The Xana Incursion: A Complete History (Warhammer 40,000 & Horus Heresy Lore)

foreign the early eras of the Imperium were an age of Discovery and all of the Sinister and occluded paradoxes that came with us the Galaxy was a dark and dangerous place a volume Riven and wrecked after the Millennia of Terror and destruction that the age of strife had Unleashed upon us a volume Riven and wrecked after the Millennia of Terror and destruction that the age of strife had Unleashed upon it everywhere in these ruins there lurked Horrors and Mysteries in equal measure but hope too after a fashion the surviving colonies of humanity that had outlasted the old night now found themselves a subject of a questing emperor of Terror who sought to reunite them with their species the stories of these reunions Are Legion and no two are alike on some Worlds the Imperium Aquila was raised high with triumphant adulation as the populace embraced the coming Imperium with open arms and blessed relief while on others there were those who denied the writ of Terror and for their obstinacy felt the tread of the legiones astartes and the wrath of their boulders these are the polar points of a spectrum and contained within that Spectrum are uncountable tales that make up those unique years of crusade and Imperium for the mechanicum of Mars the situation was no different but the examples perhaps even stranger a far less centralized Society than the Imperium it was partnered to mechanicum's web of loyalties Bound by Common culture and Creed made reuniting lost Forge worlds a more difficult Prospect in many cases and with one Forge in particular the tale would be one that tested the boundaries of the era and the darker era that followed it waves unprecedented he written he's presented that Tale no then that this is a record of the last port on the edge of the ever Blackness and of its Mysteries paradoxes and heresies the history of lazana incursion [Music] the mystery of Zana is an old one older in fact than the Imperium itself its first recorded instance within Imperial record came from essentially simultaneously logged reports from multiple Rogue Trader Expeditions that were forging through Millennia defunct warp corridors towards the galactic West these ran the typical gamut of such reports they were vastly contradictory and frequently hyperbolic Rogue Traders being what they are speaking of everything from a singular isolated human Outpost amid the darkness of the Void to an Empire of machines spanning several systems nay a sector nay several sectors on one hand it was a forbidden domain of dark imaginings wreathed with all the techno-terrors of old night well on the other he was a beacon of progress in humanity holding at Bay the predations of wild space ruled over either by beings recognizably Martian in aspect or deathless cyber things of utterly unknowable provenance depending of course on which flotilla filed which report the only thing that any of these accounts had to tie them together in any capacity was the name single word Zana this whole point of similarity set off identifiable marker tags within adeptus administratum and divisio militaris logistical processing demanding the delegation of more resources to its investigation a combined report was prepared and filed having slavishly combed through the reels of Rogue Schrader statements to establish the following somewhere in the very Western edges of the galactic reaches a technologically advanced power existed that was either human or had once been and one that stood a high probability of being a hitherto unknown or undiscovered Forge offshoes of Martian colonization efforts both prior to and during the age of strife Mars had sent many a colony ship into the furthest reaches of the Galaxy to establish worlds in her own image prior to the coming of old night this had been led by the Martian regime of the Dark Age of Technology complete as they were with all the greatest and most terrible scientific imaginings of that benite epoch during the age of strife these Expeditions had been altogether more perilous formed of mechanicum of Mars generation ships cast forth into the chaotic warp blindly stumbling along with millennia-old Astro navigation charts and equipment with Neri and navigator to spare amongst them great Crusade Imperium in partnership with mechanicum was intent on reuniting these lost forges with greater humanity and just as the records of the world's born of Terror were impossible to verify so too were those of Mars only scraps of knowledge remained of pre-strife Martian colonies and those born of strife era mechanicum efforts well besides a few notable exceptions it was impossible to even ascertain if the colony ships that had been sent out had survived their very first warp jumps some were exceptions Griffon for instance but by and large the fate of these Expeditions remained unknown Zanna could be ancient Beyond Reckoning or born of just such a lost ship of Mars not a millennia ago what form is had become would be anyone's guess and certainly the Rogue Traders were of no help in that particular regard the quest to discover the truth of Zana proceeded in much the same manner as the crusade's efforts to establish links with other rumored lost worlds of humanity but it must be noted that it received apparently significant attention from two parties worthy of discussion namely the Emperor of mankind and the fabricator general of the mechanical in the case of the latter it has been suggested to the sheer hyperbole of those early reports captured their attention for often was it but some kernel of Truth lay behind the outlandish claims of Rogue Traders while Mars very much doubted a Scion of itself occupied sector's worth of space it certainly seemed likely that this Zannah was a powerful and independent polity and as they had no record of its existence at all one who may contain a fabulous wealth of technological and scientific information and resources the emperor his motivations can only be speculated upon perhaps he thought that in Zannah he may find a lead on one of his lost Sons the primarks or was worried that this realm was one that could potentially rival in power his budding Imperium it is known that unlike other cases he personally dispatched several deep void Scout ships both of the efforts of Mars and Terra Emperor and fabricator General were seemingly for naught however Expeditions either did not return or did so empty-handed for decades on end more pressing concerns with Crusade Affairs as well as more promising leads for more verifiable Realms would ultimately begin to bleed about attention and resources away from the search for Zana until in 843 m30 a chance encounter would shift the course of history ironically it was thanks to another Rogue Trader one mamzel casalida of the dianiasi dynasty finding herself fleeing from a devastating encounter with a flotilla of fraal xenos corsairs dianiasi recorded three massive and apparently automated warships on her all specs logs upon the edge of The Intergalactic Gulf fearing death would claim her and her ship dianiasi was surprised to receive hails instead of gunfire the barks offered Aid to the stricken Rogue Trader bearing in addition both the greetings and offer of parlay between the Sovereign Forge domain of Zana and the emperor of the Imperium borne by the warships to the forge itself the anayasi and her Galleon were repaired and refitted with what she described as stunning time and was treated with utmost courtesy by the rulers of a world she termed a beacon on the shore of nice Zanna by the Rogue Traders careful and meticulous account was a world in orbit around the supermassive gas giant the system's Mainline star was in good health but apparently was set alone in the void there was nothing astrochortography would dare term a local constellation neighbor in the nearby volume for hundreds of light years dianiasis dubbing of the world as a beacon was apt Zana was an island perched on the very precipice of the Galaxy Beyond there lay only the cold darkness of The Intergalactic Gulf and all its unknowable Horrors quite how the Lords of Zada came to know of the emperor despite this being their first Contact we shall never know and serves as the introductory mystery shall we say of that strange world the initial negotiations between the Imperium and Zana were perfectly cordial but on the Imperial side clouded by a deep and immediate suspicion for many of those involved the Forge World already a paradox since its name was first logged only proved to be more so as information trickled in upon us of course the reunion and apparently good faith reunion at that with any Lost World of humanity was a moment to be celebrated but Zana represented a paradox that left some far too ill at ease to dismiss their fears the world was recognizably a mechanicum Dogma aligned worshiping the machine God in clearer synchronicity with the religion of red Mars this established its birth and sometime during the age of strife significantly after the mechanicum had unified Mars and had begun sending expeditionary ships into the Galaxy at Large however unlike say cataracts it was no Outpost of Hardy settlers clinging to survival and unlike Lucius or Griffon it was not verifiably Arc established in that it had maintained contact with Mars throughout the age of shrife initial estimates indeed appeared to point to Zana outstripping Lucius and Griffon both in terms of its output and establishment it was clearly a forge whose Roots were deep and old it had leveraged its technology to rearrange the very orbital alignment of its solar system ensnaring planetary and demi-planetary bodies into the planet's own graffitic well through means mechanicum Logistics were furiously speculating over the host or Central Forge had allowed newer Forge fans to spring up both PlanetSide in orbit and elsewhere in the system each one more mature than almost any other single Arc established Forge it had its own Navy of Warships of an unknown design not to mention a host