WARHAMMER 40K LORE: THE FALL OF ORPHEUS CAMPAIGN

[Music] for the glory of the imperium [Music] the fall of orpheus being an account of the invasion of the orpheus sector by the necron host for referral to all officers imperial field command naval shipmasters adeptus astantes officers clearance ambra telos battle group salvation orpheon cordon exterminatus and gorgon quintus castrom forces few who dwelled within its domains would have believed the orpheus sector stood on the precipice of annihilation that this fortress realm this frontier of the sigmentum tempestus a sector imperialis which had endured for nearly 4 000 years against the ravages of the orc and the predations of the eldar the destruction of civil war and the malevolence of chaos would yet prove to be as defenseless as a new born before the horror of what was to come viewers still be they planetary governor potentate prelate or void captain it could have countenanced the idea that in less than a hundred standard days scores of the orphean worlds would be laid waste in their populations numbering in the billions put to the sword nor that all which humanity had wrought amidst these distant stars would be erased with such merciless power and abhorrent intent but the darkness that came for the orpheus sector cared nothing for the power and pride of man for in the great emptiness beyond the frontier of known space ancient and wicked minds were stirring minds driven insane with the tortures of eternity soulless beings of echoed hatred and endless despair creatures to which all life had become an anathema where once again dragging themselves up from the cold iron of their graves and upon seeing the teeming vermin of humanity for as such as we are today infesting worlds that had once been theirs the dim fires of unsleeping in human malice but again roused within the outcast my knucker dynasty of the xenos form my holy order has come to call necron bestering them to a natural false life with but one cause to slaughter and destroy such are the monsters you must now face the following evidentiary document assembled from archive data after action battle testimony records court martial and mortis cortical transcripts attempts to construct as accurate a pressy as possible of the orphean war to the current date as of 998 m41 as such it contains what scant and fragmentary accounting can be made of the devastating losses of the bloody hundred as the initial zenos onslaught has become commonly known and a more detailed accounting of the war of salvation recently fought to great cost over the ashes of the orpheus sector upon you is weighted the terrible burden of truth rather than blessed ignorance as is the right of the common soldier as a commander of rank in the forces assigned to the terrible deeds which now must follow you are charged to study what this report contains wisely for in this knowledge you may better serve your emperor in battle and carry out your sacred duty in this new founded realm of the dead the chronicles of the orpheus sector being a summarized account of the events in the orpheus sector from its foundation as a province of our glorious imperium and its current situation m freo 570-750 are the voyages of orpheus during the latter years of the great crusade imperial law has it that the legendary rogue trader lady erika orpheus conducted ranging expeditions into the vast expanse known as the mandrel gorion stars on the outermost borders of what will become later codified as segmentum tempestus orpheus's voyages intended to serve as pathfinder for later far larger fleets comprising space marine legion forces and their militant support uncover a region where a few dark age human remnant civilizations are to be found living alongside scattered xenos domains marked for later eradication the region however is most characterized by the extreme age of its far-flung star systems the majority of which are incapable of sustaining life although this may not have always been the case due to its frequent celestial hazards surviving references to the rogue traders latter voyages held in the great covenant navis temple on terror also make cryptic references to numerous enigmatic and sinister pre-human ruins and monuments encountered on dead worlds near the galactic rim their near impossibility of navigation in this veiled region of dense nebula and turbulent stellar debris forces an outer limit to lady erika orpheus's range of exploration m31 the sundering of the imperium the great betrayal and savage civil war that follows rips apart the fabric of the imperium before the mandragorian stars can be fully pacified by the crusades forces throughout the war and the decades of strife that followed it the area remains a lawless borderland underneath a side of the fratricidal war's control and the haunt of renegades and xenos corsairs drawn to feast upon the wounded imperium m31 pre-100 the scouring the scourge of dinat crobane during the unending bloodshed of the scouring the traitor warlord dainat mao of the alpha legion known as crowbane for his ambushes and slaughter of raven guard forces during the battle of liax flees to their mandragorian stars and gathers to him a cultery of renegades deabolists and traitors thousands strong imperial forces sent in pursuit are repeatedly out maneuvered and cut apart piecemeal as dynaz forces known as the shadowed ones employ guerrilla tactics and dark forces to extend their mastery of the region after the vital imperial outpost station at amara is attacked and destroyed its entire population slaughtered and stockpiles plundered any imperial claim to the region is effectively severed this sundered realm caught beyond the light of the imperium at the edges of the veiled region becomes known as the dark marches and is benignted by ignorance and discord and shrouded from human sight m32 circa 170 a vengeance denied a raven guard task force under the command of shadow captain kalinger conducts a covert mission into the dark marches with the intent of finding that ancient enemy and taking their vengeance but finds nothing but lifeless silence the long cold wreckage where once traitors plotted and built their strength on the surface of the jungle shroud world of apollyon they find the broken backed hull of the strike cruiser occam's razor known to have been an alpha legion vessel standing like a grave marker over a valley filled 30 meters deep in places with the bones and shattered armor and war gear of thousands now for legion white scars and iron hands relics are identified among the channel pits contents our mutant human eldar crave and several unclassified xenos forms the prognostications of the raven guards librarians foretell doom should they linger and with their vengeance denied the sons of korax leave the ill-favored stars of the dark marches order zeno sealed addendum 77-90 slash classification mandrakora the reference for the eyes of the ordos only the mandragora enigma consultation with any dictionary imperialist will forever create many definitions and origins for this ancient and portentous word meanings whose import and identity range from a sinister plant form said to be indigenous to ancient terror that had the reputed power to scream in pain when uprooted into a renegade lorena mercantile cartel of the pre-apostasy commercial dominion period to a lesser mendicant saint widely venerated across the second quadrant for his work among the poor these three definitions only scratch the surface of this word's usage in our imperial age and are so far apart in meaning as to leave any true connection between them at best indecipherable but for those with deeper and wider understanding the word mandrakora to we of the ordozinus has a resonance of darker import particularly when it refers to place and locale although the association's origin has been lost to the blackness of war and the dead long before the rise even of our god emperor the word mandrakura and its derivations has been fastened to regions and lands sometimes to whole worlds and indeed vast sweeps of the void best left alone it is an aim given to seats of ancient alien power and to unhallowed and accursed places where the writ of man has never extended and whose shadows are tenanted with older and fowler intelligences than even legends dare allude to 552-m32 the child of the beast as the orcs rampage across the imperium in unprecedented numbers and lay waste to many thousands of worlds a vast space hulk culled by the orcs that infested the iron worm maraudes across the uralus sector inexorably passing from world to world nothing can stop the green tide unleashed from within its cavernous holds and battle group azazel the fortress world of armstrong and velga grad and the forge world of tamaxia are destroyed one after the next leaving the sector's core worlds in the ul sarif cluster and their hundred billion souls prostrate before the orc onslaught their doom is averted when a warp storm erupts and blasts the iron worm and its ramshackle fleet of course and deeper into the imperium pursuit ships attempt to follow the vessel but the storm is savage and many are lost the last communication heard from them is that the iron worm has plunged into the heart of the dark marches it does not return 610 m36 the return of orpheus in the wake of the age of apostasy the segmentum tempestus sees a resurgence in power and a renaissance of expansion known to imperial historians as the rising storm this feat is enabled by the fact that the segment had been left relatively unscathed by the centuries of turmoil that preceded this time and a concurrent law in the frequent and unpredictable warp storms that had in ages past given the sigmentum its name with the blessing of terror segmentum authorities launch a number of crusades and campaigns to destroy lingering threats within their domain and push back and fortify the borders of the imperium itself the most successful of these is the dark matches crusade commanded by lord tempestus hal orpheus a lineal descendant of the rogue trader house that had first explored the region's sinister reaches millennia previously 759 to 900 m36 the dawning years a little more than a century and a half after its outset as the dark marches crusade is over and declared a mighty victory for the forces of the imperium it has scourged countless threats and conquered over 600 worlds for the god emperor's domain these worlds and systems spread in an arcing band across the border of the veiled region ma by rit of holy terror subdivided into four newly founded sectors of the segmentum tempestus the hacksand liak uradis and orpheus sectors the founding office sector is secured through the ancient writ of conquest and takes amara for its capital the long last imperial outpost having more recently served again as a crusade operations base for more than three decades this world becomes the seat of the orpheus sector's first governor hal orpheus now a failing shadow of his past military glories and sustained only by the arts of a devoted courtery of adeptus mechanicus savants other newly colonized worlds such as arcantis gedrid and midwinter are given as glorious reward to favored imperial guard regiments for their service during the crusade while the resource rich but lifeless maya system is sealed in perpetuity by the adeptus mechanicus for their part in the crusade pilgrims colonists and settlers fled into the newborn sector both willingly and otherwise from the overcrowded hive worlds of uralus and ware sectors but this tide of souls is deemed insufficient soon further refugee throngs are redirected by the administration to the new sectors from a dozen war zones and entire planetary populations of failing or depleted worlds within more established regions of the imperium are part under edict of transmission this act consigns many millions to an often fatally perilous journey to a still largely unknown frontier by the merciless stroke of a quell 817 m36 the lost fleet