40K - THE GREAT NACHMUND WAR [1]: VIGILUS | Warhammer 40,000 Lore/History

[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] or the Great Rift tore through the Galaxy around the time of the fall of Cadia when Abaddon or Abaddon LED his 13th Black Crusade into material space no not that 13th Black Crusade the 13th Black Crusade that came after it Gilman himself speculated that the rift formed after a badon had learned that strategically destroying worlds rich in Blackstone as well as what are known as Blackstone pylons which appear to be the creation of the necron and may well be deliberately designed to contain the Great Rift which I speculate May well be the original ocean which the Eldar culture bathed in at the beginning of the Galaxy but which was then subsequently sealed later as per their mythology and perhaps due to some collaboration between the necron and the Elder after the war in heaven I could talk about that a lot more but probably another day please note also entirely my speculation abadden Abaddon had spent Millennia trying to find a path forward that would allow him to reach Terror as he is obsessed with succeeding where Horus failed his intention to open a so-called Crimson path using the destruction of Cadia as its trigger and it's best to think of Cadia as actually being some kind of Great Seal or a keystone that he believed would then unleash the rift which indeed it did many have asked why did Abaddon crash the Blackstone Fortress into Cadia thereby breaking the planet were there no other options why would he waste such a powerful ancient device such as a Blackstone Fortress well in essence The Fortress was already in ruin it had undergone a boarding action by the Loyalists and in what was basically desperation at that point Aladdin decided that things were looking uncertain he couldn't afford for the efforts of this campaign to then leave Cadia intact and he needed to score a big win against the Imperium so he decided to go all in double down and threw the Blackstone Fortress like a meteor at the planet it still scored the traitors and net gain in the big picture it seems likely though that this alone was not the singular trigger for opening the Great Rift it has been since discussed as being likely a culmination of events which all compounded the instability between the material and immaterial Realms not least the birth of the Eldar god of the Dead in Aid which undoubtedly caused massive warp disturbance also the return of Primark dillerman whose emergence to lead the impairment such a time of disruption undoubtedly bristled the nerves of those who exist in the immaterium having one of the emperor's Sons active once again to steer humanity is no small thing and not something anyone has seen for a long time and then of course yes the use of Blackstone fortresses and continuing Crusades by Aberdeen out of the eye of Terror some even speak about Magnus having had a hand in things one of the core issues that emerged for the Imperium after the violent opening of the Great Rift was administrative organization systems were now cut off and worse nearly every active Imperial War Zone had to devise and enforce its own chronological system in honesty even despite the sikatrix maledictum this was a realization long overdue as the sheer Interstellar distances within the Imperium had long made any accurate recording and documentation of time and space a largely wishful thinking Affair this is one of the reasons why we must remain continually open-minded as to just what happens where and with who in the history of the Imperium for very often events that we believed to hold a specific order in a chronological timeline May in fact be anything but and so despite what many had presumed had been based on chronological descriptions given after the return of Gilman me included it became widely debated that the current date for the Imperium should have now been m42 the this was in fact Incorrect and the time period Still Remains m41 for the Imperium how has this discovered despite these seeming stability of the old date system it soon was apparent that it had become easy for dates and times to lose all meaning between Star systems again it's somewhat surprising this was not addressed sooner like a lot sooner but that I guess speaks to how stagnant and inflexible the Imperium was and remains there are many references in material where the administratum would receive urgent calls for assistance as an imperial world is being descended upon by vast amounts of zenos the deals that have been made the favors called in and prices paid to have that request elevated and to have merely reached that point must have cost a painfully unpleasant price too high a price to even consider and then bleakly the Scribe or administrative member who would finally see this would also then realize that the request was centuries out of date into the fire it goes onward to the next request of that day this kind of miserable dystopia in the Imperium remains one of my absolute favorite Bleak pivots when it comes to the state of the Imperium for all their golden statues of astarty's tales told myths Legends still countless worlds are being besieged continuously entirely out of sight and out of mind vast reams of critical STC information probably discarded destroyed by feral tribes who didn't know any better menial scribes discounting essential intelligence that had not been stamped with the correct administrative approvals and consequently planets of billions are devoured this is the reality of the Imperium grinding creaking suffering slowly collapsing upon itself and then you have this dark stagnation juxtaposed against the immense light of the emperor's imperialistatis and so it was of course Roberta Gilman law commander of the Imperium who made the first steps to resolve this one painfully problematic issue after a long conference with his historators and the Mysterious organization of the order Chronos he decreed that a single logic could no longer be applied to time and space within the Imperium through the then highlights of Terror he made his theory and resultant process into law but even if it had been possible before in the current age there could be no unified calendar with so much temporal Distortion occurring even though the rift's warping effects might not have reached the farthest planets out of the galactic Rim its psychic Echoes and the obfuscation of the astronomicon were felt profoundly on outer worlds therefore it made some sense although simultaneously added additional confusion to Imperial record keeping to implement Gilman's new decree that each subsection of the Imperium would maintain its own chronology all of which would then use the coming of the Great Rift in that sector as its reference point so this means that chronological record keeping across the entire galaxy is now even more complex than it were before although it's also probably more realistic and slightly more accurate but also confusing and difficult and more akin to how it might actually be to try and manage some kind of Galactic Empire the sikatrix maledictum became an unsurprisingly defining event for a new era of the Imperium it remains a very complex situation and any solutions or conclusions regarding its long-term impact or practical options to seal the tear were far from Clear suffice to say though the arrival of the rift was devastating for the Imperium it split the Galaxy with those segmentum able to see the light of the astronomicon on one side and those who could not on the other the majority of segmentum obscurus and Ultima are consequently now referred to as the dark Imperium Imperium nihilus the remaining territory of the Imperium existing in the light of the astronomicon is referred to in the late period of m41 as Imperium Sanctus this consists of segmentum solar Pacific workers and tempestas less than half of the ultimate segmentum and a fraction of obscurus life and travel within the dark Imperium nihilus remains extremely dangerous astropathic communication is difficult or just not possible and the many enemies of humanity saw this opportunity to now continually besiege isolated worlds while Imperium Sanctus stands in a far stronger position it also suffers from a Litany of persistent threats but these are nothing compared to those of Imperium nihilus for this reason it was deemed critical by Roberta Gilman to forge a stable access point through the disturbance of the sikatrix maledictum and enable a continual mass transit of Imperial Fleet between the two regions to support further campaigns but it begs the question what is in fact The nachmund Gauntlet well this so-called Gauntlet was discovered soon after the rift tore through the Galaxy it stands as an anomalous warp Corridor Bridging the rift space from vigilous to the planet of sangua Terror in the Imperium Sanctus it exists as one of the few stable channels connecting the two Imperial domains but why it exists at all is not understood some of course believe it to be the work of The Emperor's will that he somehow parted the Seas of the storm to allow his faithful to travel and fight the good fight toward the galactic Northern end of the Warped Corridor stood the world of vigilus an immense Bastion world of loyal Imperials massive hives and Industry upon entering the corridor however you soon come upon the world of daravah a stronghold of ancient timuron Knights who before the dust had even settled after the emergence of the rift had turned traitor and aligned themselves with chaos there are other industrial ambastian worlds dotted throughout the gauntlet itself and finally you reach the Fortress World of sangua terror Imperial Astro cartographers continue though to struggle to agree on safe or stable routes through the gauntlet mainly because they're changing all the time the danger and anomalous nature of the space throughout the corridor is always shifting making traversing The Gauntlet one of the most dangerous Crossings in the Galaxy but the very existence of the nachman gaundat I have found leads immediately to further questions regarding the nature and necessity of such a corridor if you have Galactic warp travel why is this Corridor necessary at all well I'll tell you I found quite often that in discussing the events of vigilous Ark survaman The nagmund Gauntlet there's a common confusion about warp travel in the 40K verse and to be fair it's entirely understandable but consequently confusion arises around the concept of both the Great Rift and such a thing as a corridor Gauntlet Crossing this region of space and I'll very often see questions like why is it a thing at all can't you just enter the warp and choose where you wish to go and then you come out the other side you would just be able to go around this great rift because the Galaxy is not on a single plane you don't just put a barrier up and you can't go through it alternatively another Viewpoint is can't you just travel around the rift the answer to both of these is essentially no first of all you have to understand just how big the rift is and yes also it does exist in the three-dimensional sense it's so vast that it would be basically impossible to travel around and Traverse with traditional power and then you can't warp around it either but I think Fusion mainly seems to arise from the fact that many people are obviously well versed in broader fictional space narratives and so have built up in their minds something that we might call the mainstream of Science Fiction answer when it comes to traveling faster than light from one point in real space to another so it's completely understandable but brings a lot of misunderstanding about how warp travel functions in the 40K verse one of the most important things to understand is that the warp is something of a mirror of reality but not in a very literal sense the first thing though to understand is that travel doesn't occur at a single point in many ways it's far more linear just in terms of going from point to point so in that sense it's more akin to traveling through a wormhole or hyperspace than Concepts that are more like folded space traveling between two points in a galaxy without moving the classic overused illustration of a folded piece of paper and a pencil so yet again sorry fans of Event Horizon who want to try and make it a 40K thing they got it wrong it's not how warp travel Works in 40K because in the 40K verse the shortest distance between two points is not zero in Event Horizon the ship creates a dimensional Gateway that allows the ship to travel between two points in the Galaxy instantaneously similarly also to Navigators in June who would fold space and the ships will travel without moving this is not how it works in 40K warp travel is still faster than traveling in real space in fact it's faster by significant orders of magnitude that without it would make any Galactic Empire basically impossible but the key thing is that you must still travel so in 40K the shortest distance between two points is not zero it is in fact a straight line however you rarely can travel in a straight line because that straight line is really straight because you're in the warp and in the warp there's no logic or ordinary boundaries So in theory could you just enter the warp at one point and exit on the other side of the Galaxy and say a day's travel theoretically yes is that how it generally seems to function on the whole no usually when ships travel the warp the time spent within the warp reduces significantly the time that it would take in real space for many thousands of years to Mere days or weeks sometimes years lost ships have disappeared for centuries or longer and the warp is dangerous for a variety of reasons some being very obvious some being very obscure some that create troubling