of automata ships like those encountered by the Rogue Trader dianiasi that had many within the mechanicum immediately concerned for the independence of those machine Minds it had even created its own Titan Legion recognizably based upon the precepts of the Martian Triad Faron morgulum but whose disposition of God engines placed them in the Primus great category of the Collegiate titanica alongside the likes of the legios mortis or passages or even ignatum in summation as was whispered amongst Imperial and mechanical negotiators both Zanna did not make sense absolutely no record of its foundation was either found upon Mars or was provided by the zanyans nor would the Magi of that world confirm how old the forge was given the time frame involved the sheer establishment and advancement of Zana it was if not an impossibility than an almost absurd improbability powerful Realms of humanity had been encountered in their plenitude but those had been so Divergent from the cultures and Creeds of Terror and Mars was to almost be separate from the human species Zana in such Immaculate alignment with the Martian Norm yet seemingly in possession of a history and status that would be more at home in a society born of the Dark Age of Technology raised innumerable questions and was answering none as one divisio militares official noted Zana is a gift simply too perfect to be trusted it is either our greatest good fortune in these times of war or it is a serpent lying in wait to slay us my mind perceives a former but my soul warns of the latter at the Magi of Zana been more willing to address these concerns perhaps history would have taken a different course but alas this was far from the case they were cordial yes but not what could be considered friendly per se theirs was a guarded distance maintained in those early years a clearly maintained barrier that the zany and mechanicum kept between them and all Outsiders their massive military capabilities they explained as a necessity born of years of xenos predations while their apparent lack of clear origin was so they claimed the result of solar storms of unique severity that had caused irreparable damage to their oldest data looms and archival macro stacks ambassadors from the fabricator General politely asked to examine what archives a forge currently possessed and when these polite requests were politely denied escalated these two demands that were equally sternly rebuffed negotiations on just how Zannah would enter the Imperial fold were still ongoing and none from the mysterious forage would seed an iota of their sovereignty to the Lords of Saul until such a time as the Accords were concluded at no point did they display any form of hostility towards the great Crusade quite the opposite appearing in all stated aspects to celebrate their reunion with Humanity but any negotiator worth their salt could see that the threat was implicit than I did not desire War but should they be backed into the proverbial corner none would deny that hostilities would be inevitable younger or ill-experienced acolytes May question how this is possible for was it not the avowed policy of the early Imperium submit or face destruction was it not the emperor's Choice offered to all Humanity his way was the only way and again say it was Annihilation itself the situation was often far less cleanly cut than the iterators or their propaganda reels may have implied the offer of clemency and integration or Invasion and obliteration was only presented to foes of the Imperium that they could easily best reasonably best essentially it was one given from a position of strength from where Victory could be assured within a decent cost sundry examples of this occur within official record with the first being the mechanicum itself whose integration into the emperor's realm came with the Treaty of Olympus and not the legion as authorities on Mars's red soil Zanna with its Galactic isolation massive military disposition for medieval Navy and frankly impossible to assess technological capabilities threatened to be a campaign that some within the division militaris estimated would be the most significant armed engagement in the western Crusades history potentially one of the costliest the early Imperium had ever endured the lack of insight over the capabilities of the forge forced cost-benefit estimates to be placed as high as scaling would allow an entire astartious Legion would be needed that much was clear as well as not one but several Titan legios since the war would invariably be fought on an engine scale against a Primus great legio of zana's own the Vizio militare's voices added to this that preferably more than one astarty's Legion should be called upon and an estimate of perhaps one million troops from the exertus imperialis should be supplied for ancillary combat support even if an imperial Victory could be carried in those days none would say with certainty when it would be and if the resulting Conquest would at the end of however many years or Decades of War be even worth the struggle in the first place this was simply a conflict the Imperium could ill afford if it could afford it at all and now that their existence had been revealed to Zana any obvious delay in integration would clearly be read by the isolated Forge as a Prelude to Invasion forcing both sides into a game of arms race brinksmanship that would only delay an inevitable conflagration negotiation then was the only option and it is highly likely the zany and Magi were well aware of the favorable position they were in to leverage whatever they wanted from the clearly eager but wary Imperium after a tense several years of negotiations the Treaty of compliance was signed between the Lords of Zana and the representatives of the emperor with the approval but barely disguised anger of the fabricator General it was one of if not the most generous series of Accords signed by the early Imperium remaining a curious artifact of those Halcyon times even to this day Zana would retain its sovereignty within the Empire falling under the Jew right and jurisdiction of the mechanicum and its defuse Byzantine web of feudal obligations however its Secrets would be its own there was no legal compulsion for Zanna to divest its technological and scientific knowledge to Mars explaining the Roth of the fabricator general for having been cheated out what he no doubt desired as a kingly prize Zana was free to conduct its secrets and Affairs provided it paid due diligence to the precepts and restrictions upon technological development as demanded by the machine God and Emperor both although the question of how this would be enforced was not directly addressed something of a diplomatic massaging one imagines in return for this Zanna would arm and Supply the great Crusade and provide Harbor and Garrison repair and refit for all expeditionary fleets that either requested or required it the Accords were for the Imperium incredibly well timed no sooner had they been concluded and the great Crusade would encounter its most devastating conflict yet the rang Dan zenosides the tagmata of Zana devised of Magi of the local Ordo reductor hold Legions of cybernetica automata and supported by two newly formed Titan legios volturum and kaidianos raised from the massive God engine strength of the forge joined the first Legion Dark Angels in the fires of that first zenocide that the Imperium survived this war as well as the two xenosides to come is thanks in no small part to both the forces of Zanna and its productive might as arms armor and armaments all flowed from the forge to arm the desperate Imperial forces holding back the zenos tides Not only was the Imperium saved but Kanye operators within it noted that thanks to the conflict the Empire had a much greater idea of the capabilities their new ally possessed not to mention the fact that the xenocides had bled and bloodied to the forge of a large part of its initial military disposition the hood would enter the latter half of the great Crusade a diminished remnant of its former strength Zana nevertheless retained an almost legendary equality across the Imperium its secretive Magi its Galactic isolation its apparently Peerless technology all yet continued in both popular imagination and reality both but with that original Independence retained through absolute and total observance to the stipulation of the Treaty of compliance rumors and they are want to do persistent however Whispers of sinister experiments forbidden research and hidden heresies conducted out there in the dark upon that island in the void but given the lack of ease of scrutiny they remained just rumors eclipsed to very visibly by the quite evident macabrities of the Magi of serum or VOS in this way did Zana persist comfortably isolated perfectly diligent quietly distrusted in the Years immediately preceding the heresy subsequent to the Daven incident it is known that Horus lubrical more Master of the Imperium dispatched agents galaxy-wide in order to secure our allies for his upcoming insurrection the war master was a being of towering strategic intelligence and knowing that all such entreaties were able to be made under the cover of total and utter trust in his loyalties these agents however did not appear to reach Zanna before the istvan atrocity and the outbreak of hostilities between traitor and Loyalist forces the ruling polity of Zana the vodian consistory appeared initially to not take a single side when pressed their only statement was that the heresy was an internal matter for the great Crusades military and as per their remit under the Treaty of compliance would continue to supply the Imperium while retaining independence of political sovereignty and taking no direct involvement what zany and tagmata were abroad across the galactic reaches were quietly withdrawn to their home system where possible although the same could not be said for the menopause of eligio's volturum and kaidianos nor especially the forces of night household malinox engines of whom had