40K - THE HORROR OF THE ROPHANON REBELLION | WARHAMMER 40,000 Lore/History

[Music] today's video is brought to you by audible audible is an amazing service which offers a huge selection to listen to but it is also one of the best ways to make huge savings on 40k audiobooks the situation with my audible book club has changed and i'll have a short video on that very soon this month i'm listening to the orc narrative brutal cunning if you want to get involved check it out for this month's selection and start listening today with a 30-day audible trial get a free audio book and full access to thousands of select originals audio books and podcasts included in the audible plus plan visit audible.com luton or text looting to 500 500 for those of you in the us as always all relevant links are listed directly below in the video notes woe unto the souls of those who turned from the light of the master of mankind for trudy they reside now with the restless shades of outer night heed the lessons they might teach us for some duty does not end in death their actions echo down the ages enlightening those who would listen until the end of all things [Music] across the galaxy of humanity's reign the threat of world's rebelling remains ever present as if the threat from the zeniths were not enough there were some planets in their rulers who forget their place often this has been precipitated by the shadowed whispers of beings from the warp or their mortal cult representatives here in the materium sometimes it may simply be a disgruntled citizenry who forget just the scale and power of the imperium there are endless reasons why it may happen and very often this answers a commonly asked question what use is there in creating machines and warriors which instill a sense of fear power or terror even when the forces of humanity wage war against the corrupted marines the orcs the tyranid the ancient necron even the elder should they would not look upon the forces of humanity and feel what we would express as fear it's true enough although the one exception likely being the orcs depending just how many orcs are stood by their side they tend to be less confident when not in a massive horde so where might one need to instill fear and a sense of terror even against an enemy where might a weapon like the sororitas penitent engines best be used the question has likely answered itself one of the imperium's primary tools in retaining order across the galaxy is fear fear of what people may face should they rebel and for those who do they will soon feel it for themselves they will be made an example of while some forces of the imperium can seem at times a pale imitation of the astartes which is honestly a fair assessment it's worth remembering that those forces will not necessarily spend the majority of their time fighting in world ending battles against the most extreme enemies of humanity these battles are reserved for the most elite warriors of humanity but there are plenty more within the imperium itself battles against breakaway factions and rebellions will often contain many thousands if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of dissident citizenry armed with at least comparable weaponry and potentially even planetary defenses so even in the modern age of the imperium there are planets that will not be calmed by the mere arrival of an inquisitor a deployment of imperial guard a sororitas ship or maybe not even by a deployment of marines is exterminatus an option always but remember as much as the myth surrounding exterminatus suggests that the imperium would burn a planet as quickly as they would make a cup of tea it is in theory at least meant to be a last resort or used as a means to avert some far more severe crisis like say the spreading corruption of chaos plague or other alien infection little information has been retained regarding the fate of planet for a fanon this is likely by design and only one account is believed to have survived dictated by an imperial historic turks of a well-respected lord general of the imperium so what follows describes the rise fall and subsequent fate of the rafale world in the system known as the protean ebb the imperium refers to humanity's ancient history that is human history before the emperor even prior to the destructive period known as the age of strife as the dark age of technology this was a period of high advancement by humanity but which now nearly all records and information have been lost in this era technology reigned supreme all colony ships had fully functioning stc ai and humanity had reached out via these into the galaxy with the use of their near zenith level technology to settle its first colonies and dominate any who opposed them his period was in fact so advanced that much of the broken remnants of technology used by the imperium are believed to have originated from this time the imperium calls this the dark age of technology as they look back now with hindsight at a time of folly and destruction but for the humans who lived then it was their golden age at least for a time anyway during this era of humanity many worlds would be colonized including the planet known as rafanon for the humans of this period any thoughts of an oppressive imperium of mankind would be the last thing anybody would have been imagining if they could even contemplate such a thing humans of this time are said to have been far more elevated and beautiful in their thinking more bright and optimistic for the future of human civilization and for those who came upon the planet of rafanon as with many of these worlds so called in the protein ebb they discovered planets of great beauty and without any especially hostile life however these early humans did discover that they were not the first to come across these worlds they found tall towers made from some material they likened to silicate they found no other signs of life but these towers and cities appeared deserted it seems likely but it is unspecified that these ancient humans had come across the eden-like planets of the ancient eldari unlike the modern era of the imperium though their first thought was to not disintegrate these non-human structures to the ground and build directly over them the humans of the golden age were far more advanced in all respects from their ideology to their ethics so they instead simply left these places alone and built their new communities elsewhere on the world but this really is unfortunately all we know of the events around rafanan in this time the golden or the dark age of humanity in the age of strife which followed have nearly entirely erased human history both in documentation and physical evidence all we do know is that by the time the