40k Lore, The Siege of Vraks! The Void is lit by Lances!

[Music] greetings and salutations friends and welcome back once again to the siege of vraks and possibly the beginning of the end after having been essentially stuck for many years at this point the 88 the imperial guard siege army finally after nine years broke through the second line of vraxian defenses and after a short advance they now found themselves entrenched against the inner line the red line which left all remaining vraxian positions including the main citadel well and truly within range of krieg heavy artillery the breakthrough however had been costly in the extreme which prevented a potential rapid breakthrough of the final defensive line for whilst the imperial high command and lord commander zhulka's great push was in the end successful it was only so by the narrowest of margins despite gathering an astonishing quantity of heavy artillery ammunition and guns leading into a four day bombardment of near unparalleled intensity the vraxian defenses despite in many sectors having been categorically wiped off the map held strong with the defenders clinging on tenaciously in the very shell holes that had blown away their previous positions and whatever the assault cause of the 88th made any real progress they were quickly countered by waves of raxiom mechanized infantry and armor or potentially even worse the might of the alpha legion astartes it got so bad that in a moment of rare candor one death court officer was even heard criticizing high command stating that it would appear as if imperial high command had determined that the best way of breaking down a brick wall was to simply bash one's head against it until it collapsed and you know things are going very badly indeed when the death corps of krieg starts complaining about high command being too pig-headed but the rate of attrition was growing to such a level that even lord commander joker could ill afford to ignore it any longer after a week of continuous offensive operations across the entirety of the 88th imperial guard army's front line leading to casualties so far unseen in the entire campaign even imperial high command was about ready to call it quits until the 468th regiment under the command of colonel attus finally broke the deadlock in a nighttime surprise attack in sector 5750 an attack by the way that was not even entirely sanctioned by imperial high command the unusually resourceful colonel had pegged borrowed and stolen artillery support from several nearby independent artillery companies in addition to acquiring additional ammunition for his own formation he had then carried out an essentially unsanctioned nighttime attack upon the enemy's front line using the cover of night along with a continuous artillery barrage from the various independent artillery companies he had formed relationships with colonel attis and his men snuck out into no man's land and at the end of their stealthy advance they were less than 100 meters away from the traitor's front lines which at the moment was under continuous artillery bombardment and by the way the margin of error on an earthshake cannon the most accurate artillery piece involved in the bombardment is at least 150 to 200 odd meters generally speaking imperial guard forces are instructed to keep at least half a kilometers distance between themselves and any area currently receiving the gentle attentions of imperial heavy artillery the colonel's plan was most certainly rather unorthodox and not without a hint of risk but at a predetermined time just before dawn the preparatory artillery bombardment lifted and rolled back deeper into the enemy's defenses then colonel attis and his men rose up from their positions in no man's land bayonets fixed and stormed the traitors forward defenses catching the enemy as they were just emerging from their underground bunkers and dugouts trapping them in many cases down in the very defenses they so recently sheltered from bombardment within and those who were not trapped were cut down almost immediately as they rushed to their positions surprise was total and the assault itself a magnificent success leading to the first and so far only breakthrough of the raxion's second defensive line when the 11th assault court rolled through the gap mere days later it was all over for the raxion's second line of defenses and just like the first they had no choice but to initiate a massive scale withdrawal of their defensive line lest they be rolled up and entirely annihilated luckily for the defenders though the death cord was utterly and completely exhausted morally speaking materially speaking and physically speaking they had no capabilities with which to launch a full-scale pursuit of the retreating vraxians but it was finally done after seven days of near endless bloodshed and slaughter the second defensive line had been broken and overrun tragically however the breakthrough had cost the life of colonel attis the man who had ensured the success of the offensive would not live to reap the rewards or knowing lord commander joker the potential court-martial regardless the great push had eventually resulted in a success although by the narrowest of margins the siege army was entrenched outside of the final line of raxiom defenses and now according to plan whilst the army was certainly well and truly behind schedule all that remained now was to levy upon the final vraxian positions a heavy and prolonged artillery bombardment there was no need to attempt to blitz this line like they had tried to do with the second because the enemy really now had no way of organizing any sort of large operations against the krieg death corps any attempt to mass forces or even just to move considerable quantities of weapons men or material would be easily observable from the krieg front lines and therefore subject to intensive artillery harassing fire and if the enemy were to try and congregate in any one sector that too would be easily observable and would draw the combined ayah of virtually the entire artillery park of the 88th siege army leading to the certain annihilation of the enemy's forces and with the defenders essentially having been rendered immobile then the death corps could take