been present during the scouring of Prospero and were believed even now to be at the van of the war Master's forces shipments and the supply chain from the forage were initially uninterrupted despite the news of horus's treachery continuing to Ferry the wealth of Zana to both loyalist and traitor forces these however began to dwindle even before the coming of the ruined storm until finally they ceased there was no Imperial reason for this Rogue Traders and Charters captains as well as scattered loyalist elements in the western fringes reported no warp root tumults Ash was afflicting the galactic core and East repeated demands were made from officials loyal to either Emperor or War master and even those within the rapidly thundering mechanicum too for the confirmation of zanna's loyalty to their cause all of which rebuked with the same denial of involvement and the same called courtesy of claiming the heresy was an imperial Internal Affairs matter around this time it was reported a macro Arc convoys warned Terra disappeared in zannah's near local volume as well as a rogue Trader flotilla bearing the Eye of Horus neither were losses of any critical worth but they were noted for the location it is unknown whether either side decided to press the vodian consistory for confirmation of warp readings pointing to immaterial issues that would have destroyed these fleets but one suspects that if they had the answer would have been predictable the first move by Zana that wasn't any way overt would not take place until late 008 m30 some two and a half years after the drop side Massacre when a tag MATA in the forges Ashen bone panoply intervened in a battle on a mining World known as gilder's Grave on the western edges of the vikodak sector these forces drove back the traitor aligned Naval blockade that had isolated the world with stunning rapidity only to turn their guns on its loyalist Defenders massacring them to a man and looting the entire planet of its extracted resources notably all of its excavated Rare Earth minerals as well as the entirety of its macro engineering Machinery all before disappearing into the void this pattern would be repeated on numerous occasions zanyan tagmata performing calculated raids on loyalist and traitor holdouts of value ideally in the middle of ongoing conflicts where they would be least expected only to disappear back to their home system appeared to be utterly uninterested in claiming any territory outside of the Zana system merely in acquiring resources although to what use they would be only speculation could be drawn it is noteworthy that Imperial assayers predicted that Zanna had long before contact run down its stock of raw materials PlanetSide and was somewhat dependent on incoming natural resources to maintain productivity either way the higher echelons of bottle traitor and Loyalist commands draw two conclusions either Zanna was uninterested in anything save its own Affairs and was indeed a validly neutral or it was simply biding its time in order to give a clear Victor in the conflict a chance to emerge presented a problem yes but also an opportunity and both sides dedicated probe Expeditions in order to render more information mysterious forage was an issue for both it was true but was a prize nevertheless Sinister a reputation and story it passed not least its vital intervention in the rangdan xenosides rendered it for both sides a potentially deadly Ally and an equally deadly Prospect of an enemy reports from the Expeditions clearly revealed what Terror and Horus had feared and expected dozens of macro carriers were extant in the asteroid belt that ringed the gas giant Zanna one and many more likely were concealed within its Rocky ring between them and the Forge World of Zana II there was a constant traffic of cargo loaders this massive military buildup could be utilized for one of three outcomes by the vodian consistory itself or to present to whichever side they had decided to ship this great Boon to after all for all the storage capabilities these conveyors possessed it appeared for all the world that whatever was being contained within was being readied for delivery to a prospective client [Music] both sides moved quickly upon this Revelation on Terra the praetorian rogel Dorne Primark of the seventh Legion Imperial fists issued a very publicly visible declaration Zana was traitorous pradicia blast to the Imperium and Loyalist mechanicum and would exist Evermore under the penalty of death for refusing to declare for Terror and Mars the same time another more official Imperial dispatch was sent via the Agents of malcador the sigilite offering the vodian consistory clemency from Dorn's writ should Zana pledge however loudly or quietly they desired for the emperor and for whatever arms and armaments they were stockpiling to be delivered immediately and with all haste to Terror to serve in the praetorian's fortification of Saul and the surrounding segmentum War Master however it's okay for a subtler route in this Rogue of canny political operating horus did not dispatch one of his true mechanicum emissaries these Magi who had declared for His Banner saw themselves as the true Lords of the red planet and while their aims for the future of their polity were far from what the mechanicum had been under its partnership with Terra Horus reasoned that the coldness the Martian envoys to Zana had been received with in the past was reason enough to try a different route the planet potentiary of the war master was a davonite large priest one of those strange animalistic cultists that had borne Horus through his recovery upon that fell world and in dire retrospect were clearly devotees of the ruinous powers of the dark Pantheon identified by panicked loyalist agents as one unvikar noon he was quite unlike what any would have expected a bizarre barbarian-looking individual bedecked with feathers and bones belonging his appearance however his words were Kenny civilized and above all honeyed in contrast with the Agents of the sigilite he did not make any demands only offers this was no stick like the Declaration of Doran there was only a carrot on vicar noon offered wounds it was a tactic often leveraged by the war master in his dealings with the mechanicum just as his Primark brothers and elements of the Legion as astartes had been one to His Banner by their various displeasures and hatreds of aspects of the Imperium and its rule so too did Horus exploit the Grievances of the mechanicum forges that were historically at odds with Mars cyclotraith and serum for instance are perfect examples worlds and systems won by Horus by offering them independence of rule and experimentation free from the restrictions yoked upon them by the red planet in many ways the diffuse and fractious mechanicum made this a far easier task than the same amongst the Imperium what with its complex web of feudalism being no difficult thing to Sunder with Promises of less responsibilities and more freedom anvakar noon profered such freedom to the Lords of Zana pointing to the crimes committed against them by the Imperium with its tides and demands the losses the tagumatizana had endured fighting the emperor's enemies and the diligence of how they had supplied the Imperium but the lack of gratitude the terror bade towards them under horace's new Imperium the adversary promised the Accords Zanna would be Allied under would be far more to their liking but none of the ignorant meddling of Martian law or the heavy-handed bands the emperor had placed upon their research and development all the secrets of science they wished to uncover would be Theirs to play with horuses Envoy promised just so long as the forge would Supply the war master in his struggle to oust the tyrannical emperor the details of the new Accords were however far more complicated in their establishment and it was confirmable the devodian consistory even after an agreement in implication had been reached with the Agents of the war Master continued in bad faith or at least opportunism to liaise with the emissaries of the sigilite playing both sides for seemingly as long as possible however the dye had been cast xanna's future was more clearly aligned with the freedom offered by this davonite priest and in a stroke readilent of ancient contracts this new era for the forge would be sealed with an exchange of gifts of course the full might of zanyan Industry would be rendered unto Horus as well as the bulk of the armaments the forge had been stockpiling but in a stroke that surprised observers the consistory announced its intention to deliver to the war Master a truly unique gift or rather three of them the trio of ordinatus the classification ordinatus is a term reserved by the mechanicum for the most powerful land-based weapons platforms they were capable of maintaining and developing typically mounted on massive tract motility carriages and shielded to almost impervious degrees against outside attack and ordinatus is a weapon whose power eclipses all others Beyond those mounted on a kilometers long spacecraft took no consistent pattern it was a designation and a class rather than a nominative rule Weaponry could take the form of matter Cyclone projectors Rad conflagrators or Magna beams but what United them was their sheer potency and destructive potential these devices were city slaughterers and engine Slayers Creations capable of turning the tide of battle with a single shot or bringing down even the mightiest God engines of the Titan Legions whose power they often outclassed ordinati of the primaris grade were things ancient indeed unique creations of the Dark Age of Technology whose artifice was lost to time and whose rights of Maintenance were a secret known only to a scant fuel or denata of the minora's grade were only minoris in comparison to the uneclipsable power of the primaris grade to even dub the minorus denigrates the potential for civilization ending Annihilation They Carried their manufacture during the years of the Great Crusade were reserved to only the most advanced of Forge worlds steeped in ancient and secret knowledges and even in this case the creation was a process of decades a painstakingly difficult process fraught with danger and undertaken rarely this then was the Boon Zanna was to present to Horus three ordinatas eulitors battle ready and carrying Sonic Destructor cannons that surpassed in lethality any single device in the entire traitor Arsenal even The diamantine Siege weapons bequeathed in Ignorance by the lion to Fourth Legion Primark Porter prior to the drop side Massacre the gift was kingly indeed a staggering statement on the part of Zana and one whose motivations must be examined further one is of the mind that such a move was almost certainly a stab in the sight of Mars and more particularly her fabricator General kelbor Hal sworn to the war Master for his own aims Hal had retained every single ordinatus he controlled and that was controlled by his mechanicum fiefdoms and satrapies releasing to the war Master only what devices automata or tagmata he deemed acceptable with this Trio Zanna made a move unlike any other mechanic and polity had and likely did so to seek to supplant or weaken the fabricator General in the eyes of the war master and to become the preeminent Forge to be relied upon once horus's new Imperium was birthed foreign the Handover of the ordinati was to be conducted with full ceremonial Majesty named nepotax mythrax and asheracs after ancient Terran divinities the weapons would be first demonstrated to the war Master's chosen Emissary on the dead Moon of Zanna to Symphony a war world utilized by the Magi of the forge as weapons and Technology testing grounds the envoy in question would this time now 009 m30 be no priest of Daven but a member of the sons of Horus themselves Rexel coridon Captain within the elite catulan rivers of the legion's first company was a bloody figure who had won much Acclaim for his butchering of his former astartes Brothers during the purging of loyalist elements on istvan 3. corridon's status had only increased following the dropside massacre becoming quite the rising star within the Legion for his efficacy in leading traitor compliance actions across segmentum obscurus he was known to carry the favor of the war Master with the pride that equaled his brutal efficiency and was clearly selected for the role of Emissary for both The Prestige he represented as a member of the legion's first company but also for the sheer violence he implied by his very existence both of these were to be reinforced by The Vessel the boar coradon to the Forge World itself agarion class Grand Cruiser named kikatrice tyrannus seized as a prize from the Imperium during the Battle of Portmore her Hull previously a finally wrought artifice of white and gold was now scoured Black by the fires of war that the sons of Horus and koradon specifically had flung her might into fitting symbol for the once fine warships Fall From Grace at the hands of her new Masters within her escort flotilla was born for isos class Fleet tenders armed transports within whose holds was held the gift of the war Master for the vodian consistory the dead and destroyed of istan itself and scores of other battlefields that had felt the Wrath of the sons of Horus Susanna the war Master presented nothing less than the knowledge of the legiones astartes Torn to Pieces shredded to wreckage but with all the secrets of the emperor's Gene craft and artifice there for the Magi to pick apart like carrion Birds there was no collection of detritus it was lore of a Priceless quantity Feast for inquiring minds now Unshackled from the rules that had previously bound them it was an absolute statement of the new paradigm Zanna would occupy in partnership with Horus lubrical yet as history would so often have it this was not to be the end of the story Revelations unexpected lay in zanna's future the mysteries of Zana have been revealed to thee and if they have not one would highly recommend parsing the previous record entry in this Duality as therein you shall find the elucidation needed to proceed further along the path of the Curious tale of this most Sinister of Forge worlds the pieces had been set and the board was in play Zana had offered itself to Horus lubrical traitorous War master in exchange for his Boons and a place of Primacy at his side perhaps indeed one prestigious enough to challenge the paramounty of Mars as the lead Arbiter of all things within the new mechanicum to achieve this Zanna would not only Grant lupercal the surplus of arms and armaments it had been greedily stockpiling since the outbreak of the heresy but a trio of ordinatus ulator war machines Arcane and devastating mobile weapons platforms of unspeakable power yet for all their aims and machinations politicking and backstabbing for all their assurances in the power of their Forge their technology their place within the Galaxy things did not go quite as the Lords of Zana had intended now then this be in second part a story of that benighted Forge World the retribution of Terror that was about to befall them the Fateful conflict known as zazala incursion the Handover of the ordinata to the Agents of the war master was to be The Pact that would seal zannah's future it was an event devodian consistory intended to deliver with all due reverence for us too knew the power of a deal and the sheer Boon the war machines represented and accordingly had sent a captain of his first company reavers raxel coradon at the head of a flotilla of 16th Legion ships in the captured Grand Cruiser kikatrice tyrannus Cordon was escorting the war Master's own gift a treasure Trove of captured technology and biology from every single loyalist astarty's Legion stage was set for a summit that looked to shift the balance of the heresy in the western Galactic reaches but fate out of the Clans as warmasters ships Hove into the orbit of the Titanic gas giant Zanna won on Final Approach to the forage World itself allspec's grids aboard ship and PlanetSide blared emergency signals indicating a sudden in-system warp translation pinpoint into a volume almost insanely close to the inner system's gravity well a forced translation of scores of Warships was confirmed by the traitor Fleet the incoming vessels made absolutely no attempt to hide who and what they were immediately identifiable as Imperial and Loyalist with their choice of real space entry a statement in and of itself here now was Tara's retribution for to attempt translation so close to the gravitic alignment of the local star and its planets was a maneuver rarely attempted for how lunatic dangerous it was at the van was a ship of Simply Peerless pedigree the amphion at l'oreana class Grand Battleship whose Mark was typically reserved for serving as flagships of the Legion primarks while the emperor himself the amphion was one of the Strategic linchpins of battlefleet solar and her presence here at the edge of The Intergalactic Gulf represented one thing the Judgment of the praetorian of Terror roguel Dorne machine minds of Zanna process the Deluge of sensorium data within human rapidity conferring with Magi who likewise conferred amongst their fellows through new spheric Telly links they confirmed Beyond doubt that there were now five enemy Capital ships inbound with a host of escort Cruisers and frigates as well as a dozen transport craft whose emission patterns were utterly inconsistent with ships of their class to the automata processes of Zana this indicated in Stark terms the process of the raid for raid it was this was no Invasion the transports were not loaded with troops but Munitions their reactors already running hot beyond their thresholds suicide craft fire ships kill vessels for the forge's own macro conveyors and those of the traitors for all the fleet destroying power of a gloriana-class battleship the amphian was there to primarily cover these vessels on their final desperate attack runs dorne's decision was clear brutally clear as is his character Terra had lost Zanna and now it was imperative for the loyalist cause that the wealth of the forge be denied to the war master and his ilk the entire Zanna system reacted as akin to a biological system detecting a bacterium across the volume everything from Patrol automata to monitor ships to battle arcs awoke with blinding speed altering their trajectories and running attack Vector calculations upon The Intruders the full processing power of the system's worth of cogitators bent to tabulating and re-tabulating millions of tactical projections within the asteroid belt of the gas giant void servators broke from their steel containment holds giant automata cephalopods the size of frigates blistering with the mechanical tentacles igniting dead reactors and now powering towards the loyalist Fleet despite the skill of the Invaders and their Navigators the point of translation left them hours from their targets and the Ford world had plenty of time to react to this intrusion into their territory naturally the sons of Horus vessels blitzed the zanyan new sphere with hails and Confirmation requests demanding updates on just what the consistory intended to do about the Invaders despite of course the very clear sensor readings on their own ships confirming the apocalyptic response of both void weaponry and Fleet disposition that the forage was now throwing at the loyalists the Magi of Zana apologized profusely to their guests stating that under no circumstances would the formalities be delayed or interrupted nor with the demonstration of the ordinati coradon was scheduled to attend upon Zanna to Symphony the ongoing situation was now another demonstration that Zannah was being forced to display one of their own strength in the face of the enemy themselves a test unasked for but nevertheless risen to lest the war Masters agents developed second thoughts about their forges capabilities or their commitment they would there could be no loss of face here so even as the system aroused itself like a nest of serpents the Accords continued to proceed as the vodian consistory had laid them out as per Arrangement the gifts of Horus lupacal made planetfall at the main forges of Zana 2. secna escorial and tephra emuv assumed to be one to defuse possible tensions amongst the ranking Magi of the regime by ensuring the carrion spoils were divvied up equanimously the treasure would of course remain sealed within the various transport barges until Zara had fulfilled its end of the bargain locked under coded key numericals known only to the war Masters agents meanwhile the 16th Legion cleaved into geosynchronous orbit over the testing ranges of Zanna to Symphony the flotilla with the barbarous kikatrice taranas sheltered from the waves of Munitions rocketing out system by the bulk of the planetoid the sons of Horus Detachment made planetfall in force far more Force indeed than the Lords of Zana had expected while not atypical for the sons of Horus turned their belly Coast nature it was nevertheless judged within newspheric communion has a mark of displeasure at the ongoing situation in the system as well as a statement of expectation this was the power of Horus Zara must respond in kind to prove itself worthy of the war Masters beneficence standing ready to meet the delegation it is understood that the zhanian Magi were represented by Arch Majors procurator Gillum reijan the prime Arbiter of the United voidian consistory this is largely all that can be corroborated about the meeting itself it is easy to verify the participants of such a trees in a Summit far less so to establish the nature of their parlay let alone its content that being said what does remain suggests the encounter was far from cordial the sons of Horus were at this point in their existence given to brutish Candor that cleaved two belligerents and arrogance which was Ill Reese with the cold Precision to formality favored by zany and Magi the presence of ankhavar noon the davenite priest that had first brokered communication between the forge and the war master was a curious Oddity that nevertheless managed to soothe the rancor of his Legion Masters and placate the Magi mentioning nothing of the ongoing loyalist Force powering towards them nor the Munitions automata and Starships being flung back both sides were eager to proceed with the demonstration and passed the strained pleasantries and thus the Lords of Zana reveal to the war Masters Planet potentiaries etablo Macabre indeed the Magi had built a false War for their guests an enemy comprised of thousands of slave soldiers ranging from abh Human trials to chattel's dock of the forges captured loyalist prisoners even bad secularist divisions or the products of zannah's greedy resource raids and incredible industry all bore one thing in common the suicide collar around their necks devious device capable of remote detonation with a new spheric whim of the Magi they were slaved to equipped with everything from Small Arms to Common patterns of Imperial Battle line tanks all of these slaves had been injected with a series of chemical and narcotic stimulants to spike their aggression centers and all had been ordered to Simply do one thing survive the gates to the prison Forge rent open bequeathing onto the battlefield the Triad of monstrosities that were the loci of the entire event nepotax use your ax and mythrax the ordinati with the neurotropic pulse the Magi ordered their prisoners forward and he who resisted knew it was death any with the kin to see what was coming new obedience was also death observing the entire thing from within armored cabins of their Mastodon transports were the sons of Horus void shielded against the spattering Small Arms fire of the slave Army Helm lenses panning and zooming to where the Weaponry of Zanna had perched itself surging forward the desperate charges of the Magi swept towards the ordinati firing their guns and losing random unguided explosive projectiles against the shielded weapons Platforms in vain it was a forlorn hope that they may somehow win their freedom but no time was wasted by the zhanians they saw little needs to build tension engaging in theatrics merely to run the demonstration to the letter the weapons spoke and did so with a voice that broke the world Sonic Destructor Canon's function according to what one has found amongst prescribed writings within the indeptus mechanicus as data stacks by collating through its generators and focusing disk Sonic energy of such a potent waveform that it can rupture the bonds of matter within said waves path the ground before them was recorded to have undulated with the blast wave Solid Rock moving as akin to a roiling sea the firing of such weapons produced a sound that annihilated all other sound into silence so loud it breached the boundaries of what can even be considered noise bodies at the center of the waveform were simply turned into a Red Mist and that mist evaporated into steam by sheer crushing Force those closer to the edges had their bodies pulverized beyond all possible recognition any who are at the periphery and managed to survive did so with either their bodies or minds or indeed both shattered their very selves physically and mentally broken by the force of Destruction that had just been Unleashed upon them One Barrage had broken the slave Army's resolve utterly but the ordinati had only begun the colored Chapel of Zanna had been enlaced in defense of an artificial cityscape one that had been built and destroyed and built again at the whims of the Magi of the forge and their weapons testing requirements streaming forth from it now goaded again by kill signals from the collars was a second slave tide this one comprising of assorted armored columns in heavy infantry divisions no doubt having witnessed the annihilation of the previous engagement if such Slaughter can even be referred to as such the tempo of this attack on the ordinatai was far more fevered and desperate but alas for naught the unitors spoke and all was unto dust The Killing would proceed for several hours hence again and again the slaves of the Magi were brought before the ordinati in various combinations combined Arms Mobile infantry jump troops automata divisions even super heavy armored and self-propelled artillery tanks of rarer Legion marks all were simply snuffed out of existence by the voices of the ordinary it was a charade by this account a masquerade of a real battle in realistic terms devices such as ordinatus Weapons could not have succeeded on their own against a decently LED and coordinated Force of Arms but that of course was not the point the demonstration was just that a demonstration a chance to Revel in the destruction across the torn and sundered Battlefield a bloodbath of Staggering proportions painted by the destructive potential of the weaponry one expects that the traitors War Master would have been most pleased as a bloody ruin of the ordinati was unfolding a similar cataclysm was also proceeding in Silence of the Void the system defense Fleet of Zana had engaged the attacking loyalist ships spearheaded by the amphion the mechanical vessels were charged with extreme urgency from the forge with destroying the loyalist fireships destined for the system's Surplus supplies and All Ships In the attacking Fleet knew their protection was the highest priority Imperial ships formed a wedge formation with the anfion of the Vanguard the weaponry and sheer brute force of the Gloriana class trusted to carve a path through any that stood before her as the Loyalists continued in full burn towards Anna her escorts frantically kept pace and tallies attempting wherever possible to maneuver into gaps left within their lines or torn open by a rabid servitor ships and monitor vessels often this would necessitate these ships using their own voids and even superstructures to protect the fire ships from incoming Munitions and although the punishing batteries from the amphion and they themselves wrought terrible retribution upon the mechanicum Defenders the hosts of Zanna were many and those of the Imperium quite a bit more finite the first loyalist casualty was the battleship duken's Fury first falling out of formation its Hull burning from scores of Lance attacks shortly thereafter joined in fiery death by the Specter of IO whose crew and arms men had been utterly overrun by boarding parties of phthalux and castelax automata launched from a half dozen xenian transport box the only reprieve for the Imperium was the falling silent of the defense platforms and ground batteries of the Forge World itself who after hurling hours of Munitions towards the attacking Fleet had bled their ammunition silos dry and were testing the operational limits of their barrels and firing Chambers as resupply orders were hurriedly prioritized it was nevertheless clear that the battle would now be won and lost with the ships in play but his call consensus across the new sphere held the attrition rate was swinging in zanna's favor that was of course until a completely unprecedented occurrence for the second time that solar cycle warp incursion detection engines screamed in acknowledgment of a new and unaccountable signal had this been in the system's outer reaches it would been perhaps indicative of loyalist reinforcements to the oncoming Fleet it was not however far from us the signal was instead emerging from an impossibly close volume of the gas giant Zanna won queries were flashed between all specs Magi at the speed of thought for surely this was a malfunction only for Harsh binaric blurts confirming that all Machinery was operating within wholly demanded parameters being their answer no a ship had translated into the atmosphere of the planet itself totally within the now depleted defense Cordon of the forge's batteries all possible ships had burned out of the planet's local volume to intercept the loyalist Fleet there was none anywhere within even a proximus interception range the ship Rose from the mark cleanly and efficiently with early visual logs parsing a sable dark