may colonization fleet of over the score of ark vessels carrying some 16 million souls dispatched to found an agriworld on the verdant fen-covered planet of trilock disappears on route no traces of the fleet are ever found thailock is later colonized by a much smaller expedition some 30 years later without any further incident 759 m37 the orpheus millennial a thousand-year anniversary of the orpheus sector's founding is celebrated by the procession of the holy corpse of lord tempesta's orpheus throughout the principal worlds of the now well-established sector his sepulcher is born in his crusade flagship the araka dominus which now also serves as flagship for the whole constituted battle fleet orpheus the millennial is accompanied by great largesse and fanfare by imperial commanders of the sector and remittances by the adeptus minister resulting in great celebration by the commoner noble and ordinate alike many holy miracles and visions of faith are reported in the wake of the relic corpses passage 976 m37 the silence of liak all contact is lost with the neighbouring liax sector circumstances around this occurrence are sealed under the auspices of the segmentum conclave of the ordo zenos and are beyond the remit and clearance of this extract records from this period show a massive increase in military ties within the orpheus sector the strengthening of its battle fleet and the further construction of orbital defenses on its major worlds the crippling cost in localized hives and manpower to sustain this buildup takes a heavy toll on the orphean worlds from this time forwards all colonial missions on the edge of the veiled stars are prohibited under pain of death and a series of worlds on the border of the orpheus sector are specifically excluded by imperial edict from visitation m39 the harrowing of orpheus spurred on in part by the continued massive military expenditure mandated by the sigmentum authorities discord malcontent and privation plagued the sector revolts and cult activity and rebellions fermented on dozens of worlds result in brutal crackdowns and purges against civilian populations and the centuries that follow are dogged by bloodshed and tragedy both apparent and unexplained matters worsen as the black crusade of von mallis called the false saint and the transgressor sparks off a schismatic war of faith that spreads across the segment and pacificas and segmented and pesters this heretics creed finds its way into the orpheus sector causing further major uprisings on kolkash and epirus draining regiments and war material from the sector which had been requisitioned and reassigned to fight the ever-expanding war against the transgressors forces these schismatic planets are eventually subjugated and the petitionary world of morris lacrimal is founded to take on the penitents but the agriworld of appearances rendered into a wasteland that will take decades to recover to even a shadow of its former capacity this is enough to disrupt the fragile web of the sector's commerce and supply already overburdened and overstretched and the time hereafter will see famine and pestilence strike many of the orphean worlds again and again the 715 m38 the cult celestari rises born from the famine and bitterness of the preceding years a heretical cult known as the celestari rises among the nobles and worthiers of the sector while forbidden and persecuted by both the adept as arbites and the ordo hereticus it remains an invidious and sinister presence that cannot be fully stamped out the cult's tenets are of the falsity of the imperial creed and the veneration of a secret race of superior beings which slumber and who one day will awaken to bring eternal life to their loyal servants and bloody death to their enemies the cult takes for its sacred relics the numerous xenos archaeological remains found across the sector and in secret carries out cannibalistic rituals and seeks to further the power and enrichment of its inner circle of adherence 889 m38 the death of tyloc the garbled distress signals from the outposts on tylock speak of massacred and impenetrable darkness before abruptly being cut off may squadron dispatch from battlefleet orpheus finds the world a channel house spattered with blood and burning ruins no intact bodies are recovered however and all data storage devices on the world have been obliterated whatever event has transpired to destroy its population it is evidenced to have occurred over the course of only a handful of hours inquisitor crusade of the ordo zenos pronounces the lack of human remains found as indicating a likely involvement of eldar cabalite corsaires mothers within the inquisition and the orphean admiralty do not share this hypothesis death haunted thailak is subjected to permanent quarantine by order of the lord commander of the sector 168 m39 the battle of the gorgon deeps battlefleet orpheus aided by the forces of the revilers and the red serifs space marine chapters confront and eventually defeat a major orc invasion force in a 19-week running space battle before it can fully penetrate the sector the orc menace is finally curbed when its flagship a mega cruiser is destroyed in a savage boarding action led by a spearhead of space marine terminators scattered orc survivors slink away into the darkness however and go on to prove a constant thorn in the side for the orphean worlds for centuries to come as pirates and raiders concealing themselves in the debris systems and turbulent gravity vortices that border the deluvian subsector 860 to 903 m39 the time of revolt for nearly a thousand years the orpheus sector has been bled by the worsening strife and warfare torn between contributing more and more arms and manpower to nearby sectors most recently to fight the endless haxon wars against the apostate haptad and the eldar slaughter vein cabal and maintaining its own defenses during this period a growing disunity and the constant low ebb predations of xenos and renegade corsairs at its borders weighs heavily on the sector the orpheus sector's greatest threat of these times however is to come not from the darkness beyond as had long been feared but from within its own ranks overstretched the authority of the sector governor is waning and the last scion of the line of orpheus has long since died to be replaced by the house of lan distrusted and renowned for their intrigues and excesses tensions over times and the cost of the ongoing war flare first into campaigns of assassination and vendetta between the tangled web of nobles governors and chartist captains that rule the sector but in a short span of years growing to outright open conflict between worlds the flame of sector-wide civil war is ignited fully when the honor clans of the dracillian cluster overthrow local opposition declare their secession from the sector rallying many renegade factions to their cause and fatally undermining the sector stability elsewhere threatened by its neighbors the governing parliament of amphral brings in xenos mercenaries to conduct a pre-emptive strike against its rivals by proxy only to find they have invited the splinter web of the crave into their midst the foul aliens devour their minds and support the planet's rulers to stalk their larders until they are discovered and purged by an adeptus ministorum-led uprising now as civil war and brush fire conflicts spread across the orpheus sector it is soon revealed that the malign hand of chaos is behind the instigation of the revolt just as it had been in the nearby hacksand sector imperial guard regiments are deployed into the region in increasing numbers to bring the sector under control but find themselves facing foul demons and hordes of mutants alongside the rebels and madness stalks the worlds of apollyon and celica as they fall entirely under the sway of the ruinous powers the threat of the arch enemy serves to unite the other weary and divided worlds of orpheus like noah could and soon the battle lines are drawn 903 to 922 m39 the orthean war of faith with the military and ruling classes set against each other in bloody international conflicts and the orpheus sector itself balanced on the edge of the abyss a ramshackle fleet arrives at amara bringing with it unexpected aid a crusade force of imperial zealots militia guardsmen and pilgrims driven into a martial further by the preachings and ecstatic visions of the arch confessor marduk of hao varman marduk declares a war of faith for the souls of the orpheus sector claiming the god emperor himself has warned him of a great and terrible threat to all of mankind rising where the light of orpheus falls forever into shadow more important to the loyalist cause even than the one hundred thousand fanatics he brings with him is the presence of the arch confessor himself the adeptus minister and preacher providing both a figurehead and a rallying point for the resistance against the dark powers that have torn the sector asunder once the unhallowed forces of the demon and factions of the traitor alpha legion night lords and death mongers chaos space marines are conclusively identified among the rebels more aid is quickly sought from elsewhere in the imperium further reinforcements in the form of the angel's revenant space marine chapter in its entirety as well as the adoption aurora tass orders of the valorious heart and the black sepulchre and a task force from the ordo malleus of the inquisition strengthens the imperial cause as do countless volunteers from the citizenry of those worlds as yet untrammeled by war stirred up by marduk's oratory so begins the orpheum war of faith a bitter conflict that will last for 20 years and see a full fifth of the sector's population slain by its end and countless more ruined maimed and displaced 921 m39 the bane of saint marduk by 921 the orpheum war of faith is effectively won by the forces of the imperium with all the major traitor-held worlds either re-conquered or laid waste save one the chaos stronghold of kolkash this hive world had been fortified and corrupted into a living hell its population used as raw materials by the death mangas warpsmiths to fashion flesh weapons and mutilated and insane cannon fodder to defend their prize with against these dark forces our reigns the besieging armies of the arch confessor who claims the final victory for himself and the pilgrim warriors of the imperial guard at his command instead of involving them in the siege he dispatches his adeptus astartes and adept to sororitas allies to harry and destroy the other fleeing remnants of the traitor forces elsewhere it is known from the last signals received from the war zone that marduk's forces were making headway matching the fury of the warped tainted defenders of kolkash with faith and fire and had succeeded in forcing multiple landing zones on the planet's surface when astropathic communication with the besieging imperial fleet abruptly ceased and the alarm was raised the angel's revenant strike cruiser intercessor which first responded to the raised alarm is attacked and severely damaged on its arrival on the system's edge by two small but extremely powerful voidcraft of unknown presumed xenos origin the space marine vessel is damaged before destroying one attack and driving the other off those on the near crippled intercessor witness a great star battle erupting across the inner system on their long-range auguries but are themselves unable to intervene by the time they have limped into orbit around kolkash the unknown attacking force has departed leaving a twisted field of burning hulks drifting in orbit around the world its fortresses and cities shattered and seething with an earthly radioactive fire below there are however scattered knots of survivors amid the wreckage and fallout those that beared the stigmata of chaos and treachery the angels revenant put to the sword while those few survivors who had fought for the emperor wounded and often catatonic with shock they carry away