their time and reduce one enemy position at a time through prolonged and intensive artillery bombardment what remained of the vaccine defenses would be destroyed position by position mathematically and systematically over the course of several years even lord commander zhulke had at this point probably realized that there was no way he was going to be making his 12-year deadline but as long as he did not require any further reinforcement and could simply just sit back and utilize the vast stockpiles of ammunition still flowing into the imperial guard siege army then eventual victory was as good as guaranteed and the lord commander had plentiful political connections he could make as many excuses as needed for the unfortunate delays due of course entirely to the incompetence of his subordinates and as long as victory again was ensured some minor delays of a few years here and there could be overlooked the lord commander appeared to have guaranteed his very first campaign victory and what a triumph it was the lord commander had defeated a skillful and tenacious foe and not mere mortals mind but renegade astartes the lord commander had executed a successful campaign against chaos space marines who had given even the mighty dark angels a run for their money the fact that the enemy had been from the very get-go monstrously outnumbered and surrounded and the fact that the renegade of saudis only made up a minute portion of the defenders were less important facets of the overall campaign and with victory now a certainty and a mere question of time the lord commander was set to make quite a killing career-wise speaking out of this campaign but whilst the lord commander was busy preening and planning what he would use his newfound political capital for his enemies were planning something quite different for the lord commander after the breach of the second defensive line the defenders of rocks were essentially thrown into despair they knew as well as the lord commander that any real hope of resisting the eventual imperial victory was now more or less entirely gone cardinal zephan had retreated into his innermost sanctum where he spoke only to lord archos of the alpha legion for days and weeks on end lord arcos however saw it a little bit differently whilst the cardinals forces may now face inevitable defeat there were other forces in the galaxy that may yet provide the cardinal with a way out if only he would let lord archos carry out certain rituals certain acts on the cardinals behalf lord archos was confident that he could bring these interested forces here and ally them to the cardinals cause it did take some convincing because the ritual that lord archos suggested certainly smacked quite thoroughly of heresy but at this point the cardinal had already dug himself very very deeply indeed into the occult mysteries that he was once introduced to by his faithful deacon ma'moon and frankly with defeat staring him right in the face there was really no turning back anymore one last desperate roll of the dice it was then and lord arcos received the go-ahead to set his sorcerers into action to call forth these allies that were so willing to help the cardinal in his hour of need the ritual did not go unnoticed by the death corps of krieg as various unnatural phenomenons began occurring they began to see odd mist coalescing out in no man's land they began to see strange shapes taking form in this mist unusual thunderheads inside of which the men could swear they saw the outlines of something horrific all of this was of course reported to imperial high command but lord commander joker had far more important things to worry about than some odd meteorological phenomenons on vrak's a world that he now considered to be as good as one thusly relatively undisturbed lord archus's sorcerers were able to complete their ritual it took weeks possibly even months to come to full fruition but with no real imperative for the death corps to make life difficult for them they only had to contend with the mild annoyance of the occasional artillery bombardment from which they were more than safe sequestered as they were deep beneath the main araxian citadel the ritual they were undertaking was a massive one designed to extend an sos signal essentially out to all the various corners of the galaxy in the hope of drawing the cardinals much needed reinforcements to rocks and to open a relatively speaking safe corridor through the warp for them to traverse normally such a ritual is a huge and extraordinarily costly undertaking requiring tens of thousands of sacrifices hundreds of adept sorcerers and dozens of magi to focus and guide the energies unleashed on rocks however things were considerably easier the massive scale of slaughter unleashed on the planet over the preceding nine years had left it steeped in bloodshed horror and carnage a rich well of energy for the alpha legion magi and sorcerers to reach into and to harness and so after weeks of preparation the signal was sent out loud and strong into the galaxy reaching all the way into the eye of terror itself where it found plenty of willing ears in a completely different corner of the universe vigilant station dm498-066 was one of tens of thousands of monitoring stations surrounding the eye of terror as you can probably imagine the warp lanes around the eye are exceedingly well monitored in case something nasty pops out and it had been noticing some rather unusual activity it had noticed several large ships and also groups of ships traveling well outside the usual military and commercial lanes this immediately sent alarm lights flashing all across the segmentum since nothing is allowed to travel outside of these predetermined and heavily surveilled routes for any reason whatsoever and any ship caught outside of these routes can be immediately destroyed by the imperial navy they were of course the occasional incident of smugglers or crazy people but this was far too frequent and appeared far too organized as they also appeared to all be traveling in roughly the same direction this was almost certainly some form of chaos raiding force immediately patrol groups were dispatched to systems that could be considered likely targets and or valuable targets to the