philosophical questions such as the fact that some ships may enter the war and arrive at their destination before they even left their original starting position meaning they somehow now technically exist at two points in the Galaxy simultaneously that's a very problematic thing but the more standard confusion overall that seems to arise is this concept that both ships will enter and exit the warp wherever you wish in the Galaxy as I said there are instances where ships May travel far further or become lost thrown out far from their intended destination but it's not really true to say that regardless of distance warp travel functions by just entering at Point a and choosing point B be that anywhere else in the galaxy and then you just wait to arrive I think that notion stems from Concepts more like hyperspace where you enter this alternate Dimension that allows fast to travel you enter the coordinates you want to get to and then just wait again not really how it works in 40K so how does it work and why do we know this to be true well we know it because it's been very steadily consistently documented through the law unsurprisingly I recommend some small notes from the solar War navis primer as well as battlefleet Gothic and as we know traveling through the warp allows you to travel outside of normal time in real space thus you will arrive at your destination faster but it's not like hyperspace it's not just a dimensional space where you can go anywhere it's more like an immense Tempest of an ocean which is so severe that when you enter your options at one point are probably very severely limited you might only have a few choices as to where you can safely navigate and that route will likely determine your destination this is not to say that a single entry point predetermines a single exit point of travel it just might mean that you initially may need to travel elsewhere to then access additional routes in that sense you might think of it more akin to a road Network in some respects now over time as with our own oceans in the ancient times Roots have been recorded charted that were generally safer and more efficient to use so that steadily in connecting these roots ships were able to then remain in the warp for longer but you might still need to accept warp space and travel within a system and then re-enter at another position to access a different warp route this means that some systems have critical strategic importance in the Imperium for this very reason now hopefully that helps a little to explain the confusion around a ship entering a point and exiting anywhere they wish in the Galaxy but there's a little more to it it's not technically as simple pause that but it is possible that some ships may be able to enter and navigate a very complex route through the warp to emerge at a whole other segmentum far across the Galaxy but actually navigating through the warp in a 3D sense has been very very rarely Illustrated but there was in fact one example that illustrates how traveling The nachman Gauntlet could appear and here you can see that it appears as a massive wormholes conduits all creating roots from an entry point at either end so what you then have to understand is that it is obviously easier to enter at one of these entry points than just to translate and merge in half way along and try to find your bearings you could do it but it's probably more unstable more dangerous it's going to be more challenging and then also imagine that all of these routes are shifting slightly all of the time so if you don't enter at that key entry exit point if you come in in the Middle where ordinarily there is a root there may not be when you actually translate in into that worse still if you choose to translate into the warp anywhere and not at some of the designated charted route there could be an immense storm that alters the room significantly or closes it all together so you can start to understand how difficult and strange traveling in the warp is besides all of the Demonic and ethereal entities that are trying to destroy you in fact some Navigators have even been said to refuse translation in and out of the warp at non-designated positions because of just how dangerous it is so that brings us really to the Mandeville points what's a Mandeville Point Mandeville point is the supposed safe distance where a ship may enter or exit the warp this tends to be the edge of a star system now these don't appear to be standardized but they are seen as invisible lines which Mark the safe distance required to enter or exit the warp way to arrive inside of that point the competing forces of reality and Paradox May simply tear a vessel apart Navigators call call this rebirth death established systems will have navigation boys or reliably charted points that designate where is safest to translate from the warp back into reality so again it's not really true to say that you can just choose when you want to go into the warp and where you come out of it although it's not always made clear that that is how it functions it's it's more specific than you might imagine and it really is about charted routes you go to this coordinate you enter and then you can your Navigator can navigate through to various exit points which are also charted and coordinated what this means though for ships in the Imperium is that they have to use standard propulsion from a systems Edge to a planet and back again and very often this can mean that even for the fastest ships it can require a journey of several days to actually reach a world this is one of those lore technicalities where it may look epic for a huge Fleet to pour from the warp almost in the orbit of a planet but it's not really how it's supposed to work there's also in fictional reasons why this is a good thing it means that actual defenses in between planets and surrounding a system on charted routes can be established which makes sense and is strategically interesting because you have some opportunity to engage with the Enemy before they actually arrive at a world but there are exceptions warp gates or specifically within the primary Bastion of humanity the soul system there exists the cathonic gates essentially a warp gate enables stable travel which is obviously very unusual but in the case of more standard warp gates these are mostly between two specific points only the benefit of warp gates is that they avoid the dangers of warp translation and so enable ships to enter a system far closer than they may otherwise need to do so if using a standard Mandeville point the gethonic gates in the soul system as far as we know simply enables ships traveling from elsewhere to translate further into the soul system how this was achieved day or how they function is entirely unknown because they originate from the Dark Age of technology and Humanity has long lost the level of knowledge required to begin to understand this overall be they have xenos origin or otherwise warp gates hold immense strategic importance for both safety and time saved in space travel and then you have the astronomicon this is essentially a psychic lighthouse built upon Terror fueled by psychers controlled by the emperor which forms a beacon for Navigators to use as a point of reference to chart from without it warp travel would effectively become near to Impossible or best case extremely dangerous because terror is located in the galactic west of the Galaxy the astronomicon only reaches some of the known Galaxy this means in the galactic Far East it is far dimmer or even unable to be seen at all similarly on the very edge of the Galaxy this makes warp travel in these regions far more dangerous and it's also the reason why it's not correct to say that the terror grenades saw the astronomical from beyond our own Galaxy that's simply not possible but it is the reason why the turinator believed to now be driving towards Terror as a technicality that is often misrepresented of course with the great rift this immense warp storm blocked the light of the astronomicon meaning that all travel within the dark Imperium nihilus is extremely dangerous and difficult thus making the imperium's efforts to reach this area of the Galaxy and establish some kind of support all the more challenging some may even suggest it to be impossible now there is though no such thing as a routine warp voyage for even the shortest jump is a dangerous undertaking for a navigator guiding a vessel along Uncharted routes the risks increase considerably now during the heresy some access points in their nearby planets became key Battlegrounds not to mention things like the Catholic Gates which were also embroiled in the conflict although ultimately didn't prove decisive in the arrival of the traitors but all of this is why locating a warped Corridor such as the enactment Gauntlet becomes absolutely vital when powerful warp storms cut off access to an entire region in the Galaxy even now some permanent warp storms prevent access to other regions one of the best known examples is that of the Coronas expanse which can only be accessed via the Coronas passage this warped Corridor known as the Moor and despite the immense danger many ships which Brave the corridor to reach the system on the other side but traversing them more is so hazardous many ships are just lashed to Pieces by unknown forces and never seen again so when it comes to entering the warp it's not necessarily A wise idea to just enter at any point can you technically do so yes but it's not advisable and sometimes a navigator could even override a captain if they believe such an action to be risking the loss of all for any chance of surviving walk travel across the Galaxy you need specifically charted routes competent Navigators the light of the astronomican and favorable tides of the warp so it's absolutely not as simple as just entering wherever you want to and exiting far far away one adjacent other thing to briefly mention there are other methods of fast and light travel in the 40K verse such as the eldari or the old ones web way this exists outside of the warp and is considerably safer but it's too much to mention in detail here but basically there are other means of traveling faster than light across the Galaxy which don't require going through litter or hell but overall that's really the basics of warp travel it's ultimately in many ways still not completely clear just how all this works which is no surprise because there's plenty in the 40K verse which fits that description and when it's something as vague and mysterious as warp travel it's no surprise there either but there is a reason why it's called the Sea of souls for the void space of the warp is a Savage ocean and seemingly where you can enter has a significant bearing as to your chances of survival and success and then you still have to navigate through hell safe and efficient point of entry charting a course avoiding dangerous currents and storms that would trap and quickly destroy your vessel all fall upon The Navigators assigned to a vessel to determine an individual whose entire being is spent knowing feeling and learning about the warp and establishing safe routes through and around devastating warp storms and I've discussed Navigators previously see the link below but again hopefully this makes it somewhat clearer you don't travel instantly from one point to any other in the 40K verse you then enter the warp and just travel to your destination it's a very involved challenging process of navigating routes and courses to reach an ultimate destination and in some instances even using the warp could take still many months even years and if a warp storm is disrupting your route you might not actually be able to reach a system at all and this is in fact how some systems have ended up being cut off from the Imperium for centuries because there's no actual way to travel to them and to do so in real space could take many Millennia in some respects this could actually be positive for a planet if they just existed outside of the Imperium and too difficult to reach even for other zenos you could actually end up in a quite idyllic situation so while the warp enables Humanity to travel the Galaxy it's not a means that's reliable by which you can just quickly or easily travel anywhere you wish and this extreme difficulty and danger is why the devastating arrival of the sikatrix maledictum meant that many well-charted roots were just completely obliterated and as a result it became clear to any half decent Imperial captains and Senior officials that from its Inception any established points of travel across the rift bridging between those two regions in real space or the warp would become quickly raging War zones of unfathomable strategic importance which is where we find ourselves at The nachman Gauntlet and vigilus in the period that led up to the nachmund war vigilus was already acutely aware of the role it may have to play for the Imperium its proximity to the eye of Terror had long put in on a war footing which thankfully meant the planet was well equipped and fortified but now the stakes had increased significantly vigilus had changed from being a strategically important support world to one of the most critical planets for the Imperium in the entire galaxy the planets of the vigilous system a short distance from and to the galactic east of Acadia found themselves on the wrong side of this abhorrent Rift but through a Twist of the xenchian strands of Faith still remained accessible to the Imperium Sanctus but for those stranded on the dark side of the Galaxy it was immediately apparent they had now entered a new darker phase of existence for Humanity saying this though worth remembering that the dark side of the Galaxy that is Imperium nihilus was not literally dark it didn't