40k Lore, The Siege of Vraks! An Artillery Barrage To End the World!

[Music] greetings and salutations friends and welcome back once again to the siege of rocks we've been dealing with the adept astartes for a while but now that the space mains decided to simply go home after not quite completing their mission shall we say it is time once again to return to the death cord of krieg which found itself in a somewhat confusing position they had of course been carrying out small-scale offensive operations against the second defensive line there for quite a while in fact this was now year nine at this point the 88th imperial guard siege army was supposed to be entrenched against the inner defensive line the curtain walls the red line and yet they were still stuck on the second one and there was really no indication of it cracking anytime soon and now the terestati's support had arrived and left again that did not look as if it was going to change anytime soon undoubtedly lord commander jolke had hoped that the dark angels would have lent a little bit more direct aid in the breaking of the defenses but they had simply contended themselves with burning down the starport and also burning down the death core's potential access to the star port i can only imagine julka's face probably awoken in the middle of the night on his headquarters on thresher primaris by an aide telling him that sir that archangels they've uh they've taken the varaxian starboard oh good grand where can we use it um well sir they've destroyed the bridges connecting to it oh dratch well we can rebuild those um yes they've also burned the entire starport to the ground sir what and then they left um they informed us to inform you that um the mission has been completed sir i imagine what ensued then is lots of loud crashing noises as the lord commander throws various objects around the room imperial high command undoubtedly um hoped for more but nevertheless the dark angel's stay brief though it had been had undoubtedly succeeded in putting a fair few raxioms into the ground and if nothing else that would weaken their positions at least a little bit and something clearly had to be done to get this campaign back on track and as we have previously seen the lord commander shulker was of course a brilliant strategist and so he came up with the ultimate plan to simply once again hit the raxioms with absolutely goddamn everything but this time he was also going to be throwing in the kitchen sink ah well that is a bit of an understatement the plan that lord commander shulker came up with this time was in essentiality that very thing throw everything at the bad people but the sheer quantity of mud that was to be flung at the wall this time around was in a league of its own this would be the big push the great gambit designed to end the war as swiftly and brutally as possible and he was really in a position where the war needed to be ended soon the lord commander's star was not exactly in ascendance over at segmentum command and he could not expect any further reinforcements beyond the replacements of the troops he already had he had of course received a further lion call the 46th with three siege regiments but that was also probably all he was going to see and with the astartes reinforcements proving to be once again not quite what high command had expected it was up to the good old fashioned guardsmen to put it all all right lastly lord commander zhulke began preparing a conventional offensive of unconventional scale at this point in time the 88th imperial guard siege army's heavy artillery reserves remained more or less the same as it had previously the new line core didn't really bring anything in the way of additional heavy ordnance along with it meaning the army had in effect some 70 000 heavy artillery pieces and these are the heavy pieces the earth shakers and the bombards the various line cores of course have their own lighter artillery pieces like quad launchers and so on but this was again the heavy stuff so 70 000 guns what could be done with 70 000 artillery pieces well one of the primary problems with the second defensive line was of course the fact that it was so heavily entrenched with permacree trenches bunkers and all manners of nonsense if one were to throw an absolutely absurd quantity of high explosive at this problem the problem might just simply disappear now one would require quite literally a mountain of artillery rounds to achieve this but that was a question of logistics not necessarily one of feasibility and of course mere questions of logistics was not something that a lord commander should have to spend too much time thinking about it was commander zhulka's job to come up with the grandiose plan to have the ambition and the foresight required to envisage such a massive display of firepower it was for lesser minds and logistical core to realize it and how big of a job could it possibly be after all all he was asking for was for a small four-day barrage that was supposed to go on for around the clock for every gun in the besieging army all 70 000 of them uh let's let's have a look at this uh small and easy to carry out task shall we so your average earth shaker the workhorse of the imperial army is able to fire off some 1 000 rounds before the barrel needs changing with proper preparation and pre-operation maintenance you can probably slap on another 500 rounds to that number so let's say 1 500 rounds