imperium additionally several cruiser groups were put on high alert and capital ships were readied including the emperor-class battleship constantine valdo the apparent chaos activity had also drawn the attention of the ordo malus who dispatched a null ship to confirm the location and size of the chaos force now a null ship is an extraordinary piece of imperial technology laden down with the finest of augur and sensory equipment with a tiny crew consisting of a handful of technicians and a single blank a person who has a unique psychic mutation that renders them invisible in the warp the null ship confirmed the inquisition's fears a sizeable force of chaos raiders were gathering so far at least 30 ships had been identified several of which were cruiser class and their apparent target was vrax battlefleet scadas which was already mobilizing was now officially put on immediate alert notice the entire battle fleet including scout elements cruiser fleets and capital ships would sally forth in an attempt to intercept the chaos raiding fleet if this was not possible they were to pursue trap and destroy the fleet before it could cause any more damage as a part of the general alert all imperial navy commanders in the scotus sector were ordered to stand too and informed about the presence and likely a location of the chaos raiding forces this of course included a rear admiral raziek commander of the imperial navy flotilla stationed above rocks although to be entirely honest the imperial navy presence in the vlak system hardly deserved it a grand sounding name as flotilla during the first few years of the racks campaign there was a real tangible fear of outside interference in the ongoing siege as such a relatively considerable imperial navy force was stationed to guard the system the flagship was to be the lunar class cruiser lord bellerophon and it was further aided by a squadron of system defense monitors and each incoming and outgoing convoy was to be guarded by its own escort of sword class frigates this was a considerable defensive force a lunar class cruiser is a ship of the line able to trade blows with far larger opponents and would by itself be more than enough to scare off pretty much anything in the way of usual chaos raiding forces the three system defense monitors also had more than enough firepower to make a daunting proposition for any force of pirates or system raiders add in several squadrons of sword-class frigates and the imperial navy presence above vrax was quite formidable that however was at the start of the campaign after now 10 years of deadlock with little to no activity in the void the imperial navy presence had been considered for a long time to be superfluous to requirements first the numbers of sword-class frigates required per convoy was reduced now there was only one squadron per two convoys then it was reduced yet further and yet further again until the lord belerefon had to pull escort duty itself after years of the remaining single squadron of sword-class frigates and the cruiser running escort duty around the system they had both seen better days a decade or so of near constant wear and tear with very little in the way of maintenance will take a rather hefty toll on any machinery the defense monitors remained stationed permanently above wrecks however and were in relatively good shape all in all then this left the rear admiral with one lunar class cruiser operating on skeleton crew three sword-class frigates also operating on skeleton crew and in desperate need of maintenance and three defense monitors which was the only ships in system that were considered combat ready although they were starting to get a wee bit low on ammunition because whilst they hadn't seen any live targets to take their ire out on it was necessary to conduct occasional firing drills so three frigates three system monitors and one cruiser against 30 chaos raiders of varying class including several cruiser-sized vessels things were not looking rosy for raziak and one could make a rather plausible argument stating that at least some of this blame landed squarely on the rear admiral himself who had for years insisted that the system and the supply lines there within was completely and utterly safe there was no apparent threat to it or his fleet whatsoever painfully aware now of the gravity of his mistake he nevertheless resolved to make the most out of it the first thing he needed to do was to get more personnel aboard his ships he therefore dispatched officers down to the planet below to round up anyone that looked useful from the adaptus mechanic mechanicus labor course of course these people would have quite literally zero training in operating anything aboard a starship but aboard imperial navy vessels there are plenty of menial jobs for untrained unskilled labor and those whose jobs they were taking over might simply just be kicked up the ranking ladder to something more sophisticated now that the manpower issue was at least partially resolved the second priority was to see if any of the other ships floating around the system could be used for something worthwhile there were several large transports and freighters still in system and whilst of course these were not combat ships it's not like he had the liberty of choice and at the very least in this area the rear admiral was partially in luck due to the dark angels somewhat overzealous neutralization of the raxion starport and the end all unloading of supplies and manpower was still an extraordinarily slow and piecemeal process this meant that at almost all times there was a bit of a backlog above the planet and after lord commander zhulka's great push there was even more so of one now than usual and in amongst transport ships he found the bulk freighter israel morse which had almost finished unloading its compliments again it was certainly no warship by any stretch of the imagination but it did carry enough guns to defend itself which was better than what rezier could say for most of the other ships of which there were currently five in system two of which raziak decided were armed enough to be worth well something at least they were both smaller and less well-armed and armored than the israels but again the luxury