destroy the styles of systems it simply inhibited warp travel by obscuring the astronomicon so on both sides of the Imperium the Great Rift appeared often as a mere purple blur in the skies above their worlds during the day by night though it became far more Insidious more alive and dangerous and some reported seeing faces and strange nightmarish Visions drifting across it when the rift split the Imperium in half suddenly many thousands of Worlds were faced with the mind-altering more that was ever present and unavoidable at all hours of the day it robbed citizens of sleep distorted their minds it even went as far as to interfere with devices such as chronostates and data webs due to its proximity to the rift curfews were put in place for all citizens upon vigilus as Twilight fell and the strength of the sikatrix maledictum increased this was no speculation or fear-mongering by authorities the proximity of vigilus to the rift meant that by Night a mere moment of attention risked individuals becoming contaminated by its malevolence and therefore rendered susceptible to psychic phenomena this kind of infection by the warp is why often when humans have any kind of contact with the horrors of the immaterium they may well be purged that is to say executed by default for those who understand the warp and the beings who exist within they know all too well that it's very likely too dangerous for ordinary humans to live after witnessing the pure Infinity of the Void exceptions are made of course for those with specialized training proven service records that demonstrate evident ability and the mental strength to stand against the darkness micro-adjacent side note I often hear people asking do ordinary citizens know of chaos and the warp how could they not given the events that have occurred over the past ten thousand years of imperial history but the answer is more nuanced because although worlds who directly face the enemies of chaos and some who serve within the Imperial Guard are more likely to have some baseline understanding or belief about the warp and Chaos there was significantly more worlds who really still know nothing of it at all which is likely to their benefit in some regards but that actually brings you back around to the emperor's conundrum what's better ignorance or the primordial truth so the answer really is it's variable and it's worth remembering that some planets of the Imperium do not even believe that xenos exists in the Galaxy so sheltered are they and they only hear of such things as rumors fishermen's tales that trickle down through the populace of a hive City from passing Traders passed from one person to another to another around stories in bars and whatnot so very often these kind of stories are just dismissed out of hand because such things sound surely completely nonsensical so the Great Rift has already proven to have a disruptive and pervasive impact on human populations within the claustrophobic Hab levels of Hive worlds strange graffiti and artworks are found scrawled upon walls their forms mirror the shapes and faces seen in the rift those who especially in the beginning ignorantly stared up at the rift for too long found it as if a bright light had Shone into their eyes and now they could see its image permanently as if it were burned in moats of light to their Vision seemingly scarring their retinas permanently so that even closing their eyes tightly shut could not allow them to escape its form parents also began to discover to their horror that rift-shaped birthmarks were appearing on infants of Hive cities close to the rift something they of course made great efforts to conceal from authorities within the darkened corridors of Hive cities it even spread its form through natural organic growths water stains on the walls and the ceilings of water purification plants which mirrored the dark scar above Purge squads of the ecclesiarchy made it their mission to exterminate all visible signs of such phenomena but these heretical contaminations became even more prevalent and severe as time wore on to a point that on vigilous when earthquakes were occurring and land opened up upon investigation the land forms mirrored the swirling scarred forms of the Great Rift with such detail it even represented thin land bridges which directly corresponded to the position of things such as the nachman gauntlet now these troubling occurrences could be easily dismissed as being superficial simply due to the proximity of the planet to the rift itself it is worth to recall that for many worlds tolerance of even the smallest presence of chaos contamination can be devastating although the Imperium tells bold and impressive Tales of repelling traitor assaults it's more common that when a world begins to fall to chaos it is rarely subjected to huge planetary assaults more often when a planet is corrupted by chaos it will occur via cult who have made their prom we go to remain out of sight but not entirely out of mind discovery of these cult cells can be very difficult and it's only when initial signs that something is more broadly wrong could an investigation then be launched and this could be very vague things like an increased General sleeplessness or shortened tempers in a population persistent headaches continual errors in fabrication and Industrial centers even just simple tasks such symptoms though widespread may continue to appear harmless and without a direct cause but over time these May suddenly become more acute and then start to cause violent outbreaks persistent sleeplessness causing citizens to even lose their minds and very quickly a world can then begin to unravel and enter an unexpected downward spiral that is difficult to claw back and return from because as symptoms begin to worsen and increase exponentially in a populace this is finally when fanatical cult forces may choose to break out into the open in an attempt to then seize power upon a world now significantly weakened this is of course comparable to the strategies of the tyranid Cults the gene steel occult both operate by weakening a world internally before attempting to break the final pillars that are sagging now under the immense weight of societal collapse and are by now barely able to support a planet or Hive City's stable operations this is of course why the Inquisition the ecclesiarchy minostorm the sororitas continue to exist because they will daily scour Hive worlds seeking to purge any who show even the smallest signs of unusual behavior not to mention just general zealotry purging squads who are little more than rabid religious worshipers in an orgy of violence execution and immolating those who descend into the dark corners of a hive to escape the light of the Imperials these individuals could be outright killed on the slightest pretext still for as disorganized as these Expeditions could be they can actually be quite productive for the inquisitorial agents or Ecclesia archeology who are monitoring such activities one of the most notable signs being do they return or not that can be quite indicative of a larger problem for the world of vigilus its importance and stability have become vital and it obviously did not take long for Roberta Gilman himself to designate vigilus as being invaluable the fight for the nachman gaunted and vigilus is a beachhead or staging position for Imperials attempting to maintain stability within the dark Imperium began almost immediately thankfully as noted before it was already a strong Imperial World boasting both impressive industrial and defensive capabilities it had a heavy presence of Imperial Guard upon the world the Vigilant guard and tempestus and this had now only been bolstered by The Exodus of survivors from Cadia itself and in what is a good example of how the Imperium does not really have a standardized template for leadership over planets vigilus was maintained by a loose Confederation of both elected leaders and Nobles called the equilarian Council or to the mechanicus the Council of cogs which is surely a far more pleasing title comically though the fact that delegates had found it extremely difficult to even agree on a name for themselves illustrates how ineffective and disruptive a leadership they were only their impending Annihilation at the hands of many enemies of humanity Focus their minds on the task at hand and allowed them to put Penny differences aside for the time being this was good timing because when a teaming War Of Orcs burst from the Great Rift the system's Defenders responded with impressive response times and levels of force vigila seems secure at least on paper [Music] as the planet vigilus was as inhospitable as many an imperial Hive world its desert wastelands that stretched out as wide as oceans between each City Hive sprawl were not merely Bleak and Barren but also actively dangerous in places the chemical composition of the Dust Dunes was so saline that it would burn Exposed Skin and could in fact desiccate bare flesh in a matter of hours not a problem with the right protective clothing it would be true but as you can imagine dust storms could cause this material to be whipped into every of a traveler's gear and carried inside not to mention of course the shell armored predators that proud the dunes and preyed upon the unwary so it was a very dangerous environment Hive sprawls are the main city formation upon vigilous and actually much like atoma Prime's Hive city of turshim these are a format of Hive City that expand outwardly as much as vertically so consequently they can span much larger areas than you typically see in a hive city as large as a continent and contain many tens of billions of Imperial citizens vigilus had long been a station way station for Fort vigilus had also been something of a way station for forces that included Space Wolves and the skittari legions its industrial exports were also vital for the general Imperial War Machine so much so that within segmentum obscurus it had been designated as a planet focused entirely on production of raw material and Manpower its specialty being defensive technology which obviously with the current situation was no bad thing had it been a paradise World things may have gone South far more swiftly even more auspiciously the mechanicus upon vigilus have been blessed with the STC for scitec force fields holy Mars had even authorized their production so the force fields that had been installed around the perimeter of every continent upon vigilus and these generally were enough to easily protect the world from wandering zenos the only price asked by the mechanicus of vigil is to compensate them was to be left alone upon the forged continent of Mega Borealis not really a continent more a sprawling industrial cityscape not dissimilate to the others that already covered vigilus but this in time proved to be a poor exchange because the mechanicus mining operations badly damaged the planet's Subterranean water reserves to the point that available Water started to become extremely scarce and the mechanic has paid little care to such matters however and continued digging deeper so because of the severely diminished water availability even prior to the problems caused by the mechanicus agriculture upon vigilus was extremely minimal in fact the planet's food production came from obscure sources such as Vermin abattoirs and Subterranean nutrivats and these unpleasantly recycled fat-rich runoffs and nutrient-rich sweats were collected as they dripped from the greats of the planet's overpopulated manufactorum Habs there are of course other sources which we'll get into later but water and its source became a powerful status symbol upon vigilus directly indicative of wealth and position to nobody's surprise the working population would drink water that was often dirty foul-tasting yellowish but affordable and not completely toxic the upper classes of Citizen drank Crystal Clear Aqua glaciers mined from The Polar continent of Calyx Bane the faithful of the ministorm in hyperia hivespore drank recycled water purified with holy oils Aqua Sanctus the adeptus mechanicus drank the aqua meteoris that they mined from Frozen asteroids so as a complex situation in many ways for a pretty basic but essential planetary resource over the decades and indeed centuries vigilus had become a steadily more complex political situation to the point that it now hosted several distinct power bases or all determined to pursue their own agendas no matter the cost there was the mechanicus the ecclesiarchy which included the sororitas and their own guard Force the more standard forces of the Imperial Guard as well and then many of their number were also aligned with the mini storm forces that had proven successful in steadily permeating through into regiment but overall this caused tension among the factions there was significant squabbling over important issues and resources and then of course there was the standard aristocracy and Nobles which threw all their requests into the mix all of this though did dissipate when the disaster of the rift bore down upon the world and its greatest significance became apparent or at least for a short period of time when the skies split around vigilus many feared the planet would be consumed forever but instead it held the sikatrix maledictum at Bay was it Faith the emperor's will a fluke of quantum entanglement or some other phenomena that kept this Rift passage open none could point to any concrete conclusions but it was immediately targeted by Covetous eyes who said in motion their diabolical plans to secure it for themselves drakari raids Struck from the web way eldari sent emissaries to warn of a greater enemy yet to come and upon vigilous strict new laws were imposed making it forbidden to look at the night sky curfew imposed to