to salvation before a final ash blank winter claims the world kolkash is forever afterwards to be named saint marduk's bane as the martyred arch confessor himself was soon afterwards beatified by the holy synod of the ecclesiarchy 610 to 619 m40 the sector resurgent after the successful prosecution of the orphan war of faith the sector rebuilds under its surviving imperial commanders and by special dispensation many regiments of the imperial guard and the survivors of saint marduk's pilgrimage are allowed to settle its worlds either laying down their arms or integrating fully into the local defense forces greatly strengthening them the inquisition lays a heavy hand on the processing of refugees and purging of suspected taint from the worlds that have been subjected to renegade conquest and apollon which had seen several thoughted war breaches and demonic incursions is given to their direct control in perpetuity likewise the inner colony worlds of liberta upon which the saints had shown favor is converted to a shrine world in honor of madok and becomes a cemetery for the war's millions of glorious and blessed dead over lordship of the shrine world is given over to the angels revenant until now a fleet-based chapter as their domain with a sacred charge of duty for the protection of its reliquis and sediments these space marines permanent residence further strengthening the orpheus sector centuries of consolidation and rebuilding are to follow and despite the constant threat posed by raiders from without an insidious conspiracy and cult activity from within the obvious sector and its far-flung worlds prosper again its masters and guardians remain ever vigilant both against known dangers and against the unknown which has risen up from the darkness time and again leaving a formless shadow of threat in its wake but as the decades turn once more to centuries then living memory fades the sleepers of orpheus to use the name coin for them in the whispers of the amahit court fade into myth and dark legend once more 319 m40 the death of badrock the forces of the evil sons war boss and infamous raider badrock gut gauger who had unified the orcs of the shattered deeps and threatened why are cornered and brought to battle at les marcus by counter invasion the orcs are encircled and crushed utterly under the tracks of the imperial guards konig armoured regiments backed up by the orpheus sector defense forces in a grueling seven month campaign of annihilation the war boss's broken carcass is later taken to hang from the spire of the red cathedral of amraphaal and the deluvian sub sector is given over to great rejoicing 580 to 591 m40 the emperor's jew in a great master of armies the worlds of the orpheus sector give up over 39 million fighting men and women forming new regiments to answer the call of the great severine war raging on the border regions between the segmentum tempestus and ultima segmentum few return but their blessed role of martyrdoms is enshrined in the graven basilica severin on libathra as part of this effort the moros lacrimale penitentiary is converted from primarily being a mining facility to the creation and training of penal legion troops for the imperial guard 619 m40 the decopolis conspiracy is uncovered the hive world of decopolis has grown over the centuries to the point where its economic output and population exceed any other world within the sector including the orpheon capital world of amara nevertheless by tradition and practice the sector's military and administrative power is with its ancient throne world and the noble families that have ruled it decopolis remains eclipsed in ammar's shadow and subjected to ever-increasing tithes a situation against which the great powers of decopolis both military and mercantile increasingly chafe jealousy and bitter rivalry in turn for men's conspiracy and the deck arcs hatch a series of plans to weaken and destabilize the sector capital with a long-term aim of supplanting the governance of orpheus such plans include the fostering and covert funding and arming of political dissenters narco smuggling rings heretical groups and the conducting of campaigns of targeted assassination the wider conspiracy is discovered when the ordo hereticus of the inquisition subject the members of a captured cult cell of the celestari to interrogation and heavy weapons in their possession are traced back to manufacture onto coppolis the inquisition sweeps down upon the hive world and conducts a systematic series of purges and show trials lasting nine years which ultimately prevents outright revolt in civil war only through ruthless oppression and speed of action punitive fines and trade and transit restrictions placed onto coppola's and mother worlds by a now paranoid amara in the aftermath of the purge serve only to increase already growing hardship in the sector the exposure of the conspiracy does little to alleviate the unrest it has fueled on amara which has now taken on a life of its own discord and distrust settle like a pool across the sector's major worlds ending what many historians consider warfield sector's golden age 672-990 m41 the storm tide the office sector as with many others across the segment tempestus sees a sudden and unpredictable rise in warp squalls aetheric disruption and malignant phenomena during these years this in turn leads to a dramatic increase in the number of ships lost in the warp in the region with even major and established routes affording little protection from the fury of the imperium with this comes an increase in disasters both of natural and unnatural origin across the sector while psycho demon incursions and cult activity reaches its highest peak since the dark days of the time of revolt on many worlds latent psyches and sensitives report recurring nightmares featuring common scenes of dead cities and rising darkness of pale figures treading the dust of silent worlds and endless labyrinths haunted by unseen malignancy knowledge of this epidemic of nightmares is ruthlessly suppressed the numbers of audo hereticas and ordo malleus agents active in the region are greatly increased where practical the worlds of the orpheus sector grow ever more isolated and insular during this time and the control that hamara holds over the sector wanes despite its efforts to maintain its supremacy only the vigilance of battlefleet orpheus and the angel's revenant chapter risking the perils of the warp sustain widespread imperial rule and succeed in holding back resurgent eldar corsair attacks from the hazard nebula from overrunning outlying systems 689 m41 the howling vortex a violent but localized warp storm designated the howling vortex by the sector's navigators engulfs the region known as the baron stars and in doing so completely cut off the morris lacrimal penitentiary world from contact with the rest of the sector all transmissions and void traffic from the imperial penal colony cease and the fate of the last prison hulks on route from the decopolis purges to moros remains unknown as does that of morose's 13 million prisoners 744 m41 the kellerman murders a string of murders and thefts at the kellerman scotland are exposed as part of a wider plot involving the cult celestari regarding research into xenos artifacts recovered from the edge of the sector over several centuries a fierce gun battle between the adaptus arbeitis and the cult members leaves the scolym as little more than a charred ruin with the loss of scores of lives after action testimony from witnesses yields several reports of a fire shrouded figure walking through the flames to retrieve several unknown artifacts from the burning complex seemingly unaffected by the blaze forensic examination of the scene is unable to establish which of the scotland's extensive collection of xeno artifacts were taken rather than simply being incinerated in the fire 766 m41 the damnation of the manticore the chartist freighter manticore egyrus is befouled by a warp storm while undertaking passage from arcantis to ribosome driven by the storm it suffers multiple breaches of its ghetto field and is assailed by demons the screams and pleas of its crew and some three thousand passengers along with the whispers and promises of those that devoured them echo through the psychic effluvia of the capitoline sub-sector for the next several decades eight one one m41 the warning of the wayward sun the badly damaged void drum on wayward sun once an escort vessel belonging to the petty rogue trader caliber gildefroy's flutilla appears at the outer reaches of the adeptus mechanicus outpost's defense perimeter at harrow watch garbled communication from the ship's crew claim it has suffered severe damage from hostile xenos action and also contains incoherent warnings about gilda freud's expedition encountering a terror from beyond space which destroyed the rogue traders flew tiller ending in pleadings of immediate sanctuary for the stricken ship the wayward sun has no clearance to enter harrow watches exclusion zone and when the ship refuses to turn back it is fired upon and destroyed as a potential threat small amounts of wreckage are collected and placed under strict quarantine conditions for examination 819 m41 the shadow of the beggar king listing hive on the industrial world of kamarum 2 is overcome by an outbreak of contagious madness and despair thousands die succumbing to suicidal mania by hurling themselves into the machinery to which they are indentured or simply making their way to the planet's toxin-fogged surface and tearing open their breathing apparatus a civil collapse swiftly follows and from the anarchy a figure seemingly touched by the powers of chaos ranker non-such the self-entitled beggar king arises to lead his insane followers to overthrow the manufacturer cities of kemoram too casting down the authorities and slaughtering or corrupting the planetary defense forces there he takes his malevolence to the remaining free inhabited worlds of the system madness riding like a contagion in his work hampered in bringing in sufficient reinforcements by conditions in the war imperial forces managed to contain but cannot defeat the renegades who now infest the ash wastes and underhives of khmer one and five while murderous cults bearing names such as the endless tide and the crawling darkness conduct widespread campaigns of terror against those manufacturer and habs spires that remain in imperial control an exclusion zone is established around the camarum system and a grinding guerrilla war of attrition sets in and inquisition led storm trooper regiments are dispatched to aid the suppression campaign 990 m41 the dying stars the violent warp turbulence that has held sway across the western division of the office sector for more than 300 standard years is rapidly and suddenly extinguished by a shock wave in the immaterium leaving only the howling vortex remaining the violent imperial squall sees scores of vessels caught in its path either thrown off course or simply smashed to flinders all across the sector astropaths psyches and witches are subjected to sudden and inexplicable deaths or are hopelessly mind-burned reports of mass hysteria unexplained murders disappearances and mania increase exponentially across the worlds of the cold veil and the drucillian sub-sector the auto malleus of conclave orpheus based on napoleon issues an order for maximum vigilance to all imperial authorities believing the warp disturbances and its attendant phenomena are but a precursor to a major demonic incursion into the sector the adeptus mechanicus's deep range observation station at harrow watch reports the binary stars of the prohibited caracal system at the edge of the veiled region have both unexpectedly been destroyed by supernova at the event occurring roughly concomitantly with the storm-ending shock wave in the warp this report is largely ignored as insignificant this stellar catastrophe an event portended in the hidden