of choice was something the red admiral raziak was rather bereft of entirely by accident once again lord commander jolke had actually provided rare admiral razyak with a fighting chance due to once again the great offensive there were far more freighters in system than usual and by levying some of them into his defense force he now had three further ships that could at least to a degree stand in the battle line as for the remaining three freighters they carried virtually nothing in the way of weaponry at the very least nothing that would be worthwhile against other ships so instead raziek ordered all of these ships stripped of crew to be sent to his other vessels to further reinforce them and then the three freighters running on as little of a crew as humanly possible would be loaded up with as much in the way of ammunition and flammable materials as possible as a little extra their plasma reactors would also be prepared to overload these ships would then be formed into a fire ship squadron and send hurling towards the chaos raiders in the hopes of being able to ram one of the enemy's ships the crew was ordered to escape just before impact but well they don't call them suicide missions for nothing and as a final piece in the preparations the rear admiral sent his three sword class frigates out to the outer edges of the system to scout for the incoming chaos floorteller hoping all the while that they wouldn't actually show up and of course the sword squadron had strict orders to not engage anything they found on their scouting missions even if they thought they could take it sword captains have in the past been known to be somewhat overly enthusiastic in the face of the enemy often leading to their own violent demise assuming the escort captains were able to keep themselves in check and return without getting themselves blasted into space debris the battle plan was simple and dictated primarily by necessity the lord belarus would take the lead in any battle line followed by the three sword class frigates and then the system defense monitors and it was this part of the battle line that would be deciding when where and how it was going to move system defense monitors are essentially just very large gun platforms with the absolute bare minimum in the way of engines or maneuvering thrusters they are usually quite literally towed into position and not generally speaking expected to move all that far from said position they can move under their own power but they can only do so extraordinarily slowly and so so as to not split his already extraordinarily limited firepower raziak ordered that they decide the speed of the formation behind the system defense monitors came the armed merchantmen essentially hiding behind them in the hope that they could maybe take a pot shot or two at whatever the monitor had already mauled and behind them again came the fire ships held in reserve they would hopefully be deployed in the midst of battle to ram an unaware enemy ship as deploying them out ahead of the fleet as would be traditional in more normal naval engagements would in all due likelihood simply seize them blasted to smithereens before they could really achieve anything with as much in the way of preparations as actually possible having been made all that remained was for the rear admiral to pucker his butt cheeks grab his rosary and start praying frantically that he'd done all of this work for nothing this hope however was to be swiftly crushed by a report from the sword class frigate xo43 reporting that she had made contact with at least three enemy vessels whose drive signature confirmed them as infidel-class raiders a well-known chaos patton ship at this point rear admiral raziak was temporarily tempted to send in his sword-class frigates to engage the infidels the sword stands a fairly good chance of beating out an infidel class and considering that in all due likelihood crude by all manners of degenerates and renegades while the sword class would be crewed by the finest and most aggressive commanders in the imperial navy odds were certainly on his side but in void combat you can never entirely get rid of the chance of a lucky hit or two and if he lost a sword class frigate at this point that would be a significant dip in his own resources whilst for the enemy losing three infidels wouldn't be all too much of a problem seeing as they were almost exclusively deployed in a scouting role at this point in time the admiral managed to reign in the more bastille impulses of his frigate captains which in and of itself is quite the feat and had them returned to his own battle line this did mean however that the three infidels would be able to gain a full and clear picture of the admiral's forces meager as they were and any hope of the chaos flotilla taking its time cruising into the system was now almost surely lost since they would now have a clear picture of what they were up against they would probably simply rush into the system as fast as their engines could push them but he deemed the off chance that the raiders might be careful was not worth the risk to his frigates the infidels on their side remained very cautious near the lord bellerophon's guns and made sure to stay well clear of its gun range even going so far as to not firing off a quick little speculative volley of torpedoes just in case which is a remarkable degree of discipline for a bunch of chaos raiders after getting all of the data and information they could they swiftly headed it back out to the system edges undoubtedly to reunite with the rest of the chaos fleet the sword-class frigates were sent out once again to see if they couldn't get a bit of a sneak peek at whatever was incoming again with strict orders to not engage the infidels in case there were other forces sneaking into the system as well and roughly six days later another report came across the rear admiral's desk the report detailed a series of auger contacts obtained by the sword frigates they had identified at least 14 unique energy signatures in the incoming fleet along with one energy signature of particular notice in the midst of the enemy fleet there was something of considerable size the analysis of the drive signature came back as inconclusive