ensure all citizens remain indoors by night or face of flogging as is often the case the heavy-handed but albeit necessary imposition of these new rules caused many within the population to seek out Cults and groups who oppose such restrictions or were curious about the arrival of this strange new Celestial phenomenon the warp Rift of the sikatrix maledictum scarred the sky above vigilus and as I noted earlier the first enemy that the citizens of vigilus found themselves battling were not to be outside forces of the zenos or heretic like many planets consumed by the malevolent ethereal forces that transition across the immaterial to the material plane the people of vigilus found themselves suffering continually upsetting and inescapable nightmares they suffered sleep deprivation shortened tempers that saw workers escalate everyday disagreements into physical confrontations ever more every day and these disagreements could eventually be qualified as turning into broader skirmishes brutal random beatings in Alleyways embittered disillusioned industrial workers refusing them to work and vocally protesting against the increasingly strict lockdowns that were being imposed upon them such Disobedience even began to present itself in the form of more planned structured uprisings even astonishingly provocative acts of assassination in the upper spiers vigilous as a planet had become so precarious overnight that it looked set to fall without a single traitor even having set foot upon the world foreign [Music] was a massive world and over the Millennia opponent had been established multiple artificial continent scale cities known as Hive sprawls now these sprawls will contain upward growth much like a hive City but they also expand outward horizontally they're generally much larger than a typical more vertically styled house City and could contain many times more the average population so instead of 1 to 10 billion a sprawl could see anything like 10 to 30 billion citizens although obviously this can vary greatly depending on who controls such a city its layout design and overall purpose the worlds which contain these continent-sized Hive spores are the first steps to seeing a world become an Accu monopolist such as you see on terror itself these are worlds where the cities have grown so vast and linked together that they now effectively cover the entire surface of a planet and this actually had begun to be discussed as an option for vigilous they were looking to their future they were thinking about potential cities linking its some point but on Vigil is two of the biggest and most notable Hive sprawls were known as hyperia and mega Borealis piperia being the capital with its ministorum and Governor's palaces the ecclesi occupant vigilus had become a dominating power and had in effect its own city-state within hyperia including its own military force with the inclusion of suratas the Vigilant guard and the tempestus mega Borealis was the continent ceded to the mechanicus in the ancient history of vigilus who then proceeded to basically strip mine the territory they controlled including boring immense cavities out of the crust of the planet itself to create so-called bore hives these are effectively Hive City icebergs they still are impressive from above but 10 times as much below the surface and it was in the deepest depths of the mega Borealis where they discovered and began to mine the veins of Blackstone that material which the Imperium has quite quickly discovered to be extremely critical for potentially future control of the Galaxy unfortunately others including the necron are now chaos are also well aware of this material the necron of course being beware of it for Millennia millions of years in the darkest zones that were off limits to all but the most trusted members of the mechanicus serviters whose minds are continually wiped operating near pitch conditions harvesting this precious Blackstone the mineral is then stockpiled at the same level and heavily guarded its value is beyond estimation in the realm of generally traded materials of the Imperium and we interestingly also do have information on the drills used by the mechanicus to create these vast borehole mining operations that would later be backfilled as Hive cities the drill engines were several miles in diameter and so huge they had to be transported to vigilus the seismic activity of them on the surface was so significant that volcanic eruptions and earthquakes became commonplace and once the spiers were built up from the bore hives they were so tall that some of the uppermost levels even pierce the atmosphere meshing with space docks where all barges and Manufacturing ships were moored the mechanicus are long known also for their clever usage of a planet's own energy to power their cities there have been many examples of them using the very liquid rock the geothermal elements even building their structures in or around these extremely hazardous conditions using force fields to withstand the immense heat and pressures they equally use such raw power to then fuel their factorum and research facilities and such was the case with the Stovall on vigilus deliberately this was an area constructed over fault lines of the planet's crossed its volcanic generators harnessing the energy created by the continent's continual eruptions and the technology to do so is believed to have been based on an STC pattern this created a pleasing feedback and limitation of net energy loss during their drilling operations within the mega Borealis because each seismic event that they triggered actually fueled their power harvesting operations at Stovall at this location once its immense capacitors and Generator was satisfied any Excess power produced was then rooted to Mega Borealis first and if its needs had already been met this could then be shunted on to other Hive cities in order of priority I.E who could bid the highest for extra power which the other Hive cities almost always needed and unsurprisingly it was generally sucked up by the aristocracy sometimes industrial concerns and another Masterwork of the mechanicus on vigilus was the so-called omniscion hoist essentially this was the means by which they were transporting materials from the surface up into orbit through Mega Borealis via these immense spiers apparently this was made possible by a complex system of microfiber carbon chains and duraplace capillaries partially telescopic and modular these were created on an industrial scale by the workshops of the mega Borealis primary Hive hauled into the Stratosphere by a succession of low orbit tugs mortwald was the city where consumables primarily foodstuffs were produced they were able to grow what were designated as hyperflora an extremely Hardy form of cacti and other succulent and these were clearly not ordinary cactiers we understand them to be though they were said to be large enough to create entire forests and which contributed an oxygenating effect to the planet for a period of time at least but this was eventually overridden by the massive amounts of pollution so suffice to say whatever variation of bizarre cacti exists here on vigilus it's nothing that we would recognize or be familiar with both in the ability to provide food production and oxygenation nor to grow to such a scale that they could be described as forests because of its Noble aristocracy and Leadership the most wealthy and Powerful here lived in massive biodomes which were essentially self-contained Paradise worlds completely alien to the heavy pollution toxic wastes which existed outside they had beautiful lakes waterfalls sculptures which punctuated Lush verdant Gardens and Viridian forests everything that one would associate with outstanding natural beauty was here in stark contrast to the outside of the domes so when war came to vigilus to No Surprise the domes suddenly became heavily reinforced with massive Firepower surrounding them including outside of mort World which had built up its bastions and trench lines the almost entire eastern border of the hivespore became a defensive line most interestingly and bizarre is a specific detail about mortwald that within the southern region of the hive small were their so-called Vitae docks here the rich and Powerful could engage with extremely unusual powerful Rejuvenation techniques some merely stripping years off an individual not just cosmetically but quite literally rejuvenating them but we know that in the past for example the Imperium had discovered that some alien species could be crushed and rendered down into a potion that extended more mortal life but this had been something that was outlawed and it was already exploited so viciously that that race was now believed to be extinct but here in mortuald they had processes to achieve much the same result some of which were really quite extreme and boarded something more likely to be seen put into practice by drakari for it is said that within the bioscient flesh plants they were capable of detaching the heads of the rich and wealthy to then transfer them and suture them upon collected younger bodies such outlandish and extremely complex procedures were apparently not beyond the bio Magi of mortwold although just where they acquired these new bodies for the privilege to be transferred onto is perhaps best left to the imagination but it should be noted that individuals simply going missing within a hive city is a daily occurrence this is though a great singular example of how ordinary humans look to extend their lifespan in a Galaxy which is very often measured in many centuries if not Millennia far outside an ordinary human lifespan especially in the conditions of m41 now we said earlier that the source of water for Untold billions upon vigilus was of critical importance and this is where otec Hive Spore comes into play for it contained five vast reservoirs which to No Surprise became a desirable asset for all concern during the first phase of the vigilous war struggle the reservoirs were in fact so vast that they more resembled landlocked Seas they gathered water from deep under the planet's crossed via an elaborate system of pumps capillary Banks and pipe ways and were contributed to from specifically designed precipitation sites for most of the water needed by The Hive cities was pumped through pipelines which also contained pipes to return polluted water industrial runoff and reclaimed biomass which was able to then be cycled and processed into potable fluids and this is a good example of an imperial World which is actually moderately self-sustaining which can be somewhat uncommon with many Imperial Hive worlds requiring off-world supply for Key Resources even for the absolute Basics like water and food many Hive cities in their planets are so Barren and contaminated that cell production is now near to Impossible but most Hive worlds will at least have entire districts dedicated to recycling and reducing the wastage of such critical Necessities they also will generally produce something of value which can be traded off within the general structure of the Imperium and the administratum of course any water sent between Hive cities was mainly for the lower populace because water and specifically the type of water drank on vigilus was as we said a key indicator of wealth and Status so any of the far purer water produced from otec was transported via land train Convoy and a heavily armed guard and by that we mean militarum hellhounds so the value of the cargo is considered very seriously High Sport otek also held value in its data hives which was said to still retain data from pre-impural settlement the mechanicus greatly of course desired access to this because they believed them to likely contain dense Priceless troves of data and the governors of otech hivesport understood this all too well these data stacks these data hives were obviously used for bargaining among the Council on vigilus even when some access was granted the mechanicus priests were never allowed to access these archives unaccompanied but it's also suspected that the tech priest possibly discovered a way to remotely access the data without permission knowing the mechanicus that sounds extremely likely continuing on with the Water Theme calyx Bane was one of the last areas of naturally occurring water on vigilus it was a source for the highest grade of pure water on the world known as Aqua glaciers and huge lies cut engines would slice off huge slabs of ice from these Glacier fronts and the giant monoliths of ice were then transported to the aristocracy of mortuald hyperia any areas that could afford them in the process though of extraction the mechanicus also gained access deep below this glacial ice to valuable minerals and ore the nature of the terrain and its deep crevasses that appeared over time were likely a result of the shifting ice sheets creating a very high risk environment not to mention the logistical challenges of the temperature conditions in the apex predators which proud the region were as stealthy as they were violent hauler-sized ice mantis was seen frequently dragging icework as a way to be devoured in their layers and the near invisible white worm was a horror that sought out any source of Heat usually humanoid and burrowed through into their flesh for any too slow or preoccupied to evade them more troubling though was the disappearances of workers especially during blizzard conditions the Nerf facial Imperial sources existed to Define their nature rumors abounded and the fact that so many glacial miners went missing was enough to cause grave productivity concerns in the upper echelons of the mining clades but I'll cut to the chase for you it was the Jakari dontoria Hive Spore largest of all the inhabited areas are vigilus was an