writings of the cult celestari alongside the rise in lost ships at the sector's edge can now be seen as unheeded omens of the nightmare to come signs that if acted upon swiftly and with sufficient force may have mitigated or perhaps entirely prevented the deaths of billions the nightmare wakes 371 6991 m41 the attack came with sudden and total ferocity an invasion not of a single imperial world or a dozen but of scores of planets outposts and domains an act of extermination carried out with shocking power and deliberation across a vast swathe of the void it was an assault of such speed coordination and ferocity that to those beyond its front line its only sign was silence silence as if whole star systems had been plucked from the firmament by a death so total and abrupt there was not even time for them to scream to cry out to their neighbors in agony or warning such indeed was the swiftness of the doom that fell upon the edgewood stars of the orpheus sector that remains even now impossible to ascertain the true scope and meter of the destruction which befell them of the fate of the heavily fortified adeptus mechanicus outpost of harrow watch or the frontier colonies of palestine cartris and boros landing the feudal world of arieth and the ancient agriworld of papyrus and of more than 60 others nothing may be said for certain save that the invaders came and they were silenced it was at the inquisitorial fortress world of apollon that the alarm was first raised a needle rake black ship burned from stem to stern broke free of the vortex of fury that had engulfed the system and survived long enough to transmit its warning to the sector capital of amara the shock and disbelief of those who read it was quickly overcome by the seal of the ordo mallius appended in incontrovertible code to the astropathic warning images and verified by the inquisition senior brethren on amara prime the general call to arms being immediately signaled the planetary defense forces were activated the battlefleet orpheus called to rally and imperial guard forces already mastering in preparation for a renewed assault on the rebel carmorium systems were quickly re-tasked and redeployed as the sector capital rose as one to war increasing difficulties in communication quickly necessitated the use of fast warp capable ships to carry the drum beat of warning to such worlds core wood that slumbered in ignorance of what nightmare had already come to pass and it was only as reports from these emissaries began to come in that the true and almost unimaginable scale of the assault was revealed still yet at this time was the true nature of the threat unknown the authorities had no definite after-action reports of battle and given the symbolic and allegorical nature fundamental to astropathic transmissions the face of the enemy remained hidden messages sent towards the edgewood worlds were swallowed up unanswered while any vessel that attempted to pass a line of darkness that stretched across the sector in a curving scimitar like ark from tai lock to papyrus simply did not return perhaps most disquieting of all was the silence of liberta fortress monastery of the angel's revenant space marine chapter a force of the adopted societies who had long served as the sector's stalwart defenders and most powerful of warriors for liberta also to be struck silent by this mysterious doom sent a splinter of cold panic into the hearts of the orpheum imperial commanders that they dared not acknowledge but it was this factor more than any other that threw them into a policy of panicked preparatory defense rather than responding with blind counter aggression as they might have as preparations for war were hastily undertaken long range or spec systems etheric surveyors and even optical scopes across the remaining orpheon worlds were turned upon the dead zone with furious intent but saw nothing pickets squadrons and troops were sent to reinforce drew cilia majoris and midwinter both vital and heavily populated systems that once had been deemed secure but now found themselves on a new frontier of darkness amara itself directly threatened drew armies and warships to its breast hungrily from the corwood sector by dictatorial command the sector governor kellebron lan progressively stripped away the shielding forces of other worlds to bolster amara's own defenses and pulled warships and commerce vessels into a massing centralized fleet at the battlefleet orpheus anchorage at the amara system's edge the tense hours and frantic alarm that had followed the warning from apollyon first stretched into days in the days then into weeks and then months and nothing but silence followed tension frayed nerves and the warlike impulse of the sector's military strained at the leash and land faced increasing pressure from his nobles and commanders both to act and not to simply wait for the next blow to fall plans were drawn up for every measure of aggressive action from fleet-scale reconnaissance enforced by the imperial navy to an all-encompassing counter crusade by the generals of the camarium task force some even suggesting striking out to liberta where the generals reasoned the angels revenant no doubt fought on besieged and cut off by the foe sector governor lan was already minded to cast aside and block each of these plans in turn and gain stony support for this from lord inquisitor haram nitshona of the ordo mallius nichiona was the only ranking member of his order left at large in the orpheus sector and one of the chamber apollon a great power in his own right nichona was firm in his belief that the onslaught that had engulfed them was malefic in nature and the work of the ruinous powers who else he reasoned could so become the warp and command the tempests of the fathomless deeps to aid their plans who else could strike so swiftly and wrap the stars into the silence of a corpse shroud to hide their actions as soon as apollyon had fallen silent nichona had called for aid of his own and now he counseled the sector governor in no uncertain terms that no aggressive action was to be taken until that aid arrived the silent rent 3806 991 m41 where the watching eyes of the imperium had before spied only darkness suddenly there was a blaze of savage light an overwhelming turmoil of signal and data storm flaring across super luminal auguries and blinding celestial watch posts in a blizzard of information astrophys reeled against a tangled overlapping cacophony of distress calls and the echoing psychic screams of the dying distorted to near incomprehensibility and folded in overlapping time as if the panicking cries of the doomed had been frozen in ice only to be unleashed in a single moment riding on this storm were other far stranger calls blazing pillars of energy spiking into the ether on the edge of the veiled region pulsing like beacons these fountainheads of power spilled off the howling gales of radiation and charged particle storms that seemed free to transcend the gulfs of distance between stars in mere moments these flaring storms of energy dance like static discharge along warp roots and clung in ghostly cold fire to the hulls of the ships the seething electromagnetic contagion they brought with them whispered in unknown tongues that invaded vox channels and supposedly sealed and secure communication whips the fading echoes of agonized screams following in their wake with it one phrase in imperial gothic repeated again and again my comes havoc followed wherever the malign signal went as machinery was plagued with sudden failure and malfunction servitors were driven mad and cogitators were locked in terminal loops their machine spirits shocked into stuttering apoplexy the normal safeguards against malefic intrusion of the machine god's works proved all but worthless against the tainting signal and the tech priests of the adeptus mechanicus tucked to the widespread use of galvanic purging to score clean affected instruments a method which though damagingly crude was at least effective in creating a fire break against malignancy it was only now that the shroud was lifted that the true scale of the devastation was revealed libera where a hundred basilicas had been raised to honor the blessed dead and where the angels revenant space marine chapter had served as sentinels was now a black sea of shifting ash driven by loaded red lava all traces of the imperium's hand obliterated apollon dominion world of the ordo malleus was shattered the broken debris of its continents trailing behind it in orbit like spilled blood its moon elheim mortua had been smashed into its surface as if by a raffle god as the news spread and the vox networks of a dozen worlds continued to intermittently tumble and swirl with strange flickering symbols and echoing cries of pain fear spread rioting and outbreaks of mass hysteria catching like brush fires on midwinter and amfrau bringing them near the point of civil collapse as the forces of order and imperial rule fought brutally to curb the rising tide of anarchy help however was now at last on its way as the forerunner task force of warships and troop parks from the eredai sector was known to be inbound but the hope this offered was too little and too late much of what remained of the orpheus sector was near on its knees and the rest riven by terror even before the second wave of the invasion began the last broadcast four nine one seven nine nine one m41 andrew cilia majoris hive world of six billion souls capital of the dracillion sub-sector one of the key worlds of the orpheus sector the sun failed to rise all contact with local fleet vessels was abruptly lost than the fading vox traffic broadcast by masterpathic relay nearby spoke of a killing cold settling upon the hive world while strange bastled obelisks and jagged pyramids of blackly glittering metal erupted from the surface of the dying planet in the wake of this catastrophe fresh calls for aid and emergency reports from unknown ships began to be heard from across the central portions of the orpheus sector as the terror spread fortress taris the powerful rameli's class star fort that stud sentinel over the naval shipyards orbiting midwinter reported a massive assault on the system by unknown vessels and of strange metallic figures fashioned as specters of death materializing within its vaults and below decks perpetuating a great slaughter before midwinter itself was cut off and silenced caliber online governor of a sector now crumbling around him still refused to take aggressive action and instead waited in the emergency bunkers deep below his court palace the vast forces he had amassed tens of millions of men and women under arms and hundreds of warships held at station stood in impotent guardianship of the sector capital one by one the systems around amara sent out cries for help and all went unanswered their signals cut off into a silence that was soon replaced by a blazing corpse and pulse of celestial fire that flared and died marking each in turn as a realm where mankind no longer held sway now the only cries for help that echoed from the capitoline sub-sector where amara's own pleas for aid from the wider imperium as all other signals were themselves eventually corrupted then cut off the bloody hundred was over and the orpheus sector had been cut in half the faith of the angels revenant of the final faint of the space marine chapter little can be said for definite noble if aloof by reputation even for the warriors of the astartes this chapter of the eighth founding and of the proud lineage of the ultramarines had spent much of its long history on crusade throughout the western imperium during this time it had gained great fame in the battles of the great purge of the jagad cluster and the oc luciad war the chapters fortunes waxing and waning over the millennia until it was given home at liberty after its glorious role in the orphean war of faith the angels were evident had taken this opportunity to rebuild their