before an earthshaker's battle needs to be replaced in the case of the bombard the number is considerably lower maybe around 200 to 500 rounds due to the considerably larger shells not to mention of course various other parts that will start exhibiting certain signs of wear and tear shall we say after having fired off hundreds of kilograms of high explosives such things as bridge blocks springs recoil dampness crew in all the honesty that was probably one of the most problematic elements since those damn things need such things as food and rest and sleep and other such useless things like ear protectors spoiled brass if you ask me but nevertheless standards must be upheld anyway why am i telling you any of this well since we don't know the exact ratio of earth shakers to bombards we're gonna ballpark it and say that each gun has roughly the same rate of wear and tear on the barrel not entirely correct but good enough for now the logistical officers on rax estimated that to keep every gun firing for the full three-day period and to ensure they would be able to continue to lay fire on the enemy after the initial bombardment and of course a little bit in the way of dueling of the enemy's guns before the operation each gun would need at least two spare battles in addition to the one already mounted on the gun and to make sure they would like to have three barrels in store for each and every gun that's 210 000 artillery barrels that would need a requisitioning from krieg transportation to krieg then transportation to the surface transportation to the front line and then of course storage relatively nearby the guns and that of course is just the battles already you can start to see the potential challenges in uh lord commander jolker's grand plan and speaking of challenges we have of course not yet arrived at the most important point because whilst having spare battles is certainly a good thing it won't help you out too much unless you've actually got some ammunition to fire from said barrels the krieg logistical officers of whom i made a big song and dance in a previous video talking about how vast the logistical apparatus was from the bombardment cause and you're about to see them earning their pay estimated that the army would require at a bare minimum 80 million shells to continue a steady pace of bombardment throughout the four days if the artillery was expected to provide a further fire support to the offensive operations after this bombardment and potentially also carrying out some long-range artillery duels with the vanaxian artillery preceding the operation then they would prefer to have in excess of 100 million shells ready and stored on the planet to put this already rather sizeable number into yet further perspective an earth shake around weighs 38 kilograms the shell of a bombard can weigh up to 400 but in the name of sobriety let's assume that all of these rounds are earth shaker rounds that would mean that the 88 the imperial guard siege army was about to receive a shipment of 3.8 million metric tons of high explosive artillery ammunition well then jolker's plan might be characteristically simple and essentially boil down to little more than pick up hammer and then subsequently use hammer or nuts but the sheer monumental size of the hammer he was preparing to drop might just make any other concerns completely and utterly pointless and to make it all infinitely more interesting joker had also managed to pull off a bit of a ploy with all of this entirely by accident mind you but it bears mentioning as you can probably imagine the preparations for this big push was quite the tremendous task in and of itself the mere act of moving such an epic quantity of high explosive from point a to b is challenging shall we say normally there are two bulk freighters in orbit above ranks this is more than enough to keep the entire army supplied for weeks at the very least and possibly months depending on the general level of activity in preparation for a great push however there were six of these gigantic void crafts in orbit all of them working as fast as they possibly could to pour the manpower reserves the ammunition the spare parts and all of the various other things the army was going to need onto the planet below pushing the logistical system to the absolute bursting point and well beyond it if the siege army had access to the vraxian starport it would have been a nightmarish task but without it and with access to only improvised facilities originally designed to move less than a third of this volume the successful completion of the task could be more closely compared to getting a viciously [ __ ] in a dark alley by a crack cocaine-fueled hippogriff dark scary seemingly unending and supremely unlikely and odd as it may sound the sheer impossibility of the task was actually going to work to the procedures advantage there was so much that needed doing new ammunition stores would have to be planned new underground bunkers would have to be excavated new maintenance shops would have to be set up to prepare the guns and to do the running repairs required to put it bluntly and briefly every single part of the siege army's infrastructure would require expanding the repair capacity the medical capacity the storage capacity the transportation capacity all of it would need to be built out and this was of course going to take a lot of time which was the thing that ended up working to the siege army's