immensely overpopulated Hive City it had passed the administratum recommended levels of population density Millennia previous and so consequently when War erupted the conditions of the populace and their reactions were predictably panicked and chaotic the claustrophobic narrow nature of the structures within dontoria steadily condensed over centuries meaning that combat within the city was extremely difficult it did not require you to go many levels below the upper structures before you were immersed Into Darkness power failures were very common and its Hab areas are steeped in pollution their outer Wars often blackened flaking many Interiors marked by sickly yellow staining just from the extremely low air quality and other chemical pollutants which filtered down through the structures hacking coughs expectorant splutters were common within the city and the lands of maisha's Delta smoke field and the great choke were swathed in a dense blanket of vile pollution that damaged the lungs of those without respirators it's only local water source was polluted to the point that no life could exist within it and it sickened any who dared to drink from it but it didn't stop of course floating Shanty towns being built right upon it the drakari also known to have raided The Hive Spore more than once taking a ritual of captives a way to meet their unspeakable extended lives of pain and suffering similarly the labyrinthine lower levels of the sprawl are very easy to remain concealed for the darker and the more Insidious enemies of humanity that in their contamination seep out from the darkest corners of the hive but of course it wasn't the darkest place on vigilus that would be reserved for dirk Den for this was the most squalid and neglected sprawl of vigilus it was the small effectively shanty town that formed of a ramshackle rudimentary City Spore it had become home for those who had nowhere else to live the Council of vigilus had completely disregarded it as a legitimate City spool but duckdin's most notable structure was its half finished skeleton of a hive City that although teeming with life was not sealed and self-contained like Hive cities are usually this is because its construction was never finished but what happened or why those who designed it disappeared is not recorded by imperial history but it appears for whatever reason they began to instead build downwards into the naturally occurring Subterranean networks beneath but one structure that would become critical during the problems of vigilus were its massive Fort Wars now many of these huge fort Wars had been established and linked the live sport despite its low status dirkton was no exception and so this structure takes the form of a double row of crenellated defenses that ran to the distant Horizon it featured a rock Crete macro Highway running between the hive sprawls and these links between them meant that they were able to facilitate trade and Transit and these obviously were very resource hungry to construct both in materials and labor but it was deemed necessary to mitigate continual losses in export convoys at the time but in one fairly rare socially constructive move it had been hoped by the Council of vigilus that by allowing the faithful of hyperia to flood along the highway to durkton it could improve both their discipline and social order as well as the population's productivity the theory was that eventually there could come a day when they might then be able to merge and construct those two cities into a single high sport that would Empower hyperia all the more but alas this optimistic plan didn't not play out and dirked improved only to be a depressing continual drain on resources of course if there is one inevitably sustaining truth to life in the galaxy of m41 it's that things can always and often will get far worse before they get better and so it would be for vigilus with the arrival of not one but two xenos assaults given the state of internal planetary political tensions power struggles even covert sabotage upon one another when the true enemies of humanity appeared the result was a predictably disorganized poorly coordinated defensive response orc spacecraft broke from the rift and poured into the vigilous system the disruption of the rift prevented any early warnings from psychers and the sheer volume and surprise of the emerging Fleet smashed through the outer system defenses with the green skin ships slamming with no apparent pattern as is typical with Orcs into the way Sands between the hive sprawls of vigilus such Landings always take massive casualties but this is no matter really for Orcs as the survivors are protected from immediate Imperial adults by dome-like force fields the wreckage easily converted swiftly into makeshift scrap towns that soon became the launch pads for the Orcs to Assault The Hive sprawl cities however due to the powerful defense systems and defensive lines of the hive sprawls on vigilus the Orcs learned this was for the time being not particularly effective and so they resorted to attacking the land convoys and armored patrols that traveled the wastes and desert between Hive cities things seemed surprisingly stable despite the world having been assaulted by this old enemy of humanity but because the increasing warp disturbances the sci Fields used by The Imperials suddenly began to fail and with the Orcs constantly daring each other to see who had the nerve to test the umi's defense it was noticed very quickly by the Orcs that some of the shields were down they attacked in typically orky fashion by throwing literally everything they had at The Hive cities and this was unfortunately a colossal Battle Force the mechanicus militarism sororitas were fighting all too suddenly for the very survival of vigilus and the zenos were upon them every single bunker Street and trench line had to be paid for in blood and the Imperial currency of human lives so the situation was looking quite quickly pretty bad but apparently not bad enough for this is where a cult of the most abhorrent zenos would erupt seizing upon the circumstance of massive disruption and using it to that Advantage the gene steel occult known as the Pauper princes who originated from the world of chances Veil this was a slum Imperial World infested with Gene steel occultists some of whom had apparently at a time prior managed to reach vigilus and had steadily reached out with Insidious tendrils into the population growing their brood cycle after cycle heading the cult was its patriarch Grand sire worm and they now saw the ideal opportunity to break out into the open as I noted earlier tyraniding chaos infestations are operate fairly similarly by initially reaching out into a population very very carefully tentatively not creating too many ripples in the water securing trusted members who know how to stay out of the sights and records of officials growing their numbers cautiously over many many years and only when they see a sign of weakness a rare opportunity to seize power do they take the chance of assaulting in plain sight and begin targeting key positions and infrastructure as part of a broader plan to take control of a world not to mention of course both will very often infiltrate and install people who are sympathetic to their cause in positions of power within a hive world in the case of vigilus however there was another reason an opportunity for the gene sealer cultists to break out into open combat any cult that embeds itself upon an imperial planet is setting itself up to play a very long game a patient game of waiting so when suddenly a gigantic horde Of Orcs begins barreling straight into a hive City upon a world that a cult may have spent decades carefully inserting itself into positions that it will hope to usurp and seize power and control over all of that careful subterfuge is for naught if a bunch of stomping romping Orcs starts smashing it all to pieces and burning down their best laid plans overnight so it would be very much an occult's interest to take that opportunity to seize control of Imperial assets and simultaneously deal with the green Menace deluging The Hive spools before all of their efforts are basically made redundant they had remained masterfully undetected within the hive spall of Dirk Den a neglected City compared to others upon vigilous its lack of resources and development had left it ripe as well for abuse by the cult who were heavily embedded here and largely outnumbered loyalists they'd even gained access to the mechanica's data scripts and consequently shut down the city's Bastian force fields the Orcs responded and plowed toward the wide open sprawl of dirkton Cult agents had carefully conspired to place guard forces on the outer perimeter's defensive lines with reassurances that this was only a temporary measure while the Bastion shielding was being brought back online this did not take place instead the cultists seized and overpowered whatever military forces remained within the city Hive walls and raised the shields leaving the loyalist guards facing down an awkward outnumbering them at least three to one a brutal Slaughter ensued and as panic-stricken Citizens fled the city which was now a very clearly collapsing to non-imperial control cultists embedded themselves within this tide of uncorrupted panic-stricken refugees who fled across the immense fortwar connecting dirkton to the hyperior high sprawl the journey would take them many days the cultists also struck otec Hive sprawl to the west of hyperia and here the operation was met with far stronger resistance but they were able to take control of enough resources in the city that they contaminated the drinking water of billions with their Insidious genetic taint as was perhaps to have been expected the less than efficient aquilarian Council of vigilus had initially felt confident in their defenses with Fair reason but now with disorder and collapse occurring all across the world not to mention reports of two major Hive spores facing disruption from within things seemed to be quickly spiraling broken and gobbled messages were detailing Subterranean uprisings that were at first attributed to disruptive Rebels criminal elements and opportunists things that the council barely paid attention to initially because such matters were the jurisdiction of the local arbitis or stationed melaton already withstanding orders to crush any signs of rebellion or Resurrection the council focused on the broader political strikes of the situation industrial War output and so on but these other reports continued to build violent uprisings incidents where official forces were destroyed or simply not heard from again the picture was building of something more significant and far more troubling occurring but the council was still not focused enough on the details that lay within these reports they certainly were not well versed enough in xenos to understand the strange curled spiny icon that was now being visibly displayed upon Wars banners and arches of Imperial architecture nor were they conscientious enough to study very carefully the specifically worded reports and details that mentioned sightings of four armed mutants they had more important matters to focus on Industrial output maintaining critical resources and of course Shoring up their own interests within the hive cities that they themselves resided in the ministerum council members for example were to ensure that the several tests and ever faithful Vigilant God stayed close to their power center of saints Haven in hyperia despite the fact that they had in their hands reports which demonstrated the nearest zenos threat were hundreds of miles away breaking upon the walls of other Hive sprawls it's kind of self-serving ignorance is quite typical for Imperial worlds and is another example of the many problems facing the Imperium Noble politicians who gained their seats of Power by hereditary systems riches or control of critical planetary resources but who actually have little if any experience dealing with anything other than the day-to-day human problems of quelling disquiet among the unwashed masses so when suddenly an Insidious alien threat appears upon a world they trust in the forces that they always have to put down the problem in standard fashion whilst expending minimal risk and cost to themselves and their peers and it's why on so many worlds other than those which are strictly run by the more senior control of the Imperium are often in a very very bad situation before any help arrives and can salvage what's left so here on vigilus it was quite typical because ANS is so often the case the leadership were very inexperienced we're thinking primarily about retaining forces to look after themselves rather than the broader strategic situation for the entire planet consequently the concept of counter-attacks when appropriate or other strategic values were just not requested because the leadership prioritized their own safety and out of their guilds families far more than say the slum dirkton hivespore for which they likely cared little if it survived or fell one way or the other it was entirely an Expendable sight for the elites though any thought was truly retaining the maximum amount of Firepower for their own self-preservation this of course was partially due to the divided and also largely self-serving nature of the council as it had existed prior to the current state of affairs and whilst they were now at face value you working in a spirit of cooperation and serious discussions about allowing forces to defend should x y and Zed's situation take place they certainly were not in good faith thinking about the bigger picture of vigilous beyond their own walls of their hive cities and certainly not within the wider picture of the Imperium and The