strength after the losses they had sustained against the forces of the chaos renegades and the degenerate hordes they had put to the sword during the saint saint-marduk's war and as stern supporters of the ecclesia in the imperial creed the bounty of the orpheon ministorum was given freely to the construction of the chapters fortress monastery while the hardy federal worlders of patara form the basis of new generations of neophytes for the chapter the presence of the angels revenant in the orphean sector proved an empresent blessing and contributed greatly to its stability and the defense and expansion of the human colonies at its edgewood extent while completely autonomous of sector authority they served as protectors their shadow guarding the pilgrimage roots of the cold veil while their strike cruisers and cobra squadrons plied tirelessly the borders of the hassled nebula and the baron stars hunting down and slaughtering the zenos corsairs and marauders that had long made these trackless regions they're there such scattered and fragmentary evidence that has been uncovered about their final hour suggests unsurprisingly that they fought to the last against the overwhelming forces unleashed against them the libathra system being found littered with the radiation ghosts of deadly void combat and spreading clouds of micro wreckage furthermore the ancient hull of at least one of the vast necron tomb ships that were later cited above amara held fresh scars consistent with the unique signature of space marine bombardment cannon strikes at extreme close range indeed it may be the case that such was the resistance the angel's revenant putt-up that the invaders resorted to breaking through libera's crust and unleashing the planet's molten core to seal their fate conclusively when news of the chapter's martyrdom reached the synod tempestus a segment and wide day of requiem was decreed the bells of a thousand worlds tolling to mark their passing it is thought now that no more than a few hundred angels revenant far from the orpheus sector on crusade perhaps survive the battle of amara the battle of amara was to prove a crucial turning point in the history of the orphean war and the largest confirmed single loss of life in a confined engagement within living memory in the segmentum tempestus it would also become the crux of what has since become known as the orpheon salvation campaign the protracted counter assault to hold back and defeat the necron onslaught across the sector after the disastrous first stages of the orpheon war the battle of amara confirmed about a shadow of a doubt the true identity and vast strength of the foe that was faced by the imperium and this account is therefore more detailed than those that have preceded it in this record being compiled and collated from after-action reports of fighting units survivor testimony and memetic fragments recovered post-mortem via mori cortical transcript by the order xenos 3964 992 m41 the eve of destruction the onslaught that had consumed more than half of the inhabited star systems that made up the orpheus sector had done so in just less than a hundred standard days sowing panic and terror on a vast scale and ending the lives of billions in doing so the invaders had thrown all before them into disarray savage battles becoming desperate retreats and retreats becoming anarchic riots as the sector's forces were overcome and scattered the invaders ravaging ever onwards to victory after victory no imperial force available was able to do more than delay the enemy's onslaught or stay their progress then seemingly inexplicably they stopped adamara under the oversight of sector command and the governor general calibron lan and his military council all forces that could be availed upon were concentrated and rallied with haste none knowing just how long this pause in the attack would continue as time wore on and no attack came land's growing paranoia and seeming instability at the time unknown in its particular cause weighed heavily in the battles plans and dispositions of forces that were enacted in the mars defense the out-of-sector reinforcements now began to arrive in response to land's call for help were largely channeled directly to the build-up at hamada other local units from worlds of the acantis cluster and eastern portions of the sector as yet untouched by war were stripped wholesale from their defense positions and likewise redirected to amara weakening the protection of their homeworld an act which damaged greatly morale and planetary political stability leading to outright mutiny on several occasions which he needed to be brutally dealt with by the commissariat within a quarter span of a standard year the forces arrayed at amara had grown to colossal proportions with over 19 million imperial guardsmen in place with perhaps 10 times that amounts of reservists and militia raised under emergency edict and armed and equipped with the canadian patent to the strict provisions of the departmento munitorium foremost among the off-world imperial guard formations in martial power and one of the last contingents to arrive in system were two million troops drawn from the death cord of krieg spearheaded by the veteran 17th line corps under the command of marshall caris vena additionally several space marine chapters had answered the orpheon sector's call to arms including the entirety of the minotaur's chapter its vanguard elements now sweeping through the northern orpheus sector alongside a company of the marauders chapter which had also deployed to the amara system while detachments of the red sarifs and nemesis chapter were known to be on route the armada massed in amara's void space at this time was no less impressive comprising several hundred escort class vessels and more than 60 rated cruisers and capital vessels of the imperial navy including seven primus grade battleships and four space marine battle barges with the ancient and stored araka dominus as their flagship seldom in the history of the imperium had such overwhelming force being seen in the defense of but a single star system as the silence of the invaders drew out and time passed the rash to defend amara seemed no longer so pressing and calls for more immediate action to meet the enemy's forces became common but lan and his council remained adamant an absolute moratorium was imposed on any attempt to counter attack into the lost regions of orpheum space or even conduct reconnaissance in force to ascertain if imperial survivors still fought on isolated and alone or even to aspire enemy movements and strength a dark veil had been drawn across the sector's lost worlds which lan and his confidants seemed loath to disturb governor lan it is only in the light of documentary evidence obtained by this conclave's investigations into the conduct of the late lord inquisitor harim nashanna that some of the truth behind the fate of amara and indeed the fall of the orphean sector it can now be ascertained that nishana had been an esteemed and rightly lauded demon hunter for nyon two centuries and was of an impeachable record might not contest what seems an unavoidable conclusion however is that in this last trial the venerable man himself allowed his own fears and paranoia to undo him and saw the monstrous invasion that befell the orpheus sector not for the deadly xenos incursion it was but instead as a ploy in the schemes of the demon and the heretic a mere preamble for a greater threat that was to come in so earing intelligence of vital importance was not given its proper import nor was it passed on by nishana to the servants of the order zenus where its full meaning and value could have been gleaned it has been the imperium that has paid the butcher's bill for nachana's failure in case of points was his handling of calibron holland's descent into madness edna chana's misinterpretation of its cause following the beginning of what we know to have been the necron assault on the sector land became plagued with a series of increasingly vivid nightmares in which he found himself seated at a great feasting table surrounded by terrifying deathly figures llan himself described as being masked in bone and gilded steel and clad in the gold and darkly jeweled raymond to barbarous and alien kings and princes said before them is an opulent service of platters and dishes on which lay alternately grey dust glowing cinders and raw and bloody meat head of the table is a vast enthroned figure more terrible than the rest so fearful i knew my heart would fail if i looked directly upon him in this horrific company man found himself trapped and bitten to eat the strange meal while the deathly caught looked on all watching him in malignant silence save one draped him raw skins that ravined at the unholy banquet smearing bloody chunks of flesh into its twisted mask it would not eat and drenching itself with flagons of steaming blood he could not drink when in the dream land could not stand any more of this horror and cried out to be let go added and shrouded figure appeared at his back and whispered to him these are the worlds that were once ours the worlds that you trespassed upon and are now ours again the worlds in which we have risen have been already cleansed the world where we once walked we shall now walk again as the rights demand you are given a cycle of the pale stars to prepare yourselves for extermination mainaka comes and the banquet shall be served again nichona interpreted these recurrent dreams as the lies of demons insinuated into land's sleeping mind and a treacherous prophecy designed to so panic and deceive the imperial forces as to the timing and location of a future assault ironically in hindsight and given the nature of the wider necron threat to the imperium as he's even now only being fully understood by our own order everything lan was told so far as his mind could comprehend was quite literally the truth cross-referencing land's case with those reported elsewhere by inquisitor bios stracker and valeria it is likely that lan despite being imperial commander and surrounded by such protections as that office brings was abducted covertly and treated as the head of the forces opposing the necrons in the region an experience so malign it damaged his mind in some fashion such that the trauma of it caused his consciousness to block it out by accident or design milan's paranoia driven concentration of force in the amara system was exactly what the necrons had desired then answered to their challenge to die like warriors 390-092 m41 the black fleet the battle of amada began without preamble a warning no deep range awkward foretold of the necrons coming and no astrophosia prophesies their arrival in the currents of the empirian at one five three four two zero two local time scale a massive gravitational flux sprang into being near the amarra star its shock waves causing the sun to violently eject plasma and radiation into space in a series of massive solar flares the fury of the injured sun was such it reached as far as the orbit of the system's innermost planet auric and flash incinerated everything on its dayside in an instant across the amara system sensornets and or spec scanners were blinded vox traffic was drowned out and unshielded instruments rendered useless in the electromagnetic howl of the tortured star such was the confusion and turmoil created by the sudden solar storm that it was not until the sentinel 4 battle station in deep orbit around amara prime exploded in a rapidly expanding ball of burning gases and molten wreckage that it was realized that the long looked forward attack had finally come the necron host had unleashed their wrath the vast battle fleet on station further out at the fleet kangaroo ridge at leymond posted at what conventional wisdom dictated was the optimum location to best intercept ships translating into the system from the warp quickly brought back up systems and optical surveyors online to