emperor's great crusade arrived at rafanon many millennia later they found a world which had not been consumed by anarchy and horror and instead found a civilized and prosperous world this was not especially common but not unheard of within the great crusade the planet of rafanon saw the benefit and loyalty perhaps in rejoining humanity at large although perhaps if they had known the entire picture they might not have done at least not quite so readily but so it would be that the sons and daughters of this world joined the ranks of the nascent imperium and joined its crusade which now spanned the entire galaxy i will note for those who always inevitably ask if a planet had survived so well how did they not retain a functioning stc the answer is we don't know some stc were recovered during the great crusade it is presumed that during the dark age many humans realized through the events of this time how dangerous artificial intelligence was and this may have been why so many stc were completely destroyed this may have been more precautionary than it was necessary because as we have seen since some stc encountered by the imperium do appear to have survived into this era without becoming corrupted or evil from a human perspective for whatever the reason you wish to opt for though few if any worlds were discovered with active intact stc and for those who were they were often stolen into the void of the warp by the dark forces of the mechanicum or became of these unknown feel free to speculate wildly at will in the more practical reality of human civilization at this time humanity had to weather the horrors also of the heresy the world of rafanon and its people became very committed to the imperium and many grand loyal imperials were born here to serve humanity rafanon served the imperium and the emperor well but like so many planets devotion and loyalty do not necessarily equate to fair consideration in the affairs of a vast galactic state and certainly not the state the imperium would become in the following millennia rafalen had escaped the steadily more dystopian and highly oppressive imperium for the most part that would be until the period around the turn of m-37 and m-38 where it was ordained by the high masters of the imperial administratum that rafanown would become a hub for strategic planning and massive data processing and archiving billions of daily reports briefs dispatches and so on would need to be received processed acted on or archived so rafallan would be a central data hub for an entire segment what that means is rafano would primarily become a vast data graveyard nothing in the imperium is ever discarded unless of course something is deliberately erased by whichever branch deemed necessary so raphael would become one of these data tombs and the imperium would ship hundreds of millions of scribes serfs menials and servatures to the planet and within the span of a generation transform its entire society fairly understandably this did not go down especially well with the planet's population who had also been simultaneously declared arbitrary subjects of the priesthood of terror and its hereditary base governor system had now become obsolete and was little more than a token gesture of authority a new high council for a phantom was created and of course chaired by an official imperial improved commander this was order facade of course the true rulers of rafale were now the imperial administratum and they ruled over every man woman and child the planet was entirely subjugated to the will of the administration to fulfill whatever duty or function they deemed necessary the planet's population was now split with roughly one-third containing deployed imperial administrative and their servants the indigenous population the remaining two-thirds the populace became unseen and disregarded by the administrative who saw them as little more than a peasantry to carry out menial tasks they had of course no rights no real hope of ever bettering their lives beyond the basic existence of labor and service now in fairness this is not unusual for imperial planets but it's believed to have hit the citizens here harder than most given the fact that rafanown was prior to this a very lush garden world it still was and its people had always held a more optimistic perhaps sheltered life than many in the imperium so when finally the brutal reality of the imperium was imposed here it was perhaps more than the people could take this was a truly rare circumstance and an interesting one within the imperium in the sense that ordinarily the imperium was for the most part seemed to be something of a relatively positive development for worlds who had suffered through the nightmarish horrors of the galaxy either during the age of strife or times since on rafale though here we had a world where citizens appeared to have been very sheltered and seemingly not truly aware of just how good things had been going for them that even with the fairly oppressive addition of the administratum this was still probably one of the best worst things they could have hoped for in fact it likely gave their world even more significance and meant that they would be well protected in fact perhaps even more than previously as a lush beautiful world treasured by the imperium as garden worlds usually are however its citizens did not seem to fully appreciate this perspective nor did they comprehend the fragility of their importance the sheltered existence of rafanan had seemingly kept its populace ignorant to this brutality of the imperium and the uncompromising nature of it now had they resisted when the imperium originally arrived during the great crusade they would have well learned just what the imperium was all about but they did not and so this naivety and ignorance would prove a costly and tragic error for the citizens of rafanown milania had now passed since the administration came to rafano and the date is now roughly estimated at being around 990 of m40 sedition is not something which simply explodes out of nowhere among a calm and peaceful state as i've often said we rarely see a population rise in disorder until they feel their backs are against the wall and there's nothing to lose most people are satisfied to live lives of relative simplicity providing their housed fed and not living in terrible conditions one might consider another trigger for rebellion against a government or state is when a population feels something has been abruptly or consistently taken away from them especially when those things have been the bedrock of a society for generations and so it was with rafan it took many many years under the rule of the administratum before you would begin to see anything