nakmund Gauntlet of course though there were people who fully understood its significance and they were certainly not the type of Imperial officials one would want to cross by having them see the absolute shambles of a defense that was currently unfolding on vigilus by now multiple estadi's forces were on route to vigilus but it would take them roughly a year to actually arrive and in that time the sororitas and the planets guard and militia forces were barely able to hold on standing against the widespread disruption Of Orcs who continually battered the perimeters of the various Hive sprawl the first Space Marines to make Planet fall and vigilous were the iron hands and their successor chapter Brazen claws this was of course intimidating enough for the leadership of vigilus but there was another Force sent by Gilman himself and they would arrive soon after this initial support Force whose primary goal was to drive back and just hold the line against the Orcs so when these initial Estates forces translated into real space they quickly saw only a few orc ships in the system between themselves and vigilus it didn't seem too serious of a situation but this was due to the fact that the Orcs had presumed that they were able to quickly control the planet and so had slammed their ships into its surface but it then found that in actuality the humans bastion-class force fields were quite difficult to breach and their momentum was interrupted their battles had stalled and it turned out to be no bad thing for the inept leaders of vigilus when the Estates began to deploy to the surface of the world however they discovered quite quickly there was more going on here than they had been led to believe and the Imperials upon vigilus had been fighting a more complex situation although fighting is perhaps pretty loose term and the Imperials upon the world had been dealing with a much more complex situation Surat has patrols which strayed into areas of Hive cities controlled by the gene steel occult were regularly ambushed in very intense firefights the studies discovered saturation levels of tank traps barbed wire that was strewn with the Grim unmoved corpses of those who were unable to be saved and retrieved militarum armor had fared no better and where the burned out remains of tanks and apcs were absent in their place with sinkholes filled with armor apparently having collapsed into Subterranean corridors presumably deliberately hollowed out as a means of blocking and trapping armored columns The Hive spools that they had entered into were a disastrous mess vigilus's air support was also focusing on the movements of the green skin tribes primarily confining them where necessary with punitive strafing runs Amalia studies were taking initial reads of the situation on the ground the Orcs were very obviously highly excited by the prospect of some new ads to smash and so we're quickly headed directly for the armored superhuman Warriors but where the incredibly obvious orc speedboy's racing across the race towards newly deployed astartes could be seen from many miles away their huge dust clouds kicked up by their machines this very obviously enabled the vigilous guard to perform the strafing runs on them with their Valkyrie before they even came near to the cities themselves it also enabled the Defenders plenty of time to prepare and plan their artillery strikes and other defensive positions the cultists though were very different they had embedded themselves within the cities and were much more problem automatic it was becoming quickly apparent to the estadi's support force that the vigilous command structure had effectively collapsed almost from the outset overwhelmed by having to deal with two different xenos threats which required two completely different strategies to deal with things had not been going any better within the continent scale Hive spall of the mega Borealis and the mechanicus once the Orcs had breached the perimeter of the hive Spore for reasons that can only be guessed at the Lord of Hive scleros Tech priest Dominus epluvius 14 froze up in a very bizarre Rarity for a member of the mechanicus it appears his mental feedback loop robbed skitarian mechanicus troops of any directions other than initiative-based Squad level commands at the worst possible time now was this due to the rift itself or had he been affected in some other way perhaps even some infiltration by Gene Steeler cultists either way the situation became severe very quickly and even the Imperial Knights and Titans were not contributing to the defense of the mega Borealis worse still was that quickly the unfolding threats risked losing control of the mega borealis's borehive of scalaris which was critical to the vast sea of manufacturem as it had been built atop of a thermal stack that yielded endless geothermic power and was the key to power in the sprawl as with the other areas of the planet the gene steel occultists of Mega Borealis rose up and then the defenses really did collapse all the design defense plans and strategies were at this point effectively rendered obsolete and in what they hoped would be a killing blow the gene sect of the rising worm a sub-faction of the Paw princess had captured one of the most terrifying of Imperial weapons of Vortex missile They carried it deep into the hive City that they accessed using torn up Biometrics of slain authority figures to access the necessary checkpoints The Vortex missile was detonated beneath the slumbering warlord Titan Dominus Rex its explosion was so potent that it sent off a string of detonations that destroyed not only the wrecks but also triggered a chain reaction that spread to all the Titans alongside it so I think it'd be fair to say that the cult had caused a truly catastrophic situation within the mega Borealis there was little to be salvaged but one Arch magos caldrike took control of the situation relieving a pluvius 14 of command who was then placed in Crow storage the mechanicus was unable to consolidate what remained of their defensive forces with the iron hands astartes able to then mitigate further damage although to be further damage inflicted upon the hive support of the mechanicus was already extremely severe meanwhile within Don Toria hivespore they would face one of the worst situations yet seen upon vigilus an old transport arrived to one of its Landing ports it had been refusing any requests for landing access codes and was obviously being fired upon as it came in but it seemed to have been shielded from the fire being laid down upon it by Security forces and so when its hatch is clunked open the true horror of its payload was revealed stumbling out from the heavily worn ruined transport came a crowd of distended bloated mutants the transmission tools of nurgal the gallopox infected their assault was easily put down but unfortunately the same could not be sent for What followed a Detachment of death guard their distended leaking bodies and horned misshapen armor the sight of them alone was enough to make many wretch on site they quickly though descended away from the firefight into the darkened lower levels of dontoria contact was lost and none were Keen to pursue them for the brave souls who did however they were never heard from again very soon after a fireball coming Purge of the lower levels covering a radius of several miles from their last known position was apparently enough to consider the matter closed to the local Imperials in the council which seems wildly poor judgment and so inevitably when a plague mysteriously began to spread through the populace it was clear that the matter was indeed not concluded now disease was something already greatly feared in dontoria its claustrophobic environment of the city meant that previous pandemics had taken a very severe mental and physical toll on the already weak population so when reports of a supernatural plague began to appear the disease that melded flesh with metal to form hideous blends of man Machining demonic Anatomy parodies of human form you might say for the citizenry it was very much time to panic only the Rogue Trader delarik de languil operating out of litmus's highest spire on her quest to chart the knackman gauntlet recognize the disease for what it was the gala pox she was recorded as saying quote the magnitude of this infection cannot be underestimated this is no natural plague no malady that the human body can fight and overcome this is the galapox it is fully capable of causing flesh to run like Wax to swell and burst even to blend with augmatics War gear and those machineries close at the hand whilst the sufferer sleeps the resultant hybrids are as tough as odd Grins and singly focused on bringing their blight to as many uninfected as they can find in the name of the Astra cartographica I implore you quarantine duntoya effective immediately or lose your planet to an enemy you cannot fight of course her advice was roundly ignored and the plague spread like wildfire which created further problems as then the citizenry were taking matters into their own hands burning the infected wherever they were found bands of mutants and nightmarish hulking terrorists stalked the streets controlling their own territory elsewhere the streets thronged with giant Vermin that sometimes appeared to be more like living dead creatures their forms Twisted Beyond biological limits Street gutters were thick with fat horrible trans Lucent sludge grubs ice Stinger swarms flitted through the skies in search of fresh prey to smother and sting into a swollen blind blistering mass of oozing pus nergal had granted His blessings upon danturia and only Rogue Trader languille seemed to fully appreciate what they were facing she again requested extensive quarantine measures of the aquilarian council but privately she feared it was already too late the first Space Marines who had arrived upon vigilus were small but potent strike forces who engaged in battle within seconds of Planet 4. the Brazen claws mercilessly set about slaughtering Orcs as if it were just another day the iron hands entered the mega Borealis of the adeptus mechanicus to help slow the collapse there and then the Space Wolves were also present they had concentrated their attacks upon otec Hive sprawl for they had received word of a xenos infestation there that would test their hunting skills what had become quickly clear for the Estates was that any Communications with the plan monetary Council proved frustrating and counter-intuitive the leaders of the planet seemed both ignorant and arrogant in the extreme and with their limited numbers none of the Space Marines sent representatives to address that situation spending hours in debate with bureaucrats was not useful nor appealing so they simply relied upon communicating with chapter Brothers by their own com systems it was enough to keep them apprised of the broad tactical situation what had been largely unseen by the council upon vigilus was that the worlds of the system itself appeared to be suffering attacks by the forces of chaos and so Librarians of the assadi strike forces had sent psychic missives to their chapter Masters hoping for more reinforcement in the dead of night manaeus khalgar of the ultramarines was visited by a vision of Chief librarian Tigers he understood that of course this was no mere Vision but tigurias reaching out to him in his astral form with a message of great importance the Primark himself had ordered that vigilus could not be allowed to fall cowgar quickly secured a powerful force of every astarty's asset he could requisition chapter Masters and Navigators were briefed and began the journey to the vigilous system surrounded by his finest librarian disciples in the depths of the Fortress of Hera the chief librarian of the ultramarines tigarius guided the fleet Through The Madness of Imperium nihilus it cost several epistolaries who died clawing at their own eyes but without their efforts many ships would have been lost in their arrival badly delayed the ultramarines Armada had not reached vigilous without its own losses several ships had been lost on Route including All Aboard they set out under their subwarp engines now for vigilus any remnants of the orc flotilla who existed in the vicinity were calmly obliterated cowgirl issued orders to their studies already on the surface not to inform the local authorities of his approach and arrival he did not wish to become embroiled in protocol and politicking the estadi's force was not there to follow diplomatic procedures they had come to restore order to vigilus tight formations of drop pods smashed down to the surface and as started to quickly meshed their efforts with the beleaguered local forces near instantaneously restoring their hope morale and determination with their presence alone the arrival of an astades to any planet that is under zenos assault brings a huge benefit for the fighters of that world who as we have seen regularly have to contend with ignorant egomaniac or politicians in stark contrast to the Space Marines who upon arrival within the first few minutes will be issuing direct orders requisitioning ordinance for fire emissions and reinforcing defensive positions for Guardsmen it makes a huge difference to the effectiveness and willing sacrifices to be made by ordinary humans such as are often exhausted in every respect having fought a trudging uphill war on multiple fronts unfortunately for the aquilarian council this meant that where the iron hands and Brazen claws had not even bothered you send a representative to liaise with them as they had quickly realized this to be both a waste of time and tedious the same could not be said for Marne as khalgar ultramarines whilst Warriors of Legend they also follow the teachings of their Primark and are generally speaking mastered diplomats and strategists cowgar being one of the longest serving and most experienced examples in his former role as the chapter master and ultimate Authority in Ultramar what would he make of this despotic Council of self-serving bureaucrats very obviously not much when calgar flung open the doors to the lavish almost obscenely adorned debating Hall of the council he could immediately see the all too typical rot and Corruption of human self-interest in fact astonishingly as soon as the initial diplomatic niceties were dealt with the council actually slid back into argument sniping and finger-pointing among themselves almost disregarding khalgar's presence entirely sure enough as an enraged cowgar ordered many of the council immediately removed as they were being dragged out of their seats the truth was laid plain several of the council were exposed to have purplish knobbled skin under their luxurious garments concealed by skin Hue grease paint but undeniably alien with the truth revealed cultists rushed forth with knives drawn an inevitable scene played out the concussive force of bolters echoed to a deafening Roar within the chamber so much so that glass shattered many council members Dove under tables cultists were executed council members bound lashed and exiled cowgar had no faith nor patience for the remaining bureaucrats to be useful given the gravity of the situation he assumed command of vigilus although carefully vetted advisors remained from the former aqualarian Council who were clearly disciplined loyal and understood the planet in its hive sprawls thus the vigilous Senate was formed one of its first actions was to reorder its command structure not a small matter but with the infestations they clearly had taken hold it was extremely necessary for cowgirl the first step to victory was accurate knowledge of just what was happening where and far clearer communication the newly approved members of the vigilous Senate found it far easier to speak with someone as objective and experienced as Lord mccrack in stuck contrast to their former Masters who made a habit of continually shutting down key information speaking over one another and vicious Petty sniping ensuring the Senate and command structure of vigilus remained intact was critical and so khalgar installed a new security force of ultramarines titled the extremist guard they proved their worth almost immediately in shrugging off an eldari attack that could have crippled the entire vigilous command structure it was revealed that in fact the eldari of Crawford simhan had Divine vigilance as a world of Paramount importance in their eternal battle against the great enemy thus they had sent some of the fiercest Clan Warriors to tip the scales of Fate against the chaos Uprising that was gathering Pace on the planet but what could have been potential allies resulted in a fierce battle with the Elder ultimately forced to flee how God turned to the troubling situation of dontoria until now this had surprisingly been largely ignored with the Defenders generally focused on the far more visible orc assaults and cultist uprisings khalgar saw things differently Rogue Trader languille was spoken of as having been one of the few voices who had warned of the need to address what was occurring within Don Toria cowgirl immediately summoned her to hear what she had to say in considerable contrast to the former council's glitch or decision-making process it took barely minutes of her testimony for the newly appointed Lords of the Senate to reach and enact a decision the chapter Master of the necropolis Hawks would lead the fight against the gallopox the Crimson fists would connect with the iron hands to establish an intensively strict Cordon in an attempt to contain the plague and as the necropolis Hawks entered the area which was ground zero for the outbreak of contagion they soon discovered the situation was far from being low priority shambolic lumbering mutants with skulls and distended bodies melded with steel lurched from Alleyways and choke points Vermin left from Windows to stabbed armor joints with proboscis and fall limb and lumbering fleshawks belched bizarre Flames from their mouths a close confines the powerful Claws and improvised weapons of these Monsters made them lethal opponents but with bolt and plasma they were caught in an Exterminating Crossfire in areas were steadily cleared and marked as such the Crimson fists drew the cord and tight using land Raider redeemers and Flames spewing hellhounds of the god Promethean pipelines were opened up so that by now a quite literal fire war was established around the infected Zone the net had been cast and now for khalgar and his Senate the only choice left was to understand they're about to consign hundreds of thousands of civilians to a hideous death but if it meant saving billions such prices are deemed acceptable for the Imperium as promethium fires blazed around dontoria the iron hand enforcing the quarantine astonishingly allowed frustration and offense to impede their previous efficiency which was now nothing more than sheer brutality the populace with such limited options opted to Brave fire and Corruption rather than go face to face with merciless Estates many fled iron hands kill teams attempted to destroy the escapees but then found themselves entangled and confronted with death guard among the darker and despairing depths of dontoria it was not a textbook example in controlling such a site of contamination but it would be true to say that the previously dire situation had appeared to be brought largely under control Rogue Trader languille's role was still far from complete she had been told by her psychus that before the firewall was completed a freighter had left containing the plague that saw flesh blended with the machine the ship was headed for the warp its destination Terror her only hope was to leave immediately and attempt to intercept the freighter before it reached the system's mandible point but only her unarmed Corvette Cruiser was fast enough to reach them in an example of both the benefits and limitations of warp travel within 60 hours and Grill had cited a green gray dot on their monitors it was the freighter illustrious cargo taking a handful of her finest agents in a transition pod they boarded The Vessel the nightmares that were found inside remain only in sealed documents seen by khalgar and Rogue Trader languille but she alone would return to vigilus and did not speak to it other than posting her action debrief with khalgar what is known is that the illustrious cargo was destroyed before it could translate into the warp the energy signature of the explosion indicating that its engine decks had been sabotaged from the inside but it was then that they discovered an extremely disturbing communication from the same dontorian dock that several other vessels had departed a day earlier than the illustrious cargo using the same idents and marked with the same destination for all her efforts the gallopox infection was slowly crossing the nachmann gauntlet towards the stars of Terror the only obvious conclusion was that they must be located and stopped at any cost the Orcs meanwhile were being awk like hence running wild all across the planet and they were bloody loving it High Velocity High violence High wa in the mech towns teeth was changing faster than a thirsty knob with a big Gob or so you might say but there was a lot of trading and upgrading going on to satisfy the mob's insatiable need for faster bikes and shootier guns one thing you could say for the Orcs they certainly had more presence of mind to them than the former Council of vigilus and were on a day-to-day basis bashing anything they could as odd as they could meanwhile the troubling absence of the definitely previously reported death guard who had been largely ignored and disappeared into the depths of dontoria hivespore and just to note if it were me personally probably should have been looked into a little sooner was becoming more concerning one of the unmentioned other Hive sprawl so far was of course mortwold out to the far west of dontoria and on the east side of Mega Borealis it was the produce of most of the planet's food and Medicine which with the Orcs disrupting shipments and cultists also Rising had become critically problematic thankfully mortal did not lack for experienced soldiery it had been steadily reinforced over many years by regiment including the likes of Loca Prime Sandman of Australians and dispossessed Canadian shock troops for such experienced soldiers they would face down the awk Menace Hive Shields or no for once you've stood to defend Acadian gate there's little else you wouldn't be willing to face after in fact in many ways facing down a fairly traditional ground-pounding engagement against an enemy whose most vicious weapons are generally projectile weapons melee implements and things with a lot of teeth it's actually quite preferable for some perhaps even leisurely compared to facing down the hellish enemies of chaos and the warp so no matter what was thrown at the Defenders of mortworld they held the line and so by the time of Imperial reinforcements in the form of the mighty astartes of the Imperial Fists who came bounding out of their drop ships in bright gold and yellow ceramite and immediately charged forth to reinforce the defensive lines the Guardsmen who had faced for many months the unrelenting Rage of the Orcs or the alien subterfuge of Ambush and infiltration of cultists was so emboldened by the arrival of The Emperor's Angels they instantly became unafraid of any enemy their souls burning with righteous Zeal for they knew the unbreakable support of the Imperial fists now at their side it meant they would hold the line and in their own minds had already won expectedly not only did the Imperial fists Implement an extremely effective defensive plan as well as reinforcing the already solidly primed defenses of mortuard they also oversaw the deployment and arrival of many Imperial night houses including wandering freeblades mortuald had turned from being ignored by the previously ineffective Council to now looking like an unbreakable defensive Bastion and one of the strongest Hive spores on vigilus however for the nights that had arrived from the nearby world of their Noble Pilots continued insistence to lead an extremely aggressive Vanguard assault when it were clear that for now simply reinforcing their defensive positions was all that was necessary Rey's suspicion among the Imperial fists especially when coupled with the fact that many had seemingly obscured their traditional Insignia the senior precepts of the Riva Titan horizium's Bane also reminded them that he wished for nothing more than to unleash his warhound manipul the Hyperion hounds out into the wastes to hunt down the xenos fields but even they had accepted The Logical necessity to Simply Hold the Line nothing was to be gained by stepping out from their defensive positions of mortuard however the situation would change as the awk forces steadily returned with larger and larger Machines of War when Titan scale monstrosities appeared on the horizon the call was made that orc factories had to be destroyed within the hour the knights and Titans were striding across the wastelands and when the freeblade Knight assaulted the orc scrap city tanker spell smashed through a wasteland horde at full charge expertly utilizing their directional ion Shields to deflect fire the knights destroyed them with such speed force and ferocity that many surviving Orcs were completely disorientated Milling around in disarray which meant they were easy prey for the support of the warhounds the knights smashed through the factories of tanker spill most Orcs were out speeding around or crushed by the slaughter of their approach but after the city was burning the knights could not be compelled to return to Mort World they charged on for the next orc City seeking more Slaughter more blood more killing [Music] Mega Borealis had suffered but thanks to the effective support of the Estates and the mechanicus owned skitari much of the city was now under Imperial control and the situation seemed stable xenos Gene still occultists had been killed in good numbers but in one area their banners were still raised High and the cultists knew their time was now short so they deployed a plan that would see the patriarch and pure strained Gene Steelers lead an assault to try and Salvage something of the situation just as with many Hive cities the lower levels were so complex and unmapped and unsupported by any infrastructure that few knew their loud or cared to venture down thus with the awk War above the lower levels were quite easily the domain of the gene steel occult and its pure strain Gene Steelers before they even knew what was happening this guitarri were engaged in a sprawling multi-level battle but the mechanicus were holding out well their Tech priests having established battle plans for every conceivable form of invasion except apparently infiltration of their water systems the pipelines being considered too narrow to be any kind of risk unfortunately for them the genes did a physiology enabled them to travel through extremely narrow high pressure pipelines to emerge at the highest levels of Hive spiers where the moisture Farms were located the slaughter above was brief but now the skitari were truly surrounded their enemies assaulted from above and below and finally after three days of fighting it was all over their studies had made significant progress but cleansing the xenos from The Hive spores was only the first stage to truly win Victory they needed to scour the filth from the planet itself and that meant a change of tactic they needed a major offensive these charge of knights into the midst of the Orcs had seemingly ended in Ultimate failure but it had been something of a start something to capitalize upon so Estates strike units were quickly formed using gunships and bikes the Orcs held impressively powerful artillery but this could be evaded by these smaller faster strike units of their studies not to mention it became clear that some number of those free blade Knights were still somehow Holding Out Among the orc cities but not for long and the few who remained were literally being pulled to Pieces while their studies lacked in numbers they did make up for with their speed and evasive abilities with the much slower clunky Orcs constricted trying to fight in and among their own scrap cities with their narrow heavily congested Alleyways and corridors the vehicles were designed for waste and warfare but the bikers of the white scars and Raven guard were adept and threading their mounts through the Alleyways and Rubble of ruined cities the Orcs scrap city was no different and where the Orcs began to congregate and gather themselves together too much for the assadis to deal with they could pull away to a distance and assault somewhere else much to the frustration of the Orcs who simply wanted a stand-up fight not this constant running and hiding but just picking away at the Orcs was not entirely the plan for the estatis they didn't need to finish this so they intended to press on and attempt to destroy the Factories at the heart of the orc cities to destabilize and slow them down enough that perhaps they could be eradicated but this necessity proved to be an unfortunate undoing for as effective as they had been with their hit and run tactics these studies found themselves outnumbered quickly in the more dense areas of the Central City so much so that first The Raven wing and then white scars were forced into Retreat the Orcs would live to fight another day and there was much bawling and shouting from the Orcs about that very fact and again this is an interesting aspect about Orcs as much as they always want to have a good fight and to finish it and win to survive a battle once it started is also beneficial for them from the estati's point of view this is never a good thing because the Orcs tend to Come Away with some kind of impression of Victory which ultimately then makes them more invigorated to fight and so it could mean that they will become stronger and generally more aggressive not things you really want to see with Orcs so for all the damage that had been done by the estadio during their raid it may well have overall been quite counterproductive at this point vigilus was far from anything that one would want to term salvation for every small victory broader control seemed to slip further through the fingers of the Imperials something that calgar was apparently all too aware of when he was forced to embarrassingly pull forces out from the slum of the Dirk Den Hive sprawl which was now overwhelmed by Jean silicultists who were more preoccupied with Orcs than those of the Imperium on the plus side it made determining its fate more straightforward as they could now simply write it off this still though was a depressing situation dugden was of low value to be sure and its fate in many ways seemed predetermined in the event of such a planetary War worse still for any civilian refugees fleeing along the link Fort wall that connected it to hyperia in the north for they were now no longer being allowed to Traverse across and left seemingly to their own Fates calgar had abandoned some tens of millions of civilians in worked in for little other reason than allowing the two zenos forces to occupy themselves by fighting each other which of course they did and within days the sprawl of Dirk then was Ablaze it's miles and miles of smoke blackened The Horizon seen from hyperia even more appalling but deemed sadly necessary word that the fleeing civilians of duckden who understandably had so few options that attempting to cross the Wall seemed their best bet were prevented by the unmovable force of the Crimson fists whose quite legitimate reasoning being that amidst the vast number of civilians were infiltrators of the gene steel occult who wanted nothing more than to slide into hyperia and begin a new brood and they were correct in that assessment but nonetheless when rocks and other objects were beginning to be thrown by protesters the Marines opened fire playing out a scene that had been seen thousands of times before in the imperium's history reminiscent of The Emperor's brutal Wars of suppression During the period of unification the barely armed civilians were cut down by superhuman Warriors in a horrifying scene of Carnage a true blemish upon the honor of the Crimson fists to be sure cowgirl believed it was the right choice nonetheless the severity of the decisions now being made though did little to instill a feeling of optimism in the general populace in fact quite the contrary but then things started to get weird the rift appeared blackened at its edges Vox ghosts were beginning to be heard a spear of light was seen exiting the rift but no readings could make anything of it more Oddities followed along with sightings of winged figures around the hive spiers abductions began to be reported and critical areas were suddenly found abandoned specialist teams of Guardsmen sent to report on such sightings were not seen again but reports did begin to filter in of blackened bodies and mangled corpses littering the highest points of Imperial architecture manila's khalgar and the vigilous Senate took a Stern interest here not only did they suspect the worst but these sightings were being reported from every Hive sprawl on vigilus the ground war had been grinding on and had become so all-encompassing that none had really bothered to pay attention to what was occurring in the heights of the hive spiers which are often in many worlds that own isolated environments where only the wealthiest families and the industrialists could afford or earn the right to exist and mostly no news meant good news so the Imperials had remained focused on The Wider populations and the more Frontline situations of the rampaging Orcs And Insidious cultists they realized now that they had become willfully blind to what had come to vigilist whilst they were preoccupied with the literal Wars below meanwhile above their heads a plague of a different nightmare had descended upon the upper echelons of society as the rift defused its saturated warp corruption this had begun by superficially presenting itself as again is often seen merely disrupted sleep bad dreams some people were heard talking to themselves or rambling nonsense it was only when one Inquisitor frenza began to decipher it that she learned it was the dark tongue of chaos at first it was indecipherable but eventually the more corrupted individuals became then did the syllables hardened into more distinct words but even more disturbing was that as study of such corrupted civilians progressed it became all too clear they were not merely rambling but chanting and in unison when translated they appeared to be calling out the dark King is Coming the investigations when finally given more weight began to reveal a disturbing fact filtered through captured corrupted individuals and scrawled bloody markings upon walls they could not progress too far into the higher Hive spiers for those who did were always lost an extremely disturbing reality became apparent however the truth was heretic astartes were here on vigilus in the form of raptors warped Talons and Hell Drakes seemingly led by an appropriately titled individual harken World claimer Herald of the Apocalypse such things did not bode well for the Imperials hopes of restoring vigilus to a state of ordering defensive security so when World claimers voice echoed across the planet it surely proved terrifying but the bleakness of the picture it painted in the minds of Mortals of the absolute hell that was still yet to come turned many stomachs over despite the presence of The Emperor's Estates and money as cowgar throughout every Hive sprawl and slum on vigilus crackled distorted and garbled messages spewed from Vox units they were difficult to understand but clear enough to get the message harken world claimer made sure that his ominous message was spread to every corner of the world vigilus became a site of critical importance as a world that was soon to fill the spiraling death toll of planetary scale Hive War like so many Imperial planets who maintain a facade of order and discipline this was shattered overnight and by The Cold Light of Day only the reality of systematic corruption and ineptitude remained another critical flaw that was quickly exposed lay in the fact that each Hive spawn on vigilus relied on at least one of the others for a commodity without which it could not function and this seems to have been a very serious oversight when some form of disaster occurred within one or multiple Hive spores such as a contagion or a war this Reliance meant it were far easier for the cultists to multiple cities at once as soon as they had some influence over governors of the Cities themselves or the planetary Council and in a broader sense vigilus is perhaps an excellent example and analogy for what is befallen humanity many times in its history in the sense of building reliance upon distant resources that could at any time for many reasons be disrupted severely it was once a major reason for the massive collapse of human Galactic Civilizations during the age of strife just as much as it had been a trigger cause in the ancient civilizations of Humanity on terror so it seems strange although not entirely surprising to see Humanity Not Having learned lessons because learning lessons from past history is not something humanity is very well known for not least because it requires both history to be accurately documented and then also having people open-minded and objective enough to understand why things should be done differently and rationalized to ensure such disasters do not happen again any brief look at any point in human history demonstrates quite readily that this is not our strong suit so despite deploying money as cowgirl himself to resolve the situation on vigilus they had found themselves facing multiple enemies requiring a broad swath of tactical Solutions these studies face enemies at every turn and even at one point the Senate their Chambers were breached from above forcing the ultramarines to engage against the forces of chaos who were by now corrupting the planet in a dozen different ways meanwhile the Imperials continued to face off against drakari Orcs the eldari and of course Gene steel are cultists many of the Imperial forces were by now only what could be described as tattered remnants of their former selves nothing that could stand up to an almost unrelenting assault often from enemies who were wielding forces and weaponry far above their ability to defend against on top of all of this the populace were often being stretched to the limit in providing production and resources relying upon heavily damaged infrastructure and attempting to fill the gaps by workers being pushed to their absolute limit many dying where they stood insurrections and rioting began to take place some were workers who could just not see the victory in being thrashed to death at Imperial workstations and others were clearly just losing hope or in a day's state of panic and rage that it had all come to this and that their Fates May well already be sealed but it was when those corrupted Communications began to drift into every Hab every factorum and dark transit station when the haunted grumbled Whispers And Vox exclamations began to penetrate the senses of the populace that the mood of the planet shifted in a negative Direction worse that they were Bleak suggestive and detailing the approaching fate of all sometimes barely audible other times overwhelming shrieking that cut through human nerves like a white hot blade the unrelenting barrage of work reality and distressing inescapable Vox messaging from the void were making life for the billions of human citizens who remain trapped in their hive cities intolerable cohesion was disintegrating at every level trusting authorities was nearly extinguished and the Imperial forces of the militarum sororitas mechanicus and astartes were heavily outnumbered and just generally diminished by the grinding multi-enemy multi-approach war that was being fought in every corner of their territory despite the deployment and intervention of multiple Australia's forces the presence of calgar himself the situation was starting to look legitimately unsalvageable far from seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for any who looked to the heavens above all that could be seen was Darkness quite literally pure Darkness so consuming that it entered the minds of all and twisted them into corrupted minions of the dark entities of the Void The Defenders of vigilus faced obliteration with the oncoming forces of a badon Abaddon who was apparently arriving to the world at any time now how could the citizens and Imperials of vigilous prevail against such all-encompassing Darkness against such Reckless hate thank you foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Luetin09

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Keywords: Gaming, Discuss, Channel, Future, 40K, Warhammer 40K, Imperium, Humanity, Mankind, Doom, Fall, Space Marines, Heretic, Heresy, The Emperor of Man, Lore, History, Guide, Warhammer 40000, Warp, Immaterium, Rift, War, Slaughter, Horror, Nightmare, Tabletop, Inquisition

Id: tMUV3k-0eNg

Length: 111min 20sec (6680 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2023