view the destruction they found to their horror the image of a black fleet of unknown vessels silhouetted against the burning death throes of the battle station these ships traveling at such near impossible speeds they were in range of amara prime in moments and there was nothing that could be done to stop them nor even time to give a warning the enemy had appeared within the walls as the fleet raised its mighty engines from their idling slumber a process that would take time their amount of prime could ill afford the erica dominus and her sister ships were forced to watch impotently as flashes of golden and emerald light flickered around amara as orbital minefields and weapons platforms were swept aside by the black scythe blade and spear-like shapes of the alien invaders systematically amount of prime was stripped of the defenses that so much blood treasure and time had forged and sentinel 2 then sentinel 1 each a battle station with the firepower of an entire cruiser squadron in its own right were blasted into a pirate of burning wreckage and left to hang like fiery omens in amara prime's night sky the capital world of the orpheus sector lay open for attack planet fall by the time the orbital defense batteries that shielded its hive cities and the missile silos concealed beneath its grey seas began to open fire wildly into the skies above the enemy was already at amara's gates dark and unnatural storms boiled in the skies above riven with vivid and copes and lightning whilst eerie flashes of pale radiance flickered in the shadows between the hive spires and tunnels and passageways deep below ground tactical vox nets still mired in howling static and interference were suddenly swamped with reports of attack both from the ground and the air in the wide ceremonial plazas of the kaloshin hive a spectral army of blackened iron had appeared between the lightning strokes and was advancing through the city streets slaughtering all before it at dhanuret starport swarms of ravenous metallic insects in their thousands had erupted from the subterranean access tunnels below devouring everything in their path and tearing apart the troop shuttles and gunships on their slipways from within elsewhere the hive city of new vasberg the largest of amara prime's arcologies was to be destroyed from the air as the sleek shapes of doom scythe and night shroud-class attack ships fell upon it from the storm-wracked skies above the antimatter bombs unleashed as lightning black containment spheres by the night shrouds shattered on contact with their targets ripping them into oblivion and rending great wounds into the spires which so undermined began to topple and crash down bringing until carnage upon the multitudes trapped inside the half-submerged complexes of tritonous hive were likewise soon undone the city's defenses had long relied upon its labyrinth of flooded passageways and sub-levels to impede and confuse an attacker but found they were poor barricades against the machine dead things that came for them creatures with no need to breathe and to whom darkness was a refuge assailed by mournful funeral barks that rose from the black waters bearing silent legions of skeletal metallic warriors and scissor-handed fiends that crawled from the shadows to do murder soon the air domes and coral-like heights of tritonas were also splintered and falling its watery streets echoing with the screams of the dying beyond the cities that were the invaders primary targets military outposts were soon attacked by the relentless necron invaders the foremost of these the polar bastion militarism a linchpin of the planet's defenses was suddenly besieged by a phalanx of hulking war machines that hovered soundlessly over the ice floes seemingly unstoppable by shot and shell they closed him relentlessly tearing apart the mountain holdfast with lashing blasts of energy and unleashing waves of seismic force that brought down the granite faces of the fortress's curtain walls as if they were made of sand the kilometers of prefabricated barrick blocks on the markovin peninsula built to house nearly a million guardsmen were simply annihilated from existence blazing lambent shafts of light descending from orbit and leaving nothing but fine white ash and fused silica glass where once a vast army had started rallying for war outmatched by an enemy that seemed to be suddenly everywhere and had the power simply to materialize out of thin air the defenders of amara though thrown into disorder nevertheless fought back and fought back hard against the invader at kaloshin the massacring legions were met by the tanks of the tarkan 234th armored battalion who quickly learned that even the small arms of the invaders proved lethal to their heaviest armor at close range knowing that to remain on the open battlefield would mean swift destruction the commanders of the battalion therefore pulled their vehicles back into the wide concourses where they could hope to engage their foe at range in places almost jamming the area between the hab spires with lehman rust drawn up in staggered lines of breast manticore and basilisk artillery tanks behind them providing barrage fire support at the first sign of the unliving ranks of the necron warriors stalking towards them the takan opened fire in an unrelenting barrage of shell fire at long range through which nothing could hope to survive even as rank upon rank were blasted apart and shattered warriors were sent spinning into fragments moore took their place and yet more still dragged themselves up from the broken ground and began to reassemble themselves to hurl their metal bodies forward again there's a khan seeing with horror that their fury was doing no more than holding the tide back could not relent their barrage and kept firing until their cannon barrels began to glow dull red with heat as shells were brought up with back-breaking haste to feed the guns a savage stalemate of swords had been achieved it was one the takan officers knew they could not sustain long but little did they know they would not get the chance to see how far their determination and munitions could last against so implacable affair for the valiant guardsmen of takan death came from both above and below testimony from the single survivor of the action a trooper named yeon back then employed as part of the shell-carrying train reports that the danger went unnoticed at first owing to the thunderous din of their own guns the first he saw of their plight was when a lance of burning heat like the blast from a melter gun only far more focused and prolonged instantly incinerated the troopers in front of him and bisected a sentinel power loader nearby in a single sweeping arc back attributes to luck the fact that he and his fellows were on the return to retrieve more shells or the munitions would have surely ignited and they would have been instantly killed he describes a huge black shape buzzing past directly over his head as he threw himself into cover and locking up in shock he saw the sides of the spire towers around the armored column crawling with multi-segmented robotic insects of nightmarish size identified by the lodgesters of the audozinos as acanthrites these machine constructs propelled themselves downwards onto the trapped takan forces on tenebrous wings of shadowy force slicing apart armored vehicles with their cutting beams before descending to smash and hack apart the survivors with bladed limbs and energy reeved stingers nanaki quickly descended on the takan as trapped so close to each other their tanks could not maneuver or bring their weapons to bear without hitting one another and their own troops with no less than general slaughter ensuing takan commando units attached to the arm of battalion sought to counter the attack with concentrated bursts of helgen fire and man portable plasma weaponry but this attack was quickly overwhelmed when huge rapidly moving anthropod-like constructs erupted from the ground beneath the takan and sealed the trap these killing machines moving with blurring speed were able to pass through solid matter at will swiftly they completed the massacre smashing through the remaining battle tanks the carcasses of the sakhan guardsmen dismembered and sent spinning away as the killing machines tore past the entire 234th battalion met its end in a span no greater than 20 standard minutes with trooper yon back surviving by crawling into a sewer culvert and being swept away later to be summarily executed for cowardice in the face of the enemy in the days following the initial assault amount of prime had been blasted into a burning ruin and each of the main hives had fallen to the invaders the necron hosts taking no prisoners and offering no quarter imperial resistance however was far from entirely spent and as the havoc of the initial assault passed ad hoc formations and rallying points soon formed in the ruins in an area spared either by accident or design from the destruction that had been visited upon the world out on the carousel industrial planes which ranged for tens of kilometers to the west of the shattered ruins at new wasberg hive the death corps of krieg were awaiting they later rivaled to the master at amara and with their reputation preceding them the death corps had been deployed to several out hive areas across the planet well away from the local forces barrack stations the the corral sir planes the 17th line corps had taken over an area of 100 square kilometers of warehousing and manufacturer to house their forces finding these structures far less secure than was meeted by their doctrine they had proceeded to exploit the underground utility tunnels that criss-crossed the area setting their engineers to further expand them to create arms dumps and refuges when the onslaught came this foresight saw the line core survive almost unscathed by the initial attack and once the firestorm had passed they emerged from their improvised bunkers in their tens of thousands into the smoking ruins resolute in their determination to drive back the invaders the death corps first dispersed into the wreckage of the industrial plane sweeping methodically across the shattered ground engaging the enemy linking up with other imperial survivor groups and recovering armor and munitions whenever they could be found it was marshall venner of the death corps who took charge of the battlefield at this point ordering the execution of several senior officers of the orpheon guard he considered had failed in their duties and offering others the chance for glorious martyrdom in the front lines vena's command quickly grew to encompass over 200 000 guardsmen as well as a dozen scratch-built squadrons of attack aircraft formed from a score of decimated formations now dispersed into smaller groups for their protection and using cleared roadway concourses designed for macro crawlers as airstrips the disciplined death corps troops veterans of such broken battlefields as amara had become use the shattered cityscape as cover from which to fight using every tumble down ruin as an improvised strong point in concealing snipers and lookouts amid the mounds of the dead in the days that followed fighting against the necron forces was fierce the armored bodies of the enemy proving all but impervious to laz fire and with implacable war machines preeta naturally resistant to most heavy weapons in the imperial arsenal the death corps however more than match their relentless fare with their determination to fight no matter the odds and quickly they shifted tactics to a combination of long-range indirect bombardments with artillery and extreme close assaults denying the necrons own long-range firepower as much as possible seeking to overwhelm the fare with sheer numbers and bloody determination these tactics met with great success but often came at a heavy cost in lives likewise their combat engineers skilled in generations of tunnel fighting used seismic detonators to shield