that one might describe as heresy but the seeds of sedition had been sown by the insulting way by which the imperium and its administratum had imposed themselves upon the peaceful and more importantly loyally dutiful world of rafale its governing nobility and population felt slighted and subjugated the descent stemmed from the council of these hereditary peers who had been relegated to positions there were no more than a facade of authority they fulfilled their role by day seemingly bowing to the all-powerful authority of the administratum but in the shadows and the cover of night meetings were held and conversations were had bitterness was apparent and these bitter feelings slowly reverberated into the population who merely needed the sense of confirmation that their resentment and fears were justified in order for them to then be recruited to this cause of the disenfranchised citizenry of rafam not enough time had passed for them to become normalized to laboring as the servants of their imperial masters and they still felt the passion and desire to live their own lives trading freely and building their own futures here on this world and for some even granted the rights to travel off-world but now here they were crushed under the suffocating weight of the imperial bureaucracy and with every day month year and generation that passed they felt the need to fight free of its oppression this bitterness and hatred among the raphaem population would grow they continued in their roles they served they obeyed they bowed and scraped a living together but the council of rafael kept the bubbling rage suppressed and helped constructively direct their frustrations from boiling over prematurely the leader of this council during this time was one kruka voor voor had always been of noble blood and like many of the citizens of rafanan had served the imperium in its conflicts off-world he had fought wars against xenos such as the orcs but this did not necessarily enlighten the rafanan guard as their engagements were seemingly focused on planets in areas where they did not encounter other human worlds this is not documented at least war however came to discover the true nature of the imperium when they defeated the orc xenos in one particularly brutal engagement off of the back of this he had expected his soldiers to return home with him to rafalon why would this not be the case well we of course know better these guard would have been redirected to other engagements for as long as was necessary until they met their end for the imperium very few imperial guard ever returned to their home worlds because only in death does duty end for the somewhat naive vore this was a crushingly bitter pill to swallow he had been gifted the reprieve of returning to his homeworld thanks to his lineage but those serving beneath him were not none of them would ever see rafano again and they'd serve with both honor and distinction who knew instead what miserable circumstances they might have found their deaths but this thought haunted voor and enraged him steadily he had seen imperial citizens fighting for the imperium and when their task was completed in his eyes they were instead given nothing war came to the troubling and accurate realization that no level of courage on or sacrifice would ever be enough for the imperium it fought its wars with the weight of flesh and blood of mankind and in the end their anonymous deaths would not be remembered nor given enough respect voor's realization here was not uncommon to the feeling in fact that many astartes had during the heresy that they had fought across the galaxy but felt there was little if any reward for their sacrifice or that of their brothers and it is only through the veil of time that we steadily learn they were disturbingly more correct than they may have ever known but that's another story when voor returned to lead the council upon rafanon he felt absolutely determined that this world must be freed from the shackles of the imperium one might argue a somewhat delusional concept from someone who had presumably seen the scale and might of imperial firepower firsthand perhaps he was clouded by rage and frustration and simply believed his own wild imaginings who can say as i said before when people's backs are against the wall anything can seem plausible even when it makes no sense vore may well have rationalized like so many heretics that he was not truly attracted to the imperium he merely wanted to free his world from the oppression of the administrator and once this was achieved he might be able to reason with the imperium to restore their former state of self-governance vor almost unbelievably thought that the imperium would not allow itself to be drawn into a grinding war and would look to settle the mata quickly on condition his family remain regional rulers and at this point he would be able to maintain the former relationship rafalan had had with the imperium as one might imagine this was not the wisest of plans when vore finally felt the timing was right an order was sent out to the entirety of the population of rafanown rise up and cast off the shackles of your oppressors this was no ramshack or rebellion instigated by a reactionary group of extremists it was an orchestrated planet-wide operation planned over decades the council of rafanon had been steadily placing agents across various industrial locations and institutions so that when the rebellious and seditious acts came there would be no opportunity for the imperials to withstand the crippling blow that was dealt each agent of the rebels knew their task and they carried out their orders with precision such a well-coordinated and abruptly violent action caught the administration completely off guard such rebellions would usually only come from violent feral planets prison colonies industrial worlds with vast labor forces deployed from different areas in the galaxy or those corrupted by dark forces and xenos but from the peaceful and serene planet of rafalen none could have predicted this yet none of the imperials even suspected anything were a mess until their docile workers were kicking their doors in summarily executing or violently detaining them for later interrogation or potentially exchange later down the line as rebellions against the imperium go the actions of the rafale populace were up there as one of the cleanest and most well-planned executions no doubt aided by the seemingly unlikely occurrence of such an action when all was said and done many thousands of imperial officials were dead quite often as they slept never knowing who or what had put a projectile weapon blade or blunt instrument into their head or across their throats the menial scribes and serves of the administratum were not spared the rafanan had little empathy for those who worked in the halls of the imperials next came the destruction of the halls and archives of the administratum the rebels were now into a full-blown riot and were destroying anything they came upon that held significance to the administratum entire archives were burned and by the morning the sun was barely visible as black clouds of choking ash filled the sky the entire world of rafanon was now being racked by full-blown rebellion violent raging and unstoppable anything remained of the administratum was in a complete state of panic and terror it seemed very much as if the entire world would be lost to the rebels in barely a single day were it not for one man lord general artemus blythe blythe was a heavily decorated military veteran of the administratum and although one does not necessarily think of strong military leadership connected with the administratum this is exactly what blyth was he had weathered many serious engagements most notably he assumed control of what was known as army 17 leading an exemplary campaign to scour an entire system of rebels and pirates blythe was known for being methodical and efficiently blunt in his orders and demeanor yet he often would exhibit sparks of tactical inspiration where others might have fallen back on the security of regimental doctrines oblithe held imperial doctrines with high regard and in fact believed that while innovation was valuable and even advantageous these were only benefits that should be allowed to those heavily schooled in imperial doctrine and were able to then calmly and objectively weigh up the pros and cons of any given situation because of its lush garden nature of a world rafalen was often like many garden planets used by high up imperials to either retire or recuperate and so as fate would decide lord general blythe found himself here upon rafanon for this exact purpose just as the rebellion broke out unfortunately for the population of rafanown and vore the reason blythe found himself here was because during his last engagement he had refused to stand down as command of operations until the campaign was declared complete so for blythe he literally collapsed from sheer physical exhaustion at the point of final victory having such an imperial veteran military commander upon rafanan was unfortunate for the rebels as they would soon discover bly's immediate actions were to launch counter-attacks against the concentrations of rebels known to the imperials it would have been better to gather information and know more of their enemy but blythe balanced this against the immediate threat and felt it was important to push back immediately if the larger issue was simply knowing who he could count on he would order what imperial guard forces they had managed to contact to simply converge on a series of hastily decided objectives the aim of this was to try and understand who out of the imperials here would obey and who would side with the rebels unfortunately for blythe some one-third would follow the orders the others seemingly had believed the lies of the rebels but it would soon be discovered that those who had followed their command were in fact off-worlders and all those guard from raphael itself had rejected their chain of command and sided with the rebels for blythe though it was also discovered soon after that more concerningly those loyal forces to him were not even actual trained guard they were in fact pdf forces who were largely made up of ex-administratum who were deemed surplus and had been redistributed to pdf training camps they were about as poor quality a trained group as you could imagine cibolath coming to understand not just the situation but the strength of the force he had to work with both in numbers and actual trained skill was deeply depressing he fought back his feelings of despair blythe's only next course of action was to request reinforcements off world in such a situation a senior imperial commander will send out astropathic requests at increasing range and within a few days blight had managed to arrange a deployment of guard to be split off from a larger fleet on route to a different engagement they would then come to assist and gather a larger force from pdf in a neighboring system to bolster their strength finally to arrive at rafalen some 20 days later gathering a force for deployment in such a period of time was extremely uncommon it was only a combination of luck and the weight of blythe's rank and prestige that made it possible at all the coming war would be as bitter a campaign as blythe had ever encountered yet he never doubted for a moment that he would be victorious the only problem was that vore also shared this sentiment they were committed at this point and knew that nothing other than victory would save him and the rafale people from a fate far worse than all they had so far endured the result was a grinding war of attrition that saw every piece of ground fought over with the fury few had imagined they would ever see upon the formally tranquil world of fanon blythe's reinforcements were designated as one rig or the first rafale intervention group they deployed to the world some 300 kilometers southeast of the major population center of rafale city where they would come under the command of lord general blythe in the short time prior to the regular imperial's arrival say blythe had managed to somehow organize his paper-thin force of administrative pdf into a moderately acceptable fighting force no small achievement he'd selected any with military experience and promoted them accordingly and then focused on merely containing the rebels disrupting the operations where risk seemed acceptable but not wanting to spark any true conflicts it would have been unable to be contained after the initial zeal of their raging assault things had somewhat quietened down and blythe kept his forces away from the population centers and administratum complexes instead they patrolled the dense forests in a boreal terrain between the areas dense with rebels as well planned and competent as this sounds this was not handled especially cleanly by those under his command and while they did have some success with engagements they often came off the worse for it and blythe knew his time was running out so the reinforcements of one rig came just in time blythe was not only thankful that the regular imperials had arrived but also that they had been readily formatted as what the corps refer to as a heavy planetary assault group blythe later was documented as having some affection still for his previously poorly trained paper-thin pdf group of administrative individuals who had held the line despite their litany of shortcomings but now the real imperial troops were on the ground and things were moving quickly assault operations began a mere three days after deployment and blythe had briefed the other commanders even as they were deploying logistics and initial sight teams to the surface blythe's several weeks of planning were now surely going to come to fruition phase one consisted of elite kill teams of guard being deployed behind enemy lines to neutralize planetary defenses and this was urgently necessary to prevent mass casualties as the main force would then deploy to the surface all were destroyed in line with blythe's schedule and the rebels robbed of the use of laser defense and orbital ground missile batteries in what appeared to be a catastrophic oversight on their part what followed next was an unusually rare deployment technique in fact nearly unheard of the first wave of assault would consist of mass dropped infantry what this meant was entire companies of each regiment of an imperial guard being deployed on mass that doesn't sound too unusual but it was the means by which this was achieved through low orbit carriers who would position themselves some 50 000 feet or 9.5 miles above the surface put that in perspective earth's atmosphere is said to extend to any roughly six miles above our planet's surface these low orbit carriers would then extend via anti-gravity generators a cone of such a field below the ship the troops would then simply step out of the ship and fall at a steady rate gentle enough that they would not sustain serious injury upon reaching the surface of course some would require rebreathers because of the atmospheric difference and the ability to breathe but deployment in this manner is rare both because of the technology required but also because asking a regular guardsman to just step out of a ship and descend to a planet's surface with no means of controlling their descent is quite a big ask not to mention the fact that likely no one bothered to tell them that it is critical in such operations that the ship itself maintain its relative position over a rotating planet and this is hard enough but that also any undue movement of the ship can cause the anti-gravity cone of descent to wildly move around near the surface potentially proving fatal for those deploying troops the movement of the position near the surface could be significant for what would amount to a very tiny repositional movement of the ship itself because of the vast distance between so highly careful coordination and precision are critical here an extremely dangerous deployment to undertake but thankfully it paid off and the first wave of the guard deployed successfully if for literally perhaps no other reason than the psychological impact for the rebels of looking up seeing three regiments of highly trained imperial guard quite literally raining out of the skies once on the ground they quickly regrouped and had secured initial objectives in mere hours crushing the poorly organized rebels they encountered now though the rebels were well aware of these reinforcements and a fast second wave was being deployed containing more infantry and also armor via heavy landers this was only possible due to the quick success of the first wave having destroyed the anti-air batteries for the rebels the mix of the second infantry wave backed with light armor allowed for then the third wave to be deployed featuring three armoured regiments these were more difficult and took longer to deploy naturally but by the end of the day the three forces had secured all objectives and crushed a rebel column during the first night they further consolidated their positions and secured a nighttime deployment of super heavy armor finally general blythe arrived to take command and from here on would lead the forces atop a storm hammer super heavy tank known as the iron tyrant at first light the newly deployed armor along with his now well-organized forces rolled out blythe choosing to lead from the front he fixed his eyes upon rafanan city itself the first day's deployment had been a runaway success bly's plan was simple crush these pitiful rebels with heavy armor in the might of a well-trained imperial guard this thing would be over before it had even truly begun vore had observed the imperial's deployment and while rebel counter assaults had seemed pitiful and lacklustre this was no oversight or tactical error vore had planned this rebellion for years and he knew exactly what he was doing he had anticipated that the imperials would allow themselves to be concealed within the dense vegetation of the arboreal terrain of rafanan and for his forces knowing these conditions would well use it to their advantage launching a series of shock ambushes steadily pulling them in different directions and grinding them down steadily vore had installed small teams dedicated tank killers lying in the undergrowth and spider holes which they would then launch shock surprise attacks on the advancing imperial forces this allowed them to not only catch the intervention by surprise but more importantly allow them to target the weak points on enemy armor at close range dealing devastating damage with crack missiles scores of lehman russ were obliterated blythe did not though retreat instead the imperials pushed on weathering the storm of ambushes he was determined that they would be rooted out it was simply necessary before this risky choice had really yielded any benefits though the imperials encountered another problem vore had carefully concealed masses of infantry during the night into the dense vegetation and suddenly the imperials found themselves set upon by huge numbers of rebels furiously engaging them at close quarters any advantage the imperials had in terms of superior firepower were lost and the edge of skilled guardsmen and doctrine also countered by the zeal and ferocity of the indigenous rebels despite this blythe's imperial forces came out with something of a win but they had all lost their momentum and initiative and this had been the true goal of war he never believed they could be stopped so quickly and easily but he well understood that allowing blythe to smash at speed into their entrenched positions with the full power of imperial armor was a battle he couldn't hope to win by taking the wind out of the sails of blythe he'd bought them valuable time and set the stage for a conflict which would be far more palatable for the rafael than it would the imperials blythe now faced a battle of attrition not one of shock and awe and this was something his forces were not prepared for the force assigned to him was specifically designed for fast deployment and the crushing of upstart rebellions through the use of typical imperial might they were not designed to deal with a cunning and well-organized resistance force which numbered in essentially the entire planet's population blythe was beginning to realize he would not only be here for some time but the more reinforcements would likely be necessary and to that end assembled his officers for planning of the next stages in the retaking of rafale one powerful trait in lord general blythe was his pragmatic approach to warfare he was not a proud man not too consumed in the weight of his own name to be ashamed to scrap a well-laid plan and in the case of rafanon this was exactly what was required he now saw the situation laid bare and that any attempt to fight vore and the rafale rebels on their terms would be either extremely costly or indeed a total failure blinds armored forces despite taking considerable damage in their first advancement still numbered enough to last likely the entire campaign as blythefore saw it anyway what he needed now was hundreds of thousands of guardsmen and so he sent out new astropathic requests to regional systems for aid in typical imperial fashion with the weight of his name attached to the requisition data slates read by commanders on neighboring worlds his reinforcements would soon arrive the warfare now became far more imperium in nature that is to say any hope of a short sharp engagement using elite units was gone they were now here for a grinding ground war of steady slow hammering on the rebels the sledgehammer of the imperium had arrived and they would do what the imperial guard did best consistent blunt force trauma artillery regiments turned the landscape into a pock-marked wasteland ahead of the advancing imperials and each side constructed heavily fortified lines it's not stated in the official documentation of this campaign but i would make the logical speculation that air sometimes referred to as naval cover was relatively well matched and so neither side would hold air superiority digging in and fighting a grinding trench war of attrition would make little sense otherwise as each side continued to attempt to push forward they were met with heavy fire and so little progress was made despite the devastating firepower flanking moves were also out of the question due to both the terrain and the risk of the rafale forces launching their previous tactics of inflicting heavy damage via ambush and traps the imperial forces held their own but they were significantly outnumbered it's worth remembering the blythe's force of hundreds of thousands of guard were attempting to take down what was the population estimated at 1.8 billion now granted majority of these were not trained not active in the actual fighting but it still left them horrifically outnumbered and so for every day's successful fighting on the now sprawling front lines the losses endured by the enemy never seemed to grind them down the situation was now the raphanum populus versus the firepower of the imperium and they were well weathering the battle but both sides were tiring weeks turned to months and the apocalyptic wasteland of trenches was becoming ever more sprawling a year had passed as if it were nothing and progress had ground to a halt the sledgehammer of the imperium had failed to inflict a killing blow in fact its energy had dissipated steadily and now it lay exhausted at the door of the rafanon people the fighting frontline itself now spanned several thousand miles and have become in places extremely complex with confusing bunker complex systems and fortifications the rafanon had equally been steady constructing heavy fortifications both ahead and behind their front line and no doubt at other locations as well in due preparation for potential other engagement or flanking maneuvers the landscape had changed dramatically to the point that new guardsmen arriving to take over from those serving on the front lines couldn't believe stories of lush arboreal landscapes told by those who had survived since the initial deployment for now they looked out upon a barren wasteland of scorched earth often punctuated by shattered human remains or half-buried bodies in various states of decay one guardsman observed how he felt you might walk across the landscape and never be more than a few meters away from the dead the continual losses have been horrific as any advance were quickly put down and thousands were lost at any attempt to test the enemy lines for the imperial guard and oblithe who were now operating in proximity to the nightmarish landscape would eat alongside the dead sleep with the dead spend each watch looking out upon the dead it was a disconcerting reminder of their own mortality the loss of life had spiraled beyond what blythe had anticipated initially now he's beginning to think the campaign was so entrenched he might not live to see it brought to a successful conclusion new imperial guard forces were being requisitioned from farther afield and still they were unable to make progress none wanted to consider alternative options but the danger of such possibilities were increasing with each passing month as the impatience of the imperium grew with the lack of progress rafanan was becoming both an embarrassment and an acceptable level of what may once have been considered an ignorant populace who simply needed to be given a stern example of why they must know their place in the imperium but now rafanan was simply considered a world of heresy it may well have been discussed among imperial scholars since would vore have relented had he understood the severity of such a reclassification of the situation question is irrelevant as the final actions of the imperium would permanently resolve the matter while the campaign upon rafallan had stagnated the imperium during this time had been noting and increased what appeared to be migration of the xenos known as the orc members of the inquisitional ordo zenos were increasingly concerned as to the cause of this but their answer would be discovered soon enough the orcs that were found were fleeing from another xenos now invading the galaxy the abhorrent enemy of humanity known as the tyranids [Music] they had been found to be beginning to consume worlds once again in what would be later designated as hive fleet leviathan meanwhile the rofanon campaign had been grinding away for several years and the date is now roughly estimated at being 993 m40 the tyranids are believed to be heading towards the protein ebb system which coincidentally is the system in which rhophanon among other planets are located the ordo xenos has been carefully calculating the trajectory of the tyranids and they estimate they would be coming straight for rophanon in the near future when a member of the ordo zenos arrived to personally give this information to blyth and his command staff many were struck with expressions of true horror fighting this miserable campaign had been bad but it was at least a war they knew how to fight well enough in human terms but this abhorrent xenos clearly some of blythe's staff knew just what this meant for them to face as well they fully expected it appeared to have now been a fight of both a heretical planetary population and a nightmarish xenos simultaneously blythe however seemed undaunted by this prospect i'll have them both then he's reported to have said grinning grimly inquisitor is reported to have left without a word blythe spent days deliberating how to best handle the situation now tasked with not only resolving the conflict on rafael but also how to stop the alien horrors in their tracks before they could consume an entire system of imperial planets numbering in the tens of billions his solution was typically blithe it was objective it was logical and it was cold lord general blythe announced his plan to the horror of some of his command staff they would instead deliberately allow the tyrannis to assault the planet by drawing them here and to the relief of his forces they would not be on the world to defend it blythe would withdraw his entire imperial force from the planet and leave the rebels to fight the tyranids alone this seemed a horrifically bleak conclusion to have come to and it seemed also somewhat confusing had they not wanted to originally secure rafanan and preserve it as best they could this was indeed the case but as usual bly's thinking was far more pragmatic he well understood that his loyal force of imperial guard would hold little hope of staving off a planetary assault by the alien horrors of the tyranid his only option to bring both situations to a successful conclusion was in the ultimate choice for imperial victory exterminatus blythe's horrific plan was to allow the tyranids to fall upon rafanan leaving the heretics to their undoubtedly nightmarish fate but as the xenos were consuming the biomass of the world blyth knew this would be the perfect time to strike he would engage exterminatus upon the planet thereby ridding the imperium of two problems rebelling rafanan population numbering in billions and the tyranids who during their process of bioconsumption would be at their weakest point having expended significant biomass to assault the world [Music] as we well know exterminatus is no trivial matter it is the final word in warfare of the 41st millennium when the imperium declares exterminatus it is to consign a planet to death and all who exist upon it this often means the sacrifice of billions of human lives and moreover the loss of a planet and its resources likely forever more the latter more prominently in mind the imperium does not declare exterminatus for any reason usually it's only when a planet has become so corrupted that it is essentially beyond redemption this could be a biological pathogen corruption of chaos severe xenos infestation or as a tactical fire break there are many methods by which exterminatus is executed upon a world and i would say if you want to know more see my exterminators video linked at the end of this but suffice to say usually it is a devastating firestorm which consumes an entire planet for rafanon it came in two stages firstly under the orders of lord general blythe the imperial navy baited the tyranids to approach rafanon by a series of running naval engagements and i should note that such a coordinated plan for stopping tyranids is often not possible due to the psychic shadow the tyranids project known as the shadow in the warp thankfully in this situation the ordo zenos were able to have seen warning markers in the fleeing orcs that enabled them to provide accurate information on the coming threat and for imperials to then take appropriate actions as the task of drawing the tyranids to rafanon which had been predicted already but for blythe's plan to pay off would mean they had to be sure that the tyranids would choose this world as their next target for consumption blithe was hurriedly trying to extricate his imperial forces from rafanon without allowing the rebels to become aware of this fact and also to do so without taking losses thankfully as a well-schooled officer in the logistics of such operations blythe was well placed for this task he would firstly order a necessary sacrifice via a major offensive this would be to distract the rogue fan on and even as hundreds of thousands of guard would charge across the scorched plains of the front lines to assault rafanown positions significantly more infantry were boarding orbital conveyances along with masses of imperial hardware it's fair to say that the situation on board orbiting imperial ships was both a frenzy of activity but one of more like ordered chaos as the many thousands of guardsmen were being delivered to the waiting ships hour by hour and heavy tanks being stowed and packed in for maintenance or returned to imperial worlds this continued on for weeks but eventually blythe had no more forces to maintain the offensive and so vore seeing the petering guard force felt the time was right to counter attack vore himself would lead a huge charge in and for the unfortunate guard who remained they were crushed under the weight of the rafanan's attack vore smashed through the previously impossible front line of the imperial forces and his soldiers were jubilant they had done it they had broken the imperium war seized on the moment and ordered the entire refinement defense army to charge out from their trenches and attack imperial positions all across the trench lines to their confusion though enemy fire came they ran at first and then walked over to the enemy positions to find them disturbingly abandoned many felt extremely uncomfortable at this discovery something was very clearly not right and vore himself would see the final conveyances leaving the planet so vore now with his millions strong army were baffled but with no other explanation then their apparent victory erupted into celebrations they weren't sure of what had triggered it had their defense been so strong that the imperials saw they could no longer commit such numbers to the fight they finally decided perhaps negotiations were needed vaul believed it he convinced himself the blyth had over extended his forces and in a final assault buckled under the strength of their resistance retreating from the planet knowing that failure was upon them this belief and their rejoicing would be short-lived the skies above them began to grow dark many of the rafanown were coughing heavily already and soon they were able to see that the air around them was becoming thick with particulates as they reached for rebreathers or ran for the bunkers others looked up to see many thousands of spherical objects falling from the skies like so many worlds who suffered the horror of tyranid invasion rafanon resped little of the orgy of violence which follows the alien horrors cannot be reasoned with they will show no mercy and simply engage in ever escalating levels of extreme violence the rafanown by now had no ability to withstand the aggressive zenos they had neither the weaponry experience or stomach for such a battle and were quickly being feasted upon by the eternal hunger for biomass of the tyranid hive mind within mere weeks the tyranids were observed to have consumed the world and were steadily now beginning to process the biomass this is a time when the tyranids are at their weakest for they have expended huge amounts of their net biomass in the effort to subdue and consume a planet but they're only beginning to reabsorb this matter the end result is usually a net gain for the tyranids in terms of biomass this is how they're able to move on forward in an ever-ending cycle of consumption however if significant damage can be inflicted at this critical moment the chances for the imperium of later successfully destroying their hive ships is greatly increased at the least it also means any future engagements are likely to be able to be repelled or even halted but being able to engage the tyranids at this moment is usually very difficult and very rare because ordinarily the system will have been isolated and the tyranids will have destroyed already any potential threats up to this point in time it was only due to the significant planning through the auto xenos and blythe they were able to execute this plan so effectively a single imperial ship equipped with fast drive systems and arcane shielding passed undetected around the vicinity of rafano using the gravity of a nearby moon it flew past the world unseen by the xenos ships and launched its single projectile upon the planet rafanon was consumed in the nucleonic fire of exterminatus trillions of tyranid forms were burned to ash as the war matter of the planet fueled the raging inferno rafanon took on the appearance of a dying star with only the silhouettes for the tyranid ships set against it blythe noted another successful campaign he had scoured the world and cleansed the imperium of both vore and his dangerous population whose outlook could have contaminated other worlds were not contained and likewise the xenos horrors imperial records note that lord general bligh's plan did come at the cost of two billion imperial souls but that it likely saved 30 billion across the other worlds of the protean ebb despite the arguable failure of his overall campaign the planetary deployment of guard forces has been long studied since and become the default manual for imperial operations of this nature blithe has within the imperium become even more well regarded his tactics and strategies poured over and studied by many a burgeoning imperial officer for vore and the rafanon their rebellion was not without a sense of irony for their objections to the imperial's authority had been what they saw as unreasonable sacrifices made outside of their control so it seems fitting that when all was said and done the death of rafanon came as the ultimate sacrifice for the imperium their efforts to be free had failed and in the end they served the emperor whether they were aware of it or not as every individual upon the world of rafanown met their deaths so now i just want to talk briefly about audible and why it's an excellent service for you to consider getting involved in as always i've included some of your comments about why you guys choose to use audible audible is consistently the best value when it comes to audio books and that's more important for people these days than ever also with that in mind audible recently released their new plan audible plus and this is all about giving members a chance to listen to and explore different formats discover new favorites classics or things you've maybe never even considered before within audible as you can see you can easily narrow what's available within the plus category or search within specific themes and genres the other option is audible premium and that actually remains the standard price as per before and within that you get one credit per month for an audiobook of your choice and if that's a 40k audiobook you're looking at often 10 hours or more of content but then you also get access to the whole audible plus range and all the other benefits that come with audible as noted my audiobook club format is changing and i'll explain why soon on a short channel update flight of the eisenstein will feature soon here on the channel as did valdor but instead of doing a live stream and i'll be producing a condensed youtube overview and i will include your comments selected from a post on the channel's community tab for april i already posted our selection for this month of brutal cunning a tale which is very orky but not solely focused upon the orcs it's a good change up from the standard imperium stuff and if you're not currently a member with audible this is a great opportunity to trial it use that free audiobook offer remember you do need to choose the premium plus option to get that free audiobook offer so brutal cunning was my choice for the month because it's good to have a change up which features a zenos perspective many people are often asking what's the best say dark eldar narrative to listen to and so on unfortunately zenos are fairly light when it comes to 40k narratives but they do appear often alongside imperial stories there is of course also the great eldar series and i have a new post on the community tab soon about this month's choice and as i said a short channel update to clarify the specifics if you've not tried audible before i highly recommend it as do members of the community you can see from all the testimonials i post when i ask for feedback from you guys the audience you can get involved today by starting your 30-day audible trial with premium plus this gets you a free audio book as well as access to thousands of originals audio books and podcasts visit audible.comlutin or for those in the us text looting to 500 500. a huge thanks to all of you for supporting me here on the channel and as always i'll see you in the next one you

Channel: Luetin09

Views: 679,104

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: 4NzwTDYZr2k

Length: 55min 26sec (3326 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 17 2021