benefit the voraxians of course noticed that something was up the amount of traffic on the other side of the battlefield was increasing exponentially and kept increasing and so the varaxians hunkered down and waited for all hell to break loose and they waited and they waited and they waited and they waited and they waited and they waited months dragged by and nothing particularly interesting seemed to be happening and this constant state of nothing was driving some voraxian commanders absolutely insane the cardinal amongst them yet more reinforcements was pushed up to the front because it was clear that the creek death was preparing for something big and the braxians would have to put everything they had in stopping it yet more infantry was allocated the front line yet more reserves were pushed up yet more artillery pieces were deployed and engaged in ever escalating artillery duels with the krieg artillery and yet still the time dragged on and dragged on and no matter how ridiculous it might seem at the beginning eventually you get used to practically everything and the vaccines started lowering their guard clearly something was coming but not in their wildest dreams could they imagine the sheer quantity of [ __ ] that was about to descend upon them and that was going to be a very costly lesson for the defenders because no matter how vast the preparations were sooner or later they'd be complete sooner or later those 100 million shells would be in place sooner or later those two hundred and ten thousand battles would be ready sooner or later seventy thousand heavy artillery pieces will be maintained and prepared for a 96 hour long bombardment at precisely 08 98 22 millennia 41 a small red switch was flipped over in the headquarters command bunker of the 88 the imperial guard siege army this caused thousands of small lamps located in battery dugouts up and down the front to blink into red strobing light for the next 96 hours of virtually all communications amongst the artillery batteries would take place in one of two forms either a light signal or written instructions because the event the small blinking a red light heralded was going to ensure that no one would be hearing anything for quite a while meanwhile in the varaxian citadel a few dozen operators sat in the primary alert and response center it was their job to gather reports from the front and formulate responses to any creek actions along with directing the vraxion response whatever it may be to whatever it may be needed due to the constant artillery shells flying back and forth even during the calmest of periods they communicated primarily via vox cables dug it deep underground and encased in permacrete trenches this was due to the simple fact that any vox cable stretched above ground was temporary at best and radio signals whilst they could usually get through the interference they were a less than entirely private means of communication thusly the operators sat before what were essentially good old-fashioned switchboards with little lamps of their own indicating which sector and which commander was calling as you can imagine the place could get pretty busy on occasion but right now it was half empty despite the escalating artillery activity the front had been quiet relatively speaking for ages and no one expected it to change anytime soon there were even rumors circulating that maybe the reason for the krieg movement was not because of a build up but rather because of a withdrawal all the trucks they suppose were fedding men and material away rather than to the front after all since nothing had happened for so long they couldn't possibly be hoarding supplies it had been months no one could possibly need that much in the way of supplies all in all the mood was pretty good then small light turned on at the top of one of the switchboards nothing unusual about it could be a status reporter requests for additional supplies or instructions may haves but if the operator reached the vox input another light winked on then another and another and another and another and another and another until the entire board was beaming bright this on the other hand was unusual for several seconds many simply just stood there and wondered what the hell electrical error and overload somewhere they couldn't all be communicated right but they were all this is quickly re-established control and strategy gym officers began attempting to establish a picture of what the [ __ ] was happening one thing however was made supremely clear the procedures were not withdrawing instead they appeared to have launched an unprecedented artillery barrage all along the front line the operators were receiving reports from every single sector and all of them saying the exact same thing everything had been ticking along as usual as it had been for months the occasional shell here and there and then suddenly uniformly and without warning the ground had literally begun to shake the pace of artillery fire had increased exponentially along the entirety of the front line it certainly was an extensive barrage but it was just yet another barrage this did not trouble the operational planners over much the defensive line had been under practically continuous artillery fire for nine years this was nothing new what was important now was to formulate a response because this was undoubtedly the preliminary barrage for an attack they needed to organize reserves and prepare forces