superstructure of a unique disposition this made identification for the Magi of Zana easy although and one may editorialize here hopefully terrifying even for their cold machine miles unique was this vessel in so many ways for she was not merely the creation of the Imperium nor even mechanical she was a ship older still older than all record this craft had been raised from the ice of Ganymede the moon of Jupiter in distant Saul it was a treasure of the Dark Age of Technology bequeathed by the emperor himself to his most lethal destroyers at the very beginning of the great Crusade she was the dark Sovereign archaeo Cruiser of the first Legion Dark Angels to experienced acolytes it should come as little surprise that the first Legion were in possession of such a vessel the angels as the first combined start his Mainline combat Force had a storied history since the unification Wars as being the emperor's angels of death and had proven themselves time and time again to be capable of meeting out his most righteous Annihilation upon whatsoever promised mankind death destruction or worse the Lord of lightning had provided the first since its earliest days with an arsenal of technology that vastly outstripped impotently and lethality those of many other Legions and this extended to their Fleet amongst the Starships the Dark Angels were able to call upon were Mark's truly unique in the Galaxy Relic ships of the Dark Age of Technology whose methods of creation had been lost in the downfall of that last epoch but whose weapon systems granted them a deadliness that belied their size what is of course surprising is the presence of the dark Sovereign here at Zana at this vital moment certainly the appearance of the cruiser as well as in the volume of her translation added a completely unseen series of factors into the defense of the Forge World whose Magi even as she Rose from the atmosphere of Zana one furiously re-ran their calculation torrents over what this could potentially mean on the surface of Zana to Symphony the artificial war was immediately halted as a conducting Magi with archmagos procurator raijan at their Center in loaded this new data with alarm seeing as how the only fighting vessels within range were those belonging to the guests of the consistory Rajan turned a position the sons of Horus to engage their erstwhile cousins he intended to do so through the voice of uncavar noon the davonite priest only to find that the priest was no longer there a different figure occupied his place one who now plunged an electroshock Barb into the archmagios's body as a massive figure of Rexel coridon stepped forward crushing the tech priest's skull with his fist amidst the Thunder and fury of the incoming loyalist Fleet and the rising tide of Devastation the dark Sovereign was only just beginning to reap upon the now spent orbital defense platforms of the Forge World the deception upon Zana to Symphony went initially unnoticed and this was all the opportunity the deceivers upon its surface needed to begin their operation in earnest Rexel coradon was obviously not who he claimed to be nor indeed were any within his Entourage from the astartes to the devonite acolytes will forgive me in my misdirection and to this point it was simply a bit too delicious to deprive you of the surprise zany and Magi must no doubt have also experienced the assades corridon was in reality indrid har a former captain of the 12th Legion world leaders called Riven Hound by many who had grown to either admire or dread his reputation har was one of the oldest members of the 12th Legion a Terran ascended to a start his status during the unification Wars themselves before the legion was known as the world eaters before even they were known as the war hounds an unusually large Marine with a far higher than average degree of physical prowess he had risen to prominence during those early days with a marked lethality even amongst a legion of superlative butchers during the Revolt of the date tar for instance he had dispatched a renegade Thunder warrior in single combat by breaking the gene Warriors neck even while each of the brutes fellows had required the strength and skills of four to five authorities to bring down following the legion's reunification with its Primark angron har had been one of the few members of the newly renamed Eaters of Worlds to not accept the implantation of the so-called butcher's Nails the cybernetic implants fused the Rouge of the primark's brain and by whose actions the aggression centers of the Mind were continually stimulated har had declared such a gesture empty a position that had won him little favor within the reorganizing Legion and one that would find him placed effectively into exile seconded to a group of astartes drawn from all Legions for clandestine activities at the behest of none other than malcador the sigilites har would spend the remainder of the great Crusade upon such missions at the time of the heresies outbreak the world eater renounced both his Legion and his Primark consigning himself to the fate of a black shield a legionary without a legion swearing as he did so an oath of death that would see him pledge to atone in action and body for the crimes of his jeans sire and Earth's Wild Brothers until the time of his perishing It is believed that Android har was accompanied by fellow black Shields upon Zana to Symphony and though it cannot be directly confirmed if the Agents of the sigilite were present such a conclusion would not be considered at least by Yours Truly to be Out Of Reach while the formation of malcador's knights errant had not yet occurred in any true sense the presence of a shape-shifting agent leads one to suspect the hand of the assassinorum clade caledus whose deployment was typically sanctioned by the Imperial master of Assassins an office held by none other than the situellite himself this parties however were cast offs in a similar vein to Har they had renounced their ties to their former Legions and primarks in disgust over their traitorous actions the disguise as the sons of Horus had been totaled clearly at some point prior to the Zana incursion indrid har and his black Shields had both killed raxal coradon and seized the kikatrice tyrannus from the now dead captain and had managed to do so without alerting the command echelons of the 16th Legion the Loyalists are stories immediately seized the prizes within their grasp all three of the ordinati once destined for the armies of Horus lupercal and added to their reveal by corrupting the slave colors of the remaining zanyan prisoners with data gin torn from the banks of the still twitching body of the archmagos procurator the slaves freed from the baleful neurotropic influence of their rapidly dwindling Magi handlers radamuck adding to the chaos of the scene as the wet wear of the Guardian automata struggled to compensate for the sudden abundance of enemies in their midst in orbit the Kika tries tyrannus maneuvered to block herself from the attentions and potential retribution of the surface batteries of Zana proper placing herself on the dark side of to Symphony and refusing all hails that requested and laterally demanded she engaged the Dark Angels her launch Bays crashed open as she began a full-scale drop assault on the test bed Moon dropping a company-sized astarty's force in the bellies of screaming storm bird and Thunderhawk gunships endridhar's plan was preceding a piece the first Legion meanwhile was laying into the defenseless and scattering bulk haulers within the rings of Zanna one as a predator would amongst livestock the macro carriers preferred by the mechanicum and of course Zara were colossal barks the new no war merely the long plotting cargo runs they had intended to spend their entire service history undertaking they had little in the way of shields they had nothing in the way of Weaponry even if they had not been caught at anchor drives de-powered reactors running cool we would not have been able even at full burden to outrun a warship especially not to the one that was traveling towards them the blade of the Void black cruiser carved through them as a knife through paper hundreds of vessels were sliced by contemptuous land strikes or set burning and wrecked by a light barrage of macro cannon fire the dark Sovereign reeved through the flotilla annihilating her way to the central targets the oldest mechanic embarks Zanna possessed unlike the carriers burning in their surrounding volume these ships had in their numbers some teeth to resist the predations of the first legion's Cruiser and once a firing solution was locked they wasted no time in doing so The Barrage had little effect on the oncoming ship whose technology and systems were of an age older and Stranger Than even the one that had wrought the mechanicum ships but her Target was almost as esoteric as she was a bizarre mechanicum drum on the crystalline form that loyalist echelons had only been able to establish the name of mu-571 undeniably of zenos origin this Roman was just one of the many Mysteries zazanian priests had half kept hidden from the rest of the Galaxy the weapons fire of the dark Sovereign ceased as all of the vessel's Arcane reactor output was channeled to Shields and engines the latter to catch her Quarry the former to ensure its protectors could not arrest the hunt moo 571 burn the engines at fall to try and escape the oncoming blade but it was for naught The Sovereign clipped her top side demolishing the dromon's shields with the sheer force of kinetic energy and sending the vessel spinning hopelessly out of inertial control its proximity allowed her to deliver a lethal payload too for within the bowels of Moos 571 suddenly materialized teleport spores and the strange ships deck plating soon reverberated with the pounding adamantine steps of dark angel terminators what was now to forever be known as Susanna incursion was fully unfolding upon the benighted Forge World itself the new sphere was in what was as close to chaos as a consistory could reasonably permit date of bursts flashed across the planet near instantaneously the crania of hundreds of Magi running hot and burning through coolant fluids as they process the scale of what was happening no doubt amidst the constant inloading and X loading of binoric information was coded many an accusation of dereliction of Duty or process or obligations and equally there is little doubt that heads or cranial extrusions were and would rule for this mechanicum of Zanna may have been called secluded in Alien even by the standards of their kind but they were still human and they had been forced into a coroner unlike any they had either expected or could have possibly predicted the vodian consistory managed to maintain order however and despite the fury contained in the lojai streams of each senior Majors resolved to focus now on defending what could yet be defended the loyalist Fleet headed by the amphien had been unexpected but by the calculations run globally defeatable regardless of the cost that may have been incurred the arrival of an archaeo Cruiser bearing Legion troops no less and fully within the nominal defense volume of the forge that was another matter entirely factoring that into the sudden betrayal of the sons of Horus now fully understood by the consistory the Lords of Zana had lost not only the spatial volume of Zanna one and their precious Surplus stockpiles but also the planetoid of xanatus symphony and the three ordinati destined for the war Master's armies newspheric consensus was reached rapidly although not nearly at the speed that the Gestalt had reached when reacting to the initial invasion override signals were fired into the defense picket ships that were currently savaging the amphion and her escorts calculations predicted to the withdrawal for withdrawal it was would be a costly one but necessary in the face of now not one were two completely unchallenged Capital ships closer to PlanetSide the dark Sovereign and the kikatrice tyrannus both were currently occupied clearly but both were unknown factors pursuing unaccountable aims and in the face of the sheer power they represented the Magi had no other sound choice a paranoid decision may be but pragmatic in many respects the idea that there could yet be more loyalists in hiding in Disguise or on their way in system ruled the minds of the consistory they had suffered not one but three separate and wholly unique catastrophes this day they would not suffer more catching them unprepared and yet they would what occurred next is even more difficult to account for in parsing the records of what remains about the Zana incursion these even have largely been pieced together by predecessors to Yours Truly from scattered Vox logs and corrupted or specs greeds and fragmented video recordings what best work has been done was penned in the Years prior to the siege of Terror by morphidiaturol an exiled azanian Majors who survived the heresy by petitioning the praetorian for clemency in exchange for information it is thanks to her seminal work the paradoxes of bainoric loyalty being in part the Penance of the Lost with diverse discussions pertaining to the mechanicum that was that one is even able to formulate one's own Chronicle and we have a hint of what unfolded upon the surface of xanna too as the conflict raged throughout its system according to turo's work and as acolytes will of course remember the war Masters carry in cargo of Legion as a start his corpses in technology had been delivered to the major Forge star ports of the consistory lying under lock and key until the demonstration of the ordinati was concluded with the sons of Horus that had delivered them now revealed to in fact be the black Shields of indrid Horror it was only a can a few Magi that questioned just what these cargo haulers may contain and despite the paranoia that was now ruling the vodian consistory despite the resolve of the news fair to never be caught unaware again from within these containers came now the pounding of armored fists and the tearing of metal from within they were rent and out well the dead walked in silent Advance came astartes clad in the livery of the Raven guard the iron hands the salamanders the betrayed and shattered Legions who fell victim to the war Master on Esteban 5. but also others the yellow of the Imperial fists the pale plate of the white scars this Revenant Army was accompanied by a ramshackle series of armored vehicles and tracked weapons batteries even Dreadnought chassis the defense automata and the ad sekularis Trials of the port were immediately overwhelmed while the consistory its multifarious oculi fixed firmly on orbital defense once again found a foe in their midst and once again whose nature was wholly unexpected even one satagma of the forges the individual major and automata and Machina menopause that made up the mechanicum's tagmata rushed to respond to this fresh invasion they found themselves facing a wholly unstammable tide this was no ordinary a start his foe but one of disturbing and unnatural resilience the legionaries would lose limbs to molar bolt cannon fire but continue to fight they displayed little issue in the wake of rad Chargers or chem rounds armor that should have been rendered cored and dead by dozens of last Cannon rounds continued to power forward grinding automata under their tracks worse at least from a strategic point of view was that there was no means of communication to interrupt no network for the zanyan Magi to interrupt with data gin novox of any kind the Army was silent but appeared to have only one goal to kill until they could not Fanning out through the forge veins of Zana the zagola astartes did just that they killed and killed and killed Zanna too was now burning [Music] 15 hours since the amphian and her Fleet had broken from the materium the previously unblemished volume under the rule of Zana was in Ruins the fleet of the forge disengaging and burning hard for the orbit of their Homeworld was operating at only 33 percent of its starting disposition having sustained dire casualties and damage in its costly disengagement with the oncoming loyalist Armada although of course the Armada was on coming no more the amphien and what remained of her escorts too disengaged hulls scored and pitted from hours of punishing battle but her fire ships no longer acquired for in the rings of Zanna one the once Mighty Surplus stock that had been their target was burning over 70 percent of the arms and armaments that had been destined for the war Masters armies had been destroyed by the passage of the Dark Angels who even now were running hard for the system's closest Mandeville point the strange bulk of mu-571 accompanying them as a prize on the surface of Zana 2 itself the Revenant Army had finally been halted but at the cost of mobilizing the entirety of the world's tag matter and its bonded nighthouse malinax the Sinister Pilots of this night house were combat veterans all many having recently returned from service in Horus aligned expeditionary fleets but their prosecution of the astartes Invaders ultimately would cost them over half of the suits they possessed there was no surrender called for but the Invaders had not even made a hint of communication anyway their progress was only arrested when the finalist artists had been broken in body so utterly as to be unable of movement tephra Forge had lost several of its reactors to breaches rendering much of its territory uninhabitably radiation soaked even by mechanicum standards while in escorial Forge the Invaders had breached the Warren of subterranean tunnels the facilities extended into forcing the zenian tagmata into a costly and painfully protracted underground purgation operation on the rent and ruptured testing grounds of Zana to Symphony matters were even bloodier the slave population of the world had been liberated by the austerities under Android har and in the resulting chaos the black Shields had ransacked the research and development facilities PlanetSide confiscating all technology they could and destroying all they could not curiously though their progress had been stymied by the sudden appearance from the world's prison feigns of a Brazen automata of hitherto unknown configurations quite unlike the cybernetica the black Shields had battled during their takeover of to Symphony these machines were motivated by what was to all the world a predatory Instinct quite unlike the lumbering nature of the other automata and Horror's forces found themselves wholly unprepared for the viciousness of their assault quite who or what was directing them was at the time impossible to ascertain and in a fighting Retreat to consolidate what gains they had made the black Shields lost the ordinatus nepotax to the ravenous cyber fiends destroyed as a machine was rendered in its attempted recapture this was the final straw for the former World eater who ordered a full-scale planetary withdrawal of his forces and the remaining two War engines despite sustaining damage as it powered outsystem the Kika tries tyrannus managed to make her warp translation and with the subsequent departure of the amphian and her Fleet as well as the dark Sovereign the Zana incursion as an operation came to a close the whole Affair is a series of cascading Curiosities to say the least almost all of the major involved parties possessed motives that seemingly and paradoxically operated both in concert and opposed to one another It Is by what records remain impossible to ascertain if the retribution Fleet of Terror the cruiser of the Dark Angels and the false sons of Horus under indrid horror were even acting in concert but given the consistency with which each was able to cover and supplement the efficacy of the others surely some degree of coordination must have been agreed upon Before Time strikes one is impossible that such admittedly disparate loyalist elements could have compromised the defenses of a world such as Zana to such a degree as they did while working alone or uncoordinated but yet one can find no record of any such communion between them existing assuming for the sheer sake of Maintenance of Sanity if nothing else that this combined operation linked the forces of the praetorian with those of the sigilite and those of the Dark Angels for all of what it's worth at this point quite disparate elements in the military annals of the loyalists it would appear that those under injured har and those of the first Legion were enlisted with the promise of prizes for the Dark Angels the strange dromon mu571 disappeared into the void with the dark Sovereign one will endeavor of course to uncover its fate and whether its capture played any role in the Angel's prosecution of the thramus Crusade but I suspect not if nothing else given the sheer Galactic distance between the volumes of Zana and the then domain of the night Haunter forces made off with two of the three ordinati not quite the victory they had clearly hoped to achieve but a handsome prize nevertheless certainly depriving the war master of these weapons and doing so while wearing horus's own colors was no doubt a pleasing thing to the bitter black shield and equally certainly the presence of the ordinati was a boon to the loyalist defenses of segmentum solar until their reporter destruction upon beta Garmin during the event known only as the Titan death just as with the loss of the ordinati the great wealth of Zana was too deprived from horus's clutches and while the mundane contribution or lack thereof to the war effort that it would have represented can only be estimated versus the cost of the operation itself such a blow was deemed satisfactory as the mission's nominal success was communicated to those in the know and the records were closed upon the matter these Mysteries such as they are are the least esoteric even the involvement of the first Legion pales in comparison to The Curious Case of the Revenant astartes that assaulted the zanyan forges although one suspects some degree of parity with other accounts from the Horus heresy of equally disturbing nature dedicated acolytes may remember a short while ago your humble servant committed to record The Case of the 10th Legion iron hands and their prescribed employment of a series of Technologies known collectively as the keys of hell such rights such Machina combined in dredge Symphony were known albeit apocryphaly to permit to the employment of cybernetic Resurrection in short the returning to life of those long dead by means technological such devices such Arts existed so far beyond the bounds of what can be considered safe or sane as to be considered lunacy by even those who are aware of them but as one discussed in said record it is effectively confirmable that the iron hands in their grief following the death of their Primark employed such technology to enact vengeance upon the forces of the war master given the reports scattered that they may be of what we know occurred on Zana it appears safe to assume that in this case the black Shields of indritar possessed this technology and utilized it upon the Dead and Lost they had seized along with koredon's diplomatic party weaponizing the gift of Horus to the Magi of Zana carries with it a certain Barbed satisfaction although one will not comment on the nigh heretical means through which it was accomplished best that be left for Minds greater and wiser than mine while the use of such techno necromancy is the most likely explanation for the Gola Unleashed upon the Magi of the consistory there is of course no way to be sure of such things and even the records of that attack Admiral as more video tutorials work upon the matter is remain disjointed and inconclusive we must unfortunately place this particular case this particular aspect of the incursion amongst the sundry ominous Mysteries of the age of Darkness that yet remain unsolved and unaccountable for ten thousand years later it would perhaps be remiss of me to call the final and most loathsome question of the conflict as one I do so simply to remain true to the spirit of academic inquiry as there can be no verifying the connection that I am nevertheless about deposit for the sake of clarity the automata that suddenly arose From The Underground prison complexes of Zana to Symphony to strike at Andrew Horace black shields were of an entirely different caliber to those the astartes had dispatched with relative ease during the assassination of the archmage US pure curator they were by accounts collected from the data banks of the kikatrice taranus following her destruction later in the heresy of an animalistic man more akin to Beast than battle robot they were of patterns undiscernable to the tech priests that examined any picked captures from the astarty's helm logs nominal chassis remained of course of the typical castellax vorax and domitar automata marks but for instance all seem to have been subjected to modifications of such an extreme degree as to render them unclassifiable no motivating force was discerned by the rapidly retreating black Shields that fell under the voracious assault of these machines and the tech Marines attached to the company were only able to report the data links between them and whatever figure was holding their proverbial leashes was in a base cant unlike any they had encountered indeed this was where any new spheric links existed at all for the tech Marines were also given to report that monstrously most of the attacking automata were doing so of their own free will this latter Point coupled with the violent Behavior they displayed of course draws one conclusion abominable intelligence but I would caution you against jumping to that extreme just yet to differentiate conjecture from plausibility in this regard we must examine the latter history of Zanna following the incursion The Raid damaged and depleted the forge world's power severely but not totally the provinter of Zana the arms and armaments to the ordinati all had been denied to Horus and perhaps could have been considered enough for Terra to rest comfortably in having wrought just retribution but the incursion had of course cemented The pact between Zanna and Horus nevertheless and joined now they were in shared enemy and shared enmity most worryingly of all was that according to loyalist intelligence the vodian consistory was deposed almost immediately in the aftermath of the incursion in a violent Uprising by enraged Magi across the forge who were being led by a darker Force than even the ruling regime had been [Music] one is noted since the beginning of this record the zanyan Synod had ever been typified as a coolly detached and isolated one that verged on Sinister since the world was first reunited with the Imperium and eventually torturously brought into its nominal umbrella rule there had ever been Rumors in just how such a Forge World breached the doctrines of the machine god with their research and development but without any form of oversight from Mars a part of the compliance agreement signed by the consistory with the Imperium nothing could ever be confirmed and it not was like the Lords of Zana were going to tell anyway the veil was of course utterly torn back in the aftermath the incursion with the rise of zannah's new regime supported by the Arts and artifices of the war Masters dark hand it would appear that ironically the rapidity of zannah's plunged into the foulest reaches of Science and Industry was the direct result of the assault of hars black Shields they had mounted upon the prison complexes of zanaticiphany and just quite what they Unleashed Within anacharis scoria was by scant references a major ask Dominus in the service of the vodian consistory several decades standard prior to the outbreak of the heresy but for some unknown time and for reasons redacted he would stripped of his title of Magister and of his responsibilities namely of being the chief enforcer of machine cult Doctrine to the regime imprisoned for these undisclosed crimes on yes sanity Symphony it was he who would in the aftermath of the incursion rise to power and prominence as the first amongst the world's new Lords earning the title The xanophane Tyrant for his cold inhuman viciousness scoria's presence upon the battlefield of the Horus heresy as the years ground on towards the siege of Terror are a matter of not inconsiderable debate but where the new tagmata of Zana did March they often did so accompanied by automata of unique brutality and violence it is no small stretch of the imagination to presume that it was scoria who was responsible for forcing The Retreat of the astartes who unwittingly freed him from his imprisonment with dark irony the driving force behind zanna's rebirth in later years was he he scoria led Zanna to becoming one of the first hell forges of the dark mechanicum this of course was the ultimate fate of the world consigned now forevermore to corruption lunacy and science unspeakable a coalition of the insane and the Abominable crafting the warp as they would their metals [Music] the Zana incursion as a loyalist operation is a tale as fascinating as it is mysterious is likely we do not know the full ramifications of what was wrought that Dreadful day and we probably never will Ave imperator Gloria in excelsis Terra this video and this channel were made possible thanks to the very kind donations and support from my patreon subscribers if you'd like to help support the channel head on over to patreon.com Oculus Imperia if you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at Oculus Imperia otherwise please like subscribe comment let me know your feedback and as ever thank you very much for watching [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Oculus Imperia

Views: 191,871

Keywords: Warhammer, Warhammer 40k, Warhammer Lore, Warhammer 40k Lore, Warhammer 30k, Horus Heresy, Horus Heresy Lore, Forge World, Games Workshop, Astartes, Primarchs, Space Marines, Adeptus Astartes

Id: -ViTC4kzztg

Length: 95min 34sec (5734 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022