalactite-strewn ceiling to uneven floor. The youths have to force their way through the wall of sharp, tiny spines that lacerate flesh and split sinews.Some of the youths will manage to liberate themselves from the web of thorns, while others will become hopelessly enmeshed. Some youths will not even try to get through, standing or sitting, impassively waiting for their doom as the boiling water bubbles ever higher.Through chambers and caverns, the youths will continue on. Scalding water will churn from every crevice, dousing the flickering torches that light the way, one-by-one. Arriving in another large chamber, the youths will be confronted by a floor that is a gravelpit of smouldering embers, heated by the fire-red magma that cooled, sludge-like, in scattered puddles.The Aspirants -- those who dare -- will scamper across in a flurry of yelps and explosions of sparks. Some will fall with a howl into the curdling lava, clawing at the air and shrieking until their skin chars and their lungs fill with fire. But still, those that make it through will continue to push on.In another chamber the ground gives way to an echoing chasm lined by splintered bones. Only by leaping across, then scrabbling amid the jagged handholds of the opposite rock face, can the youths pass. The screams of those who fall, punctuated by the splintering cracks of impact, echo throughout the hollow mountain forever.And always the water will rise, dogging at their heels, curling its tendrils, wrapping everything in a sulphurous haze. The mountain fills from the base upwards, and with every step the remaining air grows hotter and more stifling.Those few surviving youths, their muscles protesting, will continue to pass obstacle after obstacle, forever convinced that each test will be their last. Only by accepting their own deaths can they march across the scorching coal fragments. Only by understanding that they are nothing, can they move unhurriedly past an unflickering motion-sensor.Only by knowing that they are dying one second at a time, that they are already dead and forgotten, can they hurl themselves into the abyss, then clamber, hands and arms lacerated, to their feet. They will be surviving and no longer caring.Passing through the final cavern the Aspirants will then enter a tunnel that twists and grows narrower, coiling slowly downwards. Palms and knees shredded, the adolescents will struggle to continue to make their way forward. The tunnel will grow steeper, walls closing-in until the youths writhe, worm-like, using only toes and elbows.Suddenly, there will be light. Worming their way from the tunnel, the Aspirants will find no relief at the freshness of the mountain air. Those that have survived to reach this point will find themselves on a ledge, jutting from a sheer rockface on the mountainside, the ground falling away in all directions.Directly in front of them will stand the Ghostmountain: the tallest of the Razorpeaks and the home of the Doom Eagles. Off to the side, a tangled shape at the farthest corner of the ledge, will be the shapes of canvas pulled taunt on metal frames.These are gliders, their only means of escape from the raging gout of water that continues to boil to the surface. Buckling the harnesses around their chests, those that dare will secure themselves into the glider. They will then hurl themselves off the ledge before the water thunders from the tunnel.Driven on by the furious gales ripping between the Razorpeak summits, the Aspirants will struggle to retain balance and altitude. Bloodied and scarred, exhausted physically and mentally, they will continue to glide towards the Ghostmountain. As the massive peak looms closer, a disembodied voice will direct them towards a craggy rockface, where they can just make out a shadowy recess above a flat ledge -- another cave.Exhausted, the survivors will once again be confronted by the disembodied voice, which warns them that though they have survived, they shall not be relieved. For they will die yet. The Librarian will then reveal himself and tests the youths psychically to see if they are worthy.Touching the minds of the survivors, the Librarian will examine their very souls, to see if the youths understood that their lives are worth nothing to them now. Only if they accepted their own mortality, and detached themselves from glory, or honour or jealousy from life itself, could they hope to be spared.Those that are found worthy will be allowed to enter the cave to discover the Eyrie of the Doom Eagles. The successful Aspirants will then enter humbly and in thankful service of the Golden Throne.But they were warned to always remember that they had not survived their day of testing. For they were now dead. Those who are found wanting will be left on the ledge of the Ghostmountain, exposed to the elements, where they will quickly die.