for a counter-attack and one of the lights winked out the operator hadn't gotten to that one yet and another one further down the line an error no there was plenty of operators receiving panicked reports this wasn't a faulty wire and as if to emphasize that yet another light winked out the only explanation for an active wire to go dark like that was if the communication had been cut off at the source that shouldn't happen all frontline commanders were under strict instructions to never break off a communique before they had talked to an operator doing so would be by the operator considered an indication that the bunker had been compromised in some way and if it hadn't been compromised then the response team would be swift in putting the commander's head on a pike to ensure that nobody else would be so careless the only other alternative was if the wire had been cut but that was impossible it was located dozens of meters below ground and the vox set itself was set deep in a command bunker somewhere it couldn't just have vanished unless perhaps this bombardment wasn't quite like the others after all back in the krieg artillery lines the highly unusual bombardment was just that now firing a heavy artillery piece is never a particularly comfortable experience the noise the reverberations the hard physical labor that it is lugging shells around etc all combined to make the firing of a heavy artillery piece an exceedingly uncomfortable experience but that is when you're firing one gun in this case the entirety of the army was firing every piece at their disposal almost 70 thousand pieces the noise was not merely deafening it was downright destructive three commanders had levied bombardments of this scale before and they knew what to expect sound baffles had been constructed in all of the various artillery dugouts to try and prevent the more destructive effects of the constant noise additionally earthworks had been placed in strategic locations to try and guide the worst of the explosive energy up and away from the batteries rather than having it bounce back and forth until eventually it got lethal the artillerymen were also issued extra noise protecting air muffles and they were to be rotated out on a by-hourly basis to try and prevent the most serious of damages the artillery crewmen were also instructed to keep their mouths open at all times and preferably to shout as loud as they could at all times in an attempt to equalize the pressure differences that would otherwise prove quite fatal but despite all of the precautions the attrition rate amongst the crew members was still well north of unfortunate blood vessels burst as did airdrums accidents happened and kept happening the ground was literally shaking under the ferocity of the bombardment which makes handling heavy artillery ammunition somewhat dodgy shall we say yet further accidents happened sometimes leading to the loss of entire crews and guns quartermasters would run ragged clearing out the casualties both the wounded and the dead assigning replacement personnel and seeing to those who had been incapacitated the engineering corps were working just as hard replacing those guns that had been lost either due to enemy shelling or accidents moving those in need of repairs and maintenance out of the line and moving other guns back up again ants replacements the workshops were working full time to keep the guns firing the engineers had to keep up a breakneck speed for the full four days to ensure that the bombardment would not falter and would not halt even for a moment it was promising to be an extraordinarily uncomfortable 96 hours for pretty much everyone except unusually enough the poor bloody infantry who for once had actually got to the better end of the deal they were all sat in nice new freshly dug underground bunkers these new underground shelters were one of the necessary expansions of the forward lines since if the infantry were located above ground in their trenches during the bombardment they would be just as deaf as their brethren in the artillery and sending deaf men against heavy machine guns whilst it might have its benefits seemed somewhat unnecessary even by krieg standards and so for once probably the first and and also likely it also the last time in the entire siege of rocks the creek guardsman was probably the least worried least inconvenienced and least troubled group of individuals on the whole planet and since these were krieg gunsman i am entirely sure that they hated every single second of it but fortunately after a mere 96 hours they could get out of their nice comfy warm relatively well sound insulated bunkers and up into the trenches but every few dozen meters there was a small wooden ladder leading up into the comforting embrace of no man's land and the surety that sacrificing the emperor's name was the greatest achievement any member of the death corps of krieg could ever hope for and there would be plenty of sacrifice to go around as the siege army mustered every ounce of strength left in it mobilizing a full two million guardsmen to launch continuous attacks across the entirety of the varaxian defensive lines or at the very least what was left of them as you can probably imagine after dumping some 8.3 million metric tons of high explosives on well pretty much anything to be entirely honest it will be somewhat diminished in stature afterwards and this held through the vanaxian defenses as well as in certain sectors they had simply just disappeared and i am sure that all the krieg officers let out a collective sigh of relief as they received reports indicating that it hadn't been a complete waste of ammunition and while some sectors continued to offer stubborn resistance in areas where the enemy had been so lucky as to avoid receiving a high explosive package down through whatever ventilation shafts were found in their bunker systems but in other areas the deathcore were making considerable gains the enemy were either reduced to defending themselves from improvised positions and shell holes hastily constructed barricades etc and in yet other sectors the creek death corps advanced essentially unopposed where the enemy had quite simply ceased to exist and of course on the absolute other extreme there are also areas in which the krieg assaults collapsed entirely mostly once again due to not poor because that would uh indicate displeasure criticism of the higher command structure which is of course impossible but rather in complete reconnaissance data suggested that there was a weakness in sector 50 45 and 158 regiment was ordered to attack it where upon the 158 regiment was pinned down by dozens of heavy weapons batteries and subsequently annihilated by traitor artillery barrages incomplete intelligence but examples of incomplete intelligence notwithstanding the death corps was making gains more gains than they had done in quite literally years at this point and they were making solid inroads at several points in the second defensive line no clear breakthroughs as yet but they had already established several solid footholds therefore the order went down to send in the second wave to follow in the first ensure that the footholds remained in imperial hands and preferably ensure the breakthrough that second part of the objective however was going to prove rather difficult the four-day-long bombardment had succeeded in severely reducing and in areas completely shattering the outer defenses however it was also a four day long bombardment and the firing of some 70 000 heavy guns over the course of 96 hours is not exactly a stealthy endeavor by the end of the bombardment the varaxians were under absolutely no illusions as to what must be coming next and had prepared accordingly there was little in the way of opportunity for withdrawing forces already deployed to the forward lines for obvious reasons however virtually all reserve personnel with the exception of a small skeleton crew kept back at the inner defensive line just in case were now organized into rapid response formations many of these units had already served in more or less this exact role already consisting primarily of motorized and mechanized regiments they had stood by in reserve ready to respond to any krieg offensive actions but in addition to these forces any and all additional troops being primarily infantry troops in origins were now also issued with motorized and or mechanized means of transports turning them into ad hoc mechanized and or motorized formations obviously they would be somewhat severely lacking in training in how to operate many of these vehicles and even more severely lacking in the training required to operate them effectively under combat conditions but considering the circumstances any additional sliver of mobility that could be squeezed out of upgrading these formations was desperately needed due to the cardinals paranoia far too many of raxa's defenders had been assigned to what was now the front line and with but a handful of exceptions all of these units were now heavily engaged and in no position to attempt any sort of organized withdrawal without the risk of being overrun and annihilated in other words the defenders were not in an ideal position but so far these primarily ad hoc formations had been effective in stimming further krieg advances and in the handful of areas where the varaxians had almost been shattered the alpha legion had stepped in to prevent any full-scale collapse of the front line thusly even after a full week of combat the death corps despite holding several solid footholds had not succeeded in creating a conclusive breakthrough and time was once again becoming an issue the death cord had cut well and truly into their just in case reserves of artillery ammunition and it wasn't all that easy to bring up fresh reserves either the long-straining and tormented logistical network was at the absolute breaking point after weeks and in many cases months of heroic efforts both men and materiel were just about ready to give up the ghost the various transport battalions were each losing dozens of vehicles every day due to mechanical failure and to make matters worse many of these vehicles were considered complete write-offs with many trucks having been driven to the point where their wheels were practically falling off the chassis due to the insane delivery schedules heaped upon them by high command meanwhile the adaptus mechanicus mass locomotion engine was still trucking along although even it was starting to show signs of wear and tear the adepts manning it demanded that if the vehicle could not be brought off the line entirely then at the very least it must be brought in for extensive and emergency maintenance as soon as possible and even at the front line exhaustion was slowly but surely starting to set in even the men of krieg will eventually start getting rather tired after a week of near continuous offensive operations especially when there wasn't a whole lot of games to show for it the 88 the imperial guard siege army was quite simply beginning to run out of steam they did however have one last card to play it was a long shot but the hope was that several fresh regiments arriving just now from krieg would provide the last bit of impetus needed to finally break through the deadlock it certainly was a long shot as these were essentially green troops although green by krieg standards certainly means something quite different than by most regimental standards nevertheless high command's expectations were somewhat subdued but there was nothing to be lost by trying or at the very least nothing that high command put all too much in the way of value on at this point during the siege the lives of young krieg's guardsmen were cheap indeed the commander of one of these fresh regiments the 460 was one colonel attus a man that had earned himself a reputation as a bit of a troublemaker back on krieg a so-called independent thinker usually such disruptive elements would be shunted off out of the way and into the combat engineers or death riders where the problem of their initiative usually solved itself by a good old-fashioned enemy action but young attitudes rebellious streak had only started to show after his deployment as a member of an infantry regiment and despite his free thinking ways he climbed quite speedily up the command ladder he was pretty much always just one step ahead of a court-martial for his various creative interpretations of orders but he also delivered results wherever he went he also collected letters of complaint condemnation and general censure in such quantities that there was a rumor going around suggesting he was entirely self-supplied with toilet paper but well details he and his regiment was assigned to the new 46th line corps where he immediately set about earning his reputation by lying cheating and stealing considerable quantities of light and heavy artillery ammunition for his regiment it turns out that the colonel had for some mysterious reasons arrived at the conclusion that high command's strategy of hurling men at heavy machine gun positions was somehow ineffective a baffling and absurd leap of logic of course but nevertheless the colonel had decided to try something slightly different the colonel had planned a night time operation something the death corps was not overly fond of attacking at night or even just maneuvering smacked too much of hesitation and an unwillingness to face one's enemy in the open of course there were parts of the death core that often operated during the night for example the combat engineers in other words the more dubious parts of the call but to see a mainline regiment resort to such actions that frankly boarded on the edge of trickery most dubious indeed but clearly colonel attis didn't care over much about what was and wasn't proper and so he laid his little plan whilst ensuring that his commanders knew only about the general outlines he was for example to launch an attack at dawn on 12 48 22 millennium 41. he neglected to mention that he had appropriated additional supplies for his regiment but high command doesn't need to know everything now do they and besides a dawn attack was entirely proper what he did not mention to his commanders was that he was to deploy the forward element of his regiment during the preceding night this was what the additional ammunition was for he had planned for a large drum fire barrage to last throughout most of the night during which he would personally lead the vanguard of his regiment out into no man's land crawling in a most cowardly fashion on their bellies across no man's land taking great pains not to be spotted by the enemy now just to be clear this idea in and of itself is not really new for the death corps the idea of infiltrating enemy lines during the night is not necessarily a novelty it is something they would rather avoid but it was a tactic and it had been tried previously on the vraks but without a whole lot of success the main difference here lay in the fact that this was not an infiltration assault this was a full-scale mass bayonet charge the infiltration into no man's slander was also not exactly standard the death corps demanded that if any forces were to try and infiltrate enemy lines whilst those lines were under heavy artillery fire they should maintain at least 300 to 400 meters distance so as to avoid being decimated by their own artillery now you might think that half a kilometer odd sounds like an awful lot of distance but well these are cannons firing from several kilometers away one tiny error in the targeting data can produce rather catastrophic consequences colonel atheists on the other hand led his personal command squad and the lead element of the 468th regiment to within 100 meters of the enemy's forward lines there is a military term called danger close that's when you're so close to the artillery strike you're calling in that there is a possibility that the shell will find you rather than the enemy 100 meters is pushing the definition of danger close well and truly into the territory of suicidal however colonel atis was not necessarily in a hurry to go shake hands with big e himself and he had carefully planned the operation he was supremely confident in the abilities of his own artillery officers whom he had selected personally additionally he had spent the last few days perusing the various independent artillery companies nearby his regiments going over the history of their command staffs and getting to know them better over a bottle of contraband or two he had worked out which independent regiments were open to a bit of creative accounting when it came to where their shells were utilized and perhaps even more importantly which companies could be counted on to not dump their artillery grenades a hundred meters short of the targets and it would appear that colonel attends had chosen wisely as none of his men were molested by friendly artillery shelling then at a predetermined time just before dawn the artillery barrage lifted for a moment and then rolled deeper into the enemy's trenches in an effort to cut off further reinforcements at the same time the krieg guardsmen that had been hiding out in no man's land got to their feet and rushed towards the enemy's trenches was total by the time the vlaxians emerged from their dugouts the men of creek were already leaping into their trenches bayonets first and within mere minutes the forward lines were overrun those defenders that had not yet managed to emerge from their dugouts were now under siege in their own defenses with cree guardsmen standing at the top of their dugout stairs dropping fragmentation grenades and firing last guns straight down into their previously safe bunkers the carnage was downright impressive usually it was the poor men of krieg that had to deal with getting one-sidedly slaughtered but the army boot was well and truly on the other foot now hemmed in and trapped the defenders could only choose between getting gunned down as they attempted to storm out of their dugouts or wait until the guardsmen above brought up a flame thrower at which point the raxion's once steadfast defenses became not only worthless but actively complicit in the defender's demise of course as with all things there were the occasional setbacks unfortunately for the 468th the positions they were currently attacking were partially occupied by augurin assault auxiliars these massive armored brutes armed with monstrous melee weaponry would rampage down the trench lines murdering anything friend or foe that got in their way and they took a lot of putting down pumped full of painkillers and slot battle rugs they were sent into a frenzied rampage and were completely impervious to pain even with fist sized holes blasted through them they would just keep going one such frankenstein monster came rushing out of the primary command dugout in the center of the outer trench line it was greeted by half a dozen helgen armed guardsmen firing full force they transformed the brute's torso into a bloody cratered mess but it didn't even slow down acting purely on instinct and rage the giant horror swung a massive spiked two-handed hammer and the first thing that caught his eye the impact sent a single great code-clad figure flying six meters down the trench until it landed in a broken heap one of the command squad guardsmen leapt onto the ogren's back and wedged a crack grenade under its oversized and clearly improvised gas mask two seconds later the giant's head and upper torso disappeared in an explosion of gore seconds later the ogre's lower half slumped to the ground the command squad took a moment of time to gather up the broken body of alpha one and for the rest of the attack they would fight on whilst carrying the body of their beloved colonel atheists a sacrifice made and service complete he would not see the eventual success of his regiment but following his previously issued instructions a signal was sent indicating the success of a vanguard assault within an hour the regiments borrowed gorgon assault transports one last gift from their commander rumbled onwards through the gains of a first wave and by nightfall on that very same day it was done now more bunkers or barbed wire stood before the 468 regiments the gorgons wheeling to the left and to the right continued down the flanks widening the breach a battery of quad launchers was swiftly moved into position and engaging the enemy over open sights they shattered the raxion's last desperate counter-attack the 468 had done what the entire 88 siege army could not for years yet another breach had been blown open this time in the inner raxion defenses and this time creed command was not inclined to repeat the mistakes of the 30th corps death rider regiments began streaming through the gap that very same night and the next morning they began assaulting the rear positions of the enemy's defensive line an assault corps was immediately evicted towards the breakthrough and tank companies would be pouring through in the early morning light followed by mechanized formations of grenadiers mounted in gorgons and trojans this time there would be no masterful retreat orchestrated by vraxian generals they knew as well as the death corps that if they pulled back to the inner defensive line everything would be as good as lost the citadel would be within range of krieg artillery and at that point it would be merely a question of time until they were all dead and thusly very little if anything in the way of contingencies had been planned for what followed was not a organized retreat but rather a mad dash towards the rear and perceived safety at least commanders would issue orders to their more fanatical followers to stand and offer suicidal resistance to the death core so that their comrades may escape in some areas this was successful in front of the 468 regiment and the mechanized and armored formations pouring through the gap it was not the bulk of the enemy's forces began retreating towards the ruins of hab block 2 where they were swiftly surrounded by mechanized and armored elements cutting them off from the last line of defenses over the following weeks combat engineers and grenadier assault teams ground down the last of the resistant in the hab block in the process they had annihilated several regiment sized formations making this by a country mile the most successful krieg operation on vrax to date unfortunately however the success was not entirely unqualified the previous week of heavy fighting as well as the monstrous expenditure of artillery and the strain placed upon the logistical system meant that the 88th imperial guard siege army was all but spent the enemy was in full retreat and whatever possible the death corps was in pursuit but it simply did not possess the strength required to chase down the enemy and launch an immediate assault upon the inner line of defenses swift victory had eluded the death corps once again on the bright side whilst swift victory may not be possible now that the defenders were hemmed into the smallest area since the beginning of the war with any and all points of their remaining defenses within easy range of krieg artillery the end was most certainly nigh the cardinals forces had nowhere left to run and they had nowhere left to shelter from krieg heavy artillery all that was left now was to grind down the last few fortifications over the next few years and finally the siege on vlax would come to an end within the citadel the cardinals commanders were coming to that very same realization they undoubtedly breathed a sigh of relief once they realized that the death corps would not be able to launch an immediate offensive on their last holdings as they were currently held by skeleton crews it would take time for them to reorganize the scattered survivors of the second defensive line however it was scant comfort as they were now in essentially an unwinnable position the cardinal himself also after having been teetering on the brink for quite some time finally withdrew entirely into madness his mind had been yet further poisoned by deacon mamoon of the long years of the siege and with this final piece of bad news and the apparent end now being merely a question of time his fragile mind had finally been pushed well and truly over the edge utilizing his skill subterfuge and diplomatic experience lord archos sensing the cardinal was just about ready to agree to anything moved in for the uh proverbial kill he swiftly replaced deacon mamoon as the cardinal's closest advisor and began indoctrinating nathan in his own twisted version of belief and events he soon had the cardinal believing that not only was the imperium holy and unsalvageably corrupt the corruption stemmed from the very man sitting at the center of it all the god emperor had abandoned the cardinal he had abandoned his last few faithful followers in the entire galaxy and this was the man the cardinal purported to serve this man clearly did not deserve anyone's loyalty least of all the pure innocent guiltless and victimized cardinal zafen had hardly been a beacon of light and hope for quite some time but now he grew ever more reclusive spending days and sometimes even weeks in private contemplation and conversation with his new alpha legion best friend as the death corps closed upon his final bastion re-dug their trenches recited their artillery and resumed their slow harassing bombardment whilst rebuilding their supplies of ammunition and reorganizing their supply chain the cardinal was slowly but surely brought further into darkness lord archos agreed that everything certainly looked rather grim for the cardinal but there was still hope of a sort whilst the imperium was irrevertibly corrupt and even the god emperor had turned his back upon the cardinal there were others out there other forces other gods even that might be willing to lend the poor cardinal sympathetic ear if only he would do as archos bid him at this point the poor and in many cases innocent people of rocks had long since been condemned to death but at the very least up until this point they had had at the very least a hope for salvation in that death the actions of the cardinal over the next few days was going to put even that slim comfort to rest outside sheltering in their freshly dug trenches krieg sentries soon began reporting unusual happenstances storm clouds could be seen on the horizon in and of itself not a unusual phenomenon on vraks but they seem to oddly be centered around the vraxian citadel they also had an odd glow to them and they seemed to rise and rise and rise slowly but surely up into the atmosphere it stretched slowly like some kind of gigantic grotesque tapestry and some of the centuries swore that they could see shapes moving inside it until next time i've been arch and i hope to see you all again soon have a good day [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Arch

Views: 410,455

Keywords: Arch, War, 40k, Vraks, CHaos, The Imperium of Man, Imperial Guard, Krieg, Lore, Warhammer, Alpha Leagion, Massive Battle, death korps of krieg

Id: bftCI0oakHk

Length: 57min 9sec (3429 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 25 2019