but it was at the very least a cruiser and quite possibly something far larger in response to this the admiral decided to change his plan he had for a while now been cognizant of the fact that he was in all due likelihood well and truly boned but with these numbers and the likelihood of being bestially outgunned he had to realize that it was no longer a theoretical the giant spiked chaos penis was now well and truly a reality and the only realistic course of action still open to him was to bite down as hard as possible in the hopes of inflicting some kind of damage having resigned his fleet more or less to its fate he ordered a change in disposition rather than the ordered lines of battle his ships would now all organize themselves into a single column of battle upon approaching the chaos fleet the lead ship would fire a volley of torpedoes with the hope of opening a gap in the enemy's battle lines through which the column would then plunge in its entirety firing from every single available gun port and starboard in this way the flotilla would ensure its ability to make maximum use of its available firepower doing as much damage to the chaos flotilla as possible whilst also granted receiving as much damage as possible in return by maximizing firepower in this way the hope was that they would be able to several chaos ships then the fire ships sheltering in the relative safety of the rear of the formation would light their engines to maximum and ram any chaos ship that had been deprived of its means of maneuver this would in turn hopefully entirely destroy the chaos vessel in theory this plan would allow raziak to inflict damage upon the chaos fleet out of all proportions to his own formation size and even more importantly it may allow him to inflict permanent damage via the complete destruction of chaos vessels and since fire ships don't really care all that much about differences in tonnage there was also the possibility of the admiral bagging himself some real big game with their strategy the downsides of the strategy however were also quite considerable the odds of razia x ragtag flotilla surviving this engagement were rather small on the bright side they would be passing through the enemy formation at battle speed which hopefully would allow them to shoot through the formation and clean out the rear of the chaos flotilla hopefully putting some significant distance between themselves and any potential pursuit but before they got to that point they would have to drag their undermanned poorly maintained slow asses through the engagement zone of every single enemy vessel in the flotilla a safe plan it most decidedly was not but considering the limited nature of the admiral's resources and the absolute need to inflict some actual damage upon the invaders it was probably the best plan available there was of course the danger that the enemy might foresee this plan and counter it seeing as the rear admiral's fleet was ragtag in nature and slow as all sin towing the defense monitors it would be a small matter indeed for the chaos raiders to simply stay at lance range firing torpedoes and scorching away the imperial ship's armor at long range however they were fighting chaos raiders never the most organized of lot and it was a ragtag tiny imperial fleet in all of your likelihood the various chaos champions captaining the vessels incoming would never adopt such a careful and cowardly strategy after all if they remained behind attacking from range somebody else might sneak in close and claim the glory and we cannot have that oh no no no most definitively no and so predictably enough the cow's fleet was barreling down upon the imperial navy head on because chaos there was however one small problem with the current plan the large energy signature that had been detected previously was now close enough to receive the attention of the navy's auger readers and they could positively identify it as the anarchy's heart a despoiler class battleship or technically an attack craft only three of these vessels were originally constructed in the mid 36th millennium by battlefleet tempestus but were quickly discontinued because they proved to be not quite as efficient as originally hoped tempestus was of the opinion that attack crafts like the despoiler class would eventually entirely replace battleships in the imperial navy but this was not to be some time thereafter the ftc plans for the spoiler must have been stolen at some point because whilst the imperium are not building any further despoilers chaos most definitively is since there is a hell of a lot more than three of them bumping about the galaxy at this point in time so what does this actually mean well razia x flagship was the cruiser lord bellerophon in 40k a cruiser is considered essentially a ship of the line a mainstay of most navies but a de spoiler-class attack craft well that's the very thing designed to break apart backlines constructed of cruisers and well there was no battle line of cruisers in front of the anarchy's heart there was a cruiser now a despoiler class is an interesting mix of carrier and battleship it boasts a battleship's alliance batteries allowing it to support its attack craft at long range but it foregoes the bombardment abilities of a true battleship in favor of several hangars filled with assault crafts and bombers this is the kind of ship that by itself alone would have been more than able to wreck the entire imperial navy complement above rocks all it would have to do will stay away its powerful engines long-range lance batteries and waves upon waves of attack crafts would be more than enough to tear apart the measly formations presented by the imperial navy the defense monitors couldn't catch it in a billion years the sword-class frigates would barely be a match for the spoilers point defenses never mind its main weaponry the only ship that could conceivably have stood something that resembled the chance against it was the lord belerefon and it only if they could close the distance fortunately the chaos fleet had decided to be more than accommodating in this particular regard as they were burning at full speed towards the imperial navy now i do hasten to point out that this was not quite as a decision as it at first sounds on one hand yes they could have wiped out the entire imperial navy flotilla virtually without suffering any form of damage but one chaos doesn't work like that and two they were on the clock they were certainly aware of the fact that the imperium would have noticed them leaving the eye of terror and they would also know that the imperium does not like chaos flotillas bumping around their backyard there would be a response force incoming and so the quicker the chaos or tiller could reach vrax the better there is also much to be said for a display of good old-fashioned brute force and in this case it almost worked on the bridge of the lord bellerophon reared admiral raziak seeing the insurmountable force that approached him thought for a moment that it might be best to simply disengage he could take his cruiser and his sword-class frigates and make for the outer edges of the system hoping to return at a later date with further imperial navy reinforcements his armed freighters would not be fast enough to escape nor would his defense monitors or the fire ships but of course in a straight up engagement these ships were as good as doomed anyway would it then not be better for razia to take the ships that could escape and return to fight another day thusly stricken with indecision raziek was on the verge of ordering the retreat when a report came from his auger crew stating that the chaos fleet had split in two distinct formations and would pass by razia's battle line to port and starboard the perfect scenario for his column assault plan and whilst that meant that razia's fleet was no less doomed it was the perfect scenario for inflicting damage upon the chaos fleet and the very scenario he had already prepared himself for and so his mind was made up he issued the orders to his flag captain to instruct the crew to prepare to go meet big e himself as they would plunge right down the gullet of the beast firing from all guns the rear admiral was determined that if it was truly to be their fate to go meet big e this day they would do so with a nice big fat shining achievement at their back shortly thereafter the battle was officially initiated as planned by a long-range torpedo salvo fired from the lord bellerophon six torpedoes in all now in 40k terms a torpedo is not really what you might imagine when hearing the word torpedo they're more along the lines of gargantuan nuclear missiles that have a rudimentary guidance system that directs them through the void they are capable of locking onto a target to a certain degree but the nature of void warfare is very different from anything that might take place on land or at sea both the missile and its target will both be moving at ridiculous speeds and to have the one intercept the other is no small task when you add in the fact that imperial cogitators have seen better days a hit is never guaranteed lastly the first torpedo missed the anarchy's heart by in void terms narrow margins which means a couple hundred kilometers the second torpedo somehow detonated upon the anarchy's heart's void shields which i think is awful for saying i didn't actually look up how void shields function because torpedoes passed right through those but hey details the third torpedo was destroyed by defensive fire from the anarchy's heart and the fourth torpedo also aimed at the attack craft suffered a malfunction and detonated in the void inflicting no further damage the two last torpedoes the fifth and the sixth had been aimed rather speculatively after the spoilers escort a pair of iconic class destroyers now these were very much so long shots even though again guidance technology is reasonably effective although limited a light and again relatively speaking small and fast ship like a destroyer can usually get itself out of the way of incoming ordnance like torpedoes which are relatively speaking slow and indeed the first iconoclast managed to dodge the torpedo the second however was not so lucky the captain was a second too late in adjusting his course and the fiendish machine spirit aboard the imperial torpedo got a solid lock ramming itself and its melter warhead straight into the iconoclast destroyer's midship virtually shearing the small vessel in half this prompted an immediate wave of cheers on the command bridge of the lord belerefon first blood went to the imperial navy as the gutted iconoclast destroyer drifted out of the enemy's battle line shortly thereafter despite the best efforts of the ship's damage control crews her plasma reactor would go critical and turned the small ship into a brief and blindingly white supernova the cheering aboard the lord bellerophon however was to be cut short mere moments thereafter as the despoiler class clearly enraged by its praise impudent show of resistance opened fire with its lands batteries at this range there was quite literally nothing the poor lunar class could do to respond all the lord belerophon could do was hunker down as well as possible hope that his voyage shield somehow held up for long enough for them to get within effective range of their own weapons it was going to be a long and bumpy ride by the time the two fleets closed and began sliding slowly almost majestically past one another firing from all weapons the lord belerephon had been badly mauled virtually all of its void shields had overloaded but the venerable old ship's massive armored prow had stood up to the enemy's fire remarkably well and through the lunar class cruiser's stubborn defiance in the face of enemy fire the rest of the rank tank flotilla had been allowed to approach virtually unscathed the sword-class frigates immediately leapt upon the anarchy's heart worrying at it like dogs might have bone the far smaller ships attempting desperately to inflict damage upon the far larger ship whilst avoiding the worst of its firepower the defense monitors slid past slowly and majestically firing their heavy weapons at the enemy's larger ships leaving the anarchy's heart to the sword-class frigates and the lord belerephon fired and all guns at anything and everything that presented itself even the armed cruisers cursed by their limited firepower engaged and took the occasional pot shot here and there inflicting mostly superficial but still damage upon the chaos flortilla it was however by no means a one-sided engagement with the first imperial ship to fall being the sword class x041 which was crippled by the spoiler class's lens batteries at virtually point-blank range the smaller ship had been playing a cat and mouse game with the chaos gunners darting in and out of their fields of fire delivering its own weapon salvos whilst darting out again just before the chaos gunners could get a lock unfortunately for xo41 it was just a tad bit too slow on one of these occasions and had half of its top decks sheared away in a single land salvo leaving the remainder of the small ship's decks either exposed to hard vacuum or on fire but at least the sword classes had the luxury of being able to get out of the line of fire of the much larger chaos vessels the poor system defense monitors had no such luxury the chaos fleet correctly identified the lumbering defense platforms as the primary threat and so concentrated their firepower upon them out of the original three defense monitors only one emerged out of the engagement battered bruised and bleeding fire from several massive rents torn in the superstructure it was virtually crippled but still standing in the battle line in return the system defense monitors had aided the lord bloodedfon in damaging a chaos heavy transport a board which was god emperor only knows how many tens of thousands of traitorous heretics and they had also succeeded in destroying a second iconoclast destroyer the engagement had been lopsided but nowhere near as lopsided as it could have been and miraculously the armed freighters had all survived the engagement although not entirely intact the israel moors had suffered particularly heavily as she became the primary recipient of the attention of chaos bomber wings knocking out three of her four plasma reactors and leaving her dead in the void but instead of abandoning ship the israel's captain ordered his surviving crew members to man the guns rerouting their minimal power to keep them operational and firing at the chaos fleet at the head of the column still stood lord belerefon almost all of its void shield generators were now permanently out of action having been overloaded and shut down to prevent them from exploding additionally a macro cannon shell had pierced the number two engine room killing virtually all of the tech adepts inside and heavily damaging the plasma reactor luckily damaged control crews had been able to stabilize it and bring it back under control the reactor had now been shut down permanently for fear of it too exploding and there was no rest for the damage control crews two of the starboard weapon batteries had been gutted and then set a light the vast quantities of ammunition had been set ablaze and damaged control crews were now fighting desperately to contain the fire sweeping through several decks and for the cherry on top the ship's primary communications tower had been sheared clean off the superstructure by a lamb's hit from the anarchy's heart the old war horse had certainly seen better days but for the moment it was still alive and fighting although for how long that would remain so was a question that was yet to be answered in front of the lord bellerophon was two further chaos cruisers and frankly the old venerable lunar class had barely survived its brush with the main chaos battle line entering into a protracted gunfight with two further cruisers would almost certainly see her put to rest along with what little remained of the imperial flotilla over the box speakers the monastorum priests began reading the crew their last rights then rear admiral raziak ordered the ship to heave to starboard presenting what remained of his weapon batteries towards the two incoming cruisers as he prepared to sell his own life and those of his crew and ship as daily as possible unbeknownst to the rear admiral however the god emperor was working his miracles out in the cold darkness of the void and slowly at first but then with gathering speed the two chaos cruisers began to turn and disengage unbeknownst to raziak his flotilla was not the only imperial navy formation within the raxion system upon learning where the chaos flotilla was headed battlefleet scadas had immediately directed the closest battle-worthy force to reinforce the vraxian navy elements this happened to be cruiser group mazur under rear admiral titus mazur they had arrived in system shortly after the chaos fleet but mazur was not overly interested in coming to the rescue of raziak his primary objective was to intercept the chaos flotilla before it could deliver its reinforcements to vraks additionally he simply wasn't at all particularly interested in helping raziek as the two had a mutual dislike raziak had at one point been a second to a young officer who had been challenged in a duel by titus mazur and subsequently killed to make matters worse the two were also rivals who couldn't seem to quite shake one another whenever one was promoted the other was also shortly thereafter promoted they had gained much the same in the way of plaudits and honours and perhaps mazur saw an opportunity to rid himself of a bothersome rival regardless however the two chaos cruisers were not aware of this mutual dislike and so they decided to focus their attention on the greater of the two threats and in this case it was a badly battered and bruised lunar class cruiser and a handful of near-dead ships or a cruiser group not a particularly difficult evaluation to the crew of the lord bellerophon however it must have seemed like divine providence they had no way of communicating at the moment with their communication tower spinning happily through the void and so all they could see was the two cruisers set to murder every last one of them turning away and disengaging for mazur however it must have seemed the exact opposite he had a hope that the two cruisers would be too busy blasting apart the hapless remnants of the defence fleet to intercept his formation that might allow him just enough time providing his fleet was under heavy burn which it was to intercept the enemy flotilla and disrupt their landing efforts however he simply could not ignore the two chaos cruisers heading towards him as they were probably the worst types possible in the situation a slaughter-class cruiser a hit-and-run raider with massive short-range firepower and a devastation class a long-range sniper with the ability to deploy attack craft if rio admiral mazir tried to simply just rush past there was a real danger that the devastation classes attack crafts would be able to several of his warships engines by focusing in on their driver plants and then dead in the water the slaughter class would be able to dart in and annihilate them to prevent this from happening mazir dispatched one of his three cruisers the dominator class orion with its massive prow mounted nova cannon and batteries of macro cannon batteries it would be a daunting task for the two cruisers to destroy staying at long range would put them at the mercy of the nova cannon but trying to dart in to the ship would expose them to its multiple macro cannon batteries and with the sword-class frigates nearby it was a doubly risky meanwhile the rest of cruiser group mazir continued on intercept course it now consisted of the gothic class cruiser consul thrashi and the grand cruiser covenator it might just be two ships but they were two pretty damn large and powerful vessels additionally the chaos flotilla would need to enter into low orbit to deploy their reinforcements rendering them extremely slow and vulnerable to the two ships firepower it might not be enough to destroy the chaos flotilla but it certainly would make the captains of said flotilla think twice about deploying their troops whilst all of this was going on raziak was still fighting his own private battle still unaware that imperial reinforcements had arrived in system he was desperately reorganizing what remained of his fleet and he decided it was about time to deploy his reserves the three fire ships that he so far had kept safe at the very back of his column he had three ships and for them he picked three targets one was to strike the blood dawn which was still engaged with his flotilla and currently in the process of launching dreadclaw assault boats towards the crippled israel moors with the intentions of capturing the armored freighter for future chaos use the second fire ship was heading directly towards the anarchy's heart which was one hell of a gamble if it hit it would take the battleship out of the fight but the odds of that happening were rather small and the third headed towards the aaron's bane the massive chaos bulk transport that had been injured previously in the engagement by the lord bellerophon it was a very ambitious gamble sending his fire ships in against the largest enemy vessels ensured that if they hit they would significantly impact the combat but the odds of them hitting were as mentioned rather slim and as if to prove that the first fire ship was torn apart with ease by the blood dawn as it tried to close the second aimed at the anarchy's heart was also swatted out of the void with an area sidewards glance but the third had better luck with the anarchy's heart distracted by the incoming fire ship it was unable to provide protection to the add-on who was slowing down in preparations for entering into the upper vraxian atmosphere this meant he was unable to take the evasive maneuvers necessary to avoid the third fire ship as far as the battle in the void was concerned the addons bane was of virtually no consequence it was lightly armed and armored and all the imperial bulk transport but as far as the battle on the ground was concerned it was probably the greatest threat in the system as it was chock-full of chaos reinforcements tens of thousands of cultists mutants beastmen and all manners of monstrosities paying for blood in its many holds the crew of the fire ship refused orders to abandon their vessel and instead guided it in to the very end striking the add-on spain directly amidship this unsurprisingly inflicted crippling damage upon the heavy transport and preparing as it was to enter into low orbits it had no way to escape caught in vrax's gravity field the ancient ship began its slow but inexorable fall towards the planet below once again cheering broke out aboard the lord belerephon they saw the adults bane plunged towards the planet below and expected to never see it again the dark gods however had different plans miraculously the crew managed to regain enough control to fire their main engines it was nowhere near enough to resist the fall to the planet's surface but it was enough to right the ship and ensure that it did not simply plunge directly into the planet's surface and by the grace of the ruinous powers it carried out a relatively successful belly landing what the aeron spain did was certainly stretching the term but after digging a kilometers long gouge in the terrain of the shalia plateau most of those aboard survived and far worse was the fact that the anarchy's heart had made low orbit undisturbed despite their best efforts cruiser group mazur was too late to stop the anarchy's heart beginning to deploy its reinforcements even now drop pods and landing crafts were streaming out of the battleship's hull seeding the planet below with alpha legion and chaos warband reinforcements the chaos flotilla had succeeded in its primary mission and the death corps of krieg was about to have a whole new load of friends to play with as for the thrilling conclusion to the battle in the void and how the death corps reacted to their new visitors you're going to have to wait until the next episode until then i have been arch thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed the video please do consider sharing it around to friends and like-minded individuals as it really does help quite a lot anywho until next time have a good day [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Arch

Views: 348,388

Keywords: Arch, Vraks, War, Void, Imperial navy, Chaos, Space Battle, The Siege of Vraks, arch warhammer, 40k lore, archwarhammer, arch warhammer 40k, warhammer 40k lore, arch warhammer lore, warhammer lore, 40k, arch warhammer vraks, warhammer 40k, warhammer, warhammer 40k arch

Id: 4-MpLvSpcww

Length: 63min 37sec (3817 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 31 2019