their bunkers and tunnels from the ravening assault of the necrons canopic scarab swarms with flame air and melter squads kept in permanent readiness to respond to any sudden incursion from below marshall venner knew that such gains as his forces had made were at best transitory and with no hope of reinforcement arriving and with the necrons in command of much of the planet's surface it was only a matter of time before his forces were isolated surrounded and destroyed as soon as they were deemed a sufficient threat veno decided that rather than see his command bled and destroyed without gain he would instead attack and pursue martyrdom in the glorious destruction of the emperor's enemies all he needed was a target and he would soon be provided with one reconnaissance by elements of the minotaurs chapter trapped on the planet's surface during the attack had determined that in the rubble of new vasberg hybe something alien had manifested in the darkness where wreckage had been strewn hours previously a step pyramid of strangely angled green black stone riven with veins of pulsing emerald light now rose up into the night drawing bolt after bolt of lightning from the troubled skies above to strike its apex and causing it to burn with glimmering ghost fire around this pyramid had formed lesser citadels of the same maleficent stone these being studied with arcane weapons emplacements and strange battlements connected to the main structure by angular trenches filled with glowing fog around the pyramid complex these skeletal figures of necrons moved in tireless patrol and tides of scarabs and other constructs swarmed in and out dragging a multitude of corpses and wreckage fragments with them to feed the pyramid's hunger against this stronghold of the enemy marshall vena arranged his forces for attack even as intelligence came in from forward observers of alien stars being seen in the rent open storm above the pyramid through which blasted flares of emerald energy that surged up from its apex with deafening reports as they moved into position each of the men of the death corps assault brigades knelt in silent ordered ranks crouching in the rubble in ash waiting for the call to battle as the alien lightning flashed and flickered in the shrouded night between the ruins in which the death call marshall and the necron defenses lay was a rough kilometer of open ground blasted flat and scorched marking the kill zone which they would have to cross to reach their objective the signal was given at last and the death corps rose as one and began to advance across slowly evenly gathering pace as they left the rubble and entered the blasted ground immediately the curving arcs of century pylons materialized on the walls of the citadels and turned to track the advancing army arcs of power visibly flaring along the strange necron battlements then the killing began howling beams of emerald energy blasted great slaves of men from existence while tesla cannon spat volleys of lightning that left anything they touched as blazing cinders hundreds fell in the first moments but the death corps line did not waver in its advance and now from deep in the ruins behind them their own guns spoke impassively forward artillery observers had noted the range and disposition of the necron's own heavy weapons and marked them for destruction vena had ordered that no munitions were to be spared no cannon left in reserve and the death corps basilisks and praetors answered this call with a furious bombardment sending tons of shells into the air to fall like deadly rain on their targets instantly the pyramid and its sub-citadels were reeved in a mantle of flame as hundreds of shells burst against the alien structures the pyramid flickered for a moment like a mirage on the horizon before becoming solid once again one of its outlying obelisk towers blasted to fragments in a stream of arcing lightning soon as the bombardment lashed out again great chunks of black masonry were torn free from the structure in an eerie howl cut across the battlefield clearly audible even over the thunder of the shell fire the necron firepower was quickly redirected upwards sweeping the skies and blasting apart the shells before they could reach their target and in the respite the death corps pressed their advantage surging forwards while veno's tank companies held back until now roared forth from the rubble at flank speed through the death corps lines towards their objective as the imperial troops closed to a few hundred meters the ground before the citadels burst open disgorging murderous cannot tech constructs directly into the oncoming death corps troops the huge articulated bodies of the stalkers rose up and tore through the lines whilst hundreds of smaller scarabs dragged men down stripping the flesh from their bones they were met with bayonet and lass gun flamer and frag grenade and the death corps flowed like a tide around the killing machines while the tank companies entered range and opened fire with their battle cannon into the ranks of the shambling necron warriors they were beginning to stream from the citadels on the left flank a squadron of micarius omega plasma tanks unleashed blasts like miniature suns towards the defense pylons heedless of their own overheating cannon in their determination to strip the citadel of its defenses while on the right centaur carriers sped forth through a storm of gorse fire which blasted scores of them to shrapnel in order to deploy their quad launchers as close as possible to the enemy thousands fell tanks erupted into fire and a blizzard of shells was hurled against the black pyramid which began to break and crack smoke billowing and actinic lightning playing sickly across its splintering surface behind the imperial lines the companies of troops left behind to defend the artillery positions found themselves beset and in a desperate battle to stave off twisted blade-handed flares that came from them from the shadows just as necron attack craft shrieked from the skies to strafe them into oblivion the squadrons of imperial lightnings and avengers that tore through the night to intercept the lethal night sives of the necrons were few but bravely they dove straight into the heart of the enemy squadrons their weapons blazing in the darkness each pilot commending their soul to the emperor and knowing that this would be their final battle the die was cast the battle was held in the balance and there could be no holding back already tens of thousands lay dead on the blasted planes before him but fenner did not falter in ordering forth a second wave raising his sword high and leading the charge himself across the deadly ground the death corps filled the battlefield like a living tide of steel and fire and crashed and toppled the remaining kinetech stalkers that barred their path trampling the scattered scarabs into the earth the death corps reached the outer citadels of the pyramid complex just as their own shelf hour began at last to falter but for the necrons it was too late the enemy was already upon them the human soldiers swarming like ants across the alien fortifications surrounded the necron warriors were brought down in murderous crossfires and the machine creatures were driven back and destroyed one by one as for every creek the necrons slaughtered a dozen more took their place everywhere across the structure breacher charges were slammed into place and melted bombs were hurled into energy conduits and cracks in the armored edifice the violent detonation of the black pyramid blinded on lockers five kilometers distant and carved an ash white crater out of the wasteland that was clearly visible to vessels in orbit over the battle-savaged world although elsewhere the imperial defenders also saw degrees of success holding off if not repelling the invaders the necron invasion had been murderously effective each of the three major hive cities was in ruins the planet's principal star port was overrun and its keystone defense facilities had been reduced to rubble the death toll had climbed into the billions and amara prime burned the minotaur and the reaper with its lethal cargo deployed to the surface and the conquest of the planet well underway the necron fleet had turned its attentions again to interplanetary space leaving amount of prime covered in boiling black storms and riven with the fiery streaks of wreckage re-entering its atmosphere in their wake the imperial armada ranged against them now arrayed in a vast echelon formation and on full burn towards the inner system detected their movement and its captains cursed momentarily believing the invaders would flee before the armada's cataclysmic gathered might leaving them no chance to avenge their failure to prevent the black fleet from bringing about the deaths of so many on the planet's surface they were wrong the necron ships turning with almost contemptuous grace formed themselves into a perfect crescent-shaped attack formation and locked onto a direct intercept trajectory with the heart of the imperial armada exhibiting sudden unearthly acceleration no human ship could ever hope to match on the flag bridge of the apocalypse-class battleship erica dominus grand admiral gorg cowell knight commander of battle fleet orpheus watched the holosphere before him showing the on rushing enemy with growing apprehension although his desire was to avenge the losses his fleet had suffered in the past months and the affront to the world he had been solemnly sworn to protect unlike many of those under his command he would not let his wrath blind him the firepower of the fleet at his disposal was of an unimaginable order of magnitude and more than capable of shattering entire worlds through brute force alone a fact that he believed his foe was more than aware of now with the imperial battle or specces repaired he could ascertain that the black fleet possessed less than a quarter of his own number of vessels and by imperial standards far less in tonnage the bulk comprising what would comparably be of escort class in imperial terms the larger vessels some 20 in number were according to the intelligence provided to him by the ordo zenos identified as harvest ships while the foe matched his 11 greatest warships with two monsters of their own together anchoring the center of the attacking crescent these tombships were gigantic each being over 15 kilometers in span and surmounted with strange pyramid-like structures that threw off incomprehensible energy readings which baffled and alarmed his magos they had already been codified the sun killer and the dead hand by imperial stratagos and marked as the highest priority targets at all within the armada the force represented the largest concentration of xenos necron vessels on record and kawu determined to give them the respect they deserved having conferred with the sinister asteroid molok a chapter master of the minotaur space marines the minotaur's chapter fleet commanded by the lumbering relic assault ship diablos crata itself shielded by a dozen escorting strike cruisers had deployed into a second echelon some way behind the armada's main line of battle poised either to deliver a killing blow after the lions had clashed or to intercept any breakthrough force where the enemies plan to punch straight through rather than engage to his own command he issued the direct order to all vessels to maintain formation and engage only as directed on pain of death and although the captains of many battle-hungry destroyers and cruisers balked at the order they knew that their lives would be forfeit to their own shipboard commissar should they disobey with frightening speed the necron fleet closed the empty void between them and was entering extreme weapons range before any orders could be given or carried out the imperial armada though was first to speak its wrath hundreds of torpedoes spat from the launch tubes of the mast destroyers frigates and cruisers of the imperial force blazing straight and true on pillars of fire towards the black fleet that awaited them the necrons came on undeterred and as the torpedo swarm drew closer they made no attempt to alter course or evade and as hundreds of thousands of kilometers of distance was eaten away to tens of thousands no avoidance maneuvers nor counter fire issued from the ominous xenos warships on the flag bridge of the erika dominus all looked on in breathless silence as the torpedoes entered terminal range suddenly where hundreds of blue icons had flickered on the hollow sphere tracking the projectile's path red alarm glyphs now flashed frantically and simply disappeared scores of torpedoes simply ceased to function rendered inert and powerless by some agency the imperial battle or specces could not even detect while others simply self-destructed or spun wildly off course as if blinded the few that flew true were simply avoided with contemptuous ease by the necron vessels which sped past them at unguessable velocities or vented their atomic spite uselessly against the impassive black hulls of the great tombships too few to have any real effect still the necron ships blacker yet against the blackness of the void came on within mere moments the two fleets neared the edge of lance range and the necrons fired on the bridge of the imperial ship's alarm sirens howled as massive gravitational distortions were detected hurtling towards them at speeds barely below that of light and too late the struggling machine spirits and cogitators of the imperial ships identified them for what they were fragments of dead stars these bolts of oblivion shattered void shields in bright actinic flashes and tore open the ships within with savage ease and up and down the imperial line ships both great and small simply flashed out of existence alongside the araka dominus the battle cruiser ricked them back which had served the imperium since before the great crusade was struck amid ship and exploded bathing the armada's flagship in fire and debris despite the eternaled around him karu issued the order for the armada to come about to broadside and fire at will and the closing void between the two fleets became a blinding storm of blazing lance beams and plasma fire hurtling macro cannon shells and roaring missiles whilst the necrons answered with a fury all of their own as blasts of emerald and amber light flickered out to splinter hulls and strip away decks the two fleets inter-penetrated and parted racking each other mercilessly as they passed and kuwa watched in horror as the holosphere resolved the chaotic details of the battle into some semblance of order the casualty lists flickering on it as strange mechanicus can't runes which only a trained and augmented eye had a hope of being able to interpret at such speed fully a quarter of his ships were registered as destroyed or crippled already compared to so few of the enemy so very few horror mounted on horror for the admiral as the necron fleet having flown past arrested its inertia and turned back upon their course coming right back at the imperial ships from behind it was an utter impossibility and yet it happened before his disbelieving eyes the second necron attack run was even more devastating than the first the imperial ships caught unexpectedly from behind in their vulnerable rear arcs blind spots created by their own drive flares and already reeling in many cases from battle damage were easy prey and dozens died before they realized the danger or heard kawu's emergency order to break formation the retribution class battleship talisman of grace was caught before the sun killer and sheared in half by its gorse rays while the heavy cruiser mandicatus was pulled apart mercilessly by a pack of necron raiders like a wounded herd animal caught between predator beasts the armada's line of battle quickly fractured and broke apart ships flaring and exploding like stars in the darkness the survivors now lashing vainly all about them with broadside and battery fire or spilling fighters and bombers into the void often to be cut apart by the defensive fuselage put up by their own brethren the erica dominus herself turned as closely as her expert crew could grant her and caught a harvest ship broadside the black hull rippling like water and finally failing before the fury of energy poured into it the harvest ship detonated with a flash of pale green flame leaving nothingness in its way but the roars of triumph on the flagship's bridge were short-lived as the venerable battleship was rocked to new as a triad of necron raiders passed close alongside her her void shields down the dir ships hammered her from stem to stern gutting her starboard lance batteries and consuming her main engine deck in fire unable to answer her helm the araka dominus tumbled wildly in the darkness the bodies of her crew and frozen air trailing behind her as she fell through the carnage the necron ships wheeled and fell like carrying birds at the feast the two great tomb ships glided majestically and in violet for the heart of the storm annihilating anything that came near while the pilots and crews of lesser craft that drew close were driven mad with fear or found their ships had become cold tombs for them their power draining away to nothing it was into this bloody melee that the minotaur's chapter fleet plunged headlong having observed the battle on his own hollow sphere asterion molok the bleak master of the minotaurs quickly realized that engaging the necron ships with their superior firepower maneuverability and range was suicidal folly and instead issued orders for close assault without quarter or reservation of force their target was to be the dead hand which the machine animus of his own ancient assault ship had discerned had been the first vessel to leave the orbit of stricken amara and the first to fire upon the fleet this molok knew in his warrior's heart was the master of the foe their flagship the throne of their commander and it was this the minotaurs meant to destroy adopting an attack formation in the shape of a bowl's head with the diadolos crater forming the protected skull the chapters free battle barge is the jaw and its eight strike cruisers the horns the chapter fleet smashed into the heart of the battle engines at full burn and fire held until the last moment as they unleashed hell from their bombardment cannon and plasma batteries the chapters war vessels did so heedless of whatever lay in their path as stricken imperial ships caught between them and their goal were shredded just as were any necron raiders smashed aside on the fleet's headlong plunge towards the dead hand two necron harvest ships turned and opened fire into the on rushing space marine vessels the battle barge daughter of tempests once the pride of the lamenters chapter fleet and taken as a prize during the badab war was blasted asunder and fell from the formation its entire arm at four section disintegrating in the necron crossfire but the minotaurs did not relent even when the dead hand's own weapons spoke and shattered the port side hull of the fidalitas lambda and sent a trio of strike cruisers into fiery oblivion at point-blank range boarding torpedoes gunships and cestus assault rams hurtled from the launch bays of the minotaur's fleet and crashed into the hull of the dead hand and its close escorts the ships at their backs still firing remorselessly at the prey hoping to open up hull rents for the borders to exploit a dozen assaultcraft managed to pierce the whole skin of the necron flagship and found within a channel house of stagnant blood wreaking air darkened corridors and black alien sepulchers malevolent scatter engines were everywhere and raf machines phased through the solid walls to assault the attackers as antibodies would attack a virus invading a living body the minotaurs impactable and unrelenting fought on battling and bleeding for every inch of ground as every turn of passageway brought fresh enemies looming out of the darkness one by one the space marines fell their armor blackened and burned by bodies punctured and torn apart by the ghost claws of the tombship's defenders until only one squad remained terminator squad extillion blast scarred and bloody at last forced its way into the tomb ship's vast central chamber a cold and haunted space nearly a kilometer across that lay beneath the black pyramid that crown the tomb ship here amid the chill mists and circles of strange obelisks at the center of ranks of whispering sarcophagi reeved in corpescent ghost light arose a great deus upon which stood the terrifying overlord of the necrons in a shrouding cloak of raw darkness it would be the last site the warriors of squad xtelion would see as a phalanx of necron praetorians rose up from the shadowed mists and slaughtered them for their transgression but it would be enough the signal had been sent all but close enough now to crash into the tomb ship the deadlock crater badly wounded and with rents of damage scoring her dense armor opened fire with her bombardment cannon at point-blank range their targeting solution identified by squad extillium below the fuselage of macro shells ruptured the dead hand's hull exposing the vault chamber within to open space in a screaming vortex of decompression the dead hand bucked away like a wounded animal one vast arc of its crescent superstructure catching the diadolos crater a glancing blow and sending the relic assault ship spinning with the impact the damage however was done the seamless shell within the tombship otherwise impenetrable to all specs or targeting solution was broken and in that instant the ancient teleporter engines of the diadolos crater had fired and delivered their baleful cargo as the pulsing shock wave of the teleport transit cleared asterion molok and his bodyguard of 30 of his chapters terminator armored veterans alongside two contempted dreadnoughts of the chapter stood amid the black gale of the venting atmosphere and confronted the lord of the necron host between them there was no preamble no warriors salute or declaration of challenge or intent instead moloch merely raised his black spear and unleashed its last blast at the sinister figure high on its throne like deus the golden white bolt strong enough to pierce the armor of a battle tank struck the machine creature's shoulder and rocked the figure back but it did no more than elicit an eerie hissing howl not of pain but of insulted rage from the cold air a great glittering cleaver like blade of pale obsidian materialized in the necron overlord's outstretched skeletal hand and he threw himself from the deus like a bolt of thunder slicing open the first terminator in his path with a savage backhand blow as if the warriors wanted armor whereas nothing so was the battle joined and in a moment all in the vast chamber was fury the sound of churning storm bolters and roaring assault cannon bleeding away with the air into the open void above from the darkness the necron praetorians and tomb guardians came hulking armored forms twice the height of a man their gilded and corroded death masks glimmering gold and crimson in the fire flash light of the minotaur's weapons in their hands they bore arcane staff weapons blazing with ghostly flame with which to blast their foes to ash or great cleaving blades and tall segmented shields able to repel the deadliest fire soon the minotaurs were hard-pressed a shrinking circle of warriors who had already accounted for twice their number only to see the fallen drag themselves back up from ruin or be replaced by another of their kind stalking implacably from the darkness monarch raged and slew as tirelessly as any machine warrior that rose up before him and with a great cold fury his storm shield resounding with the blows of enemy weapons while the black spear tirelessly slashed and stabbed punching through armored torsos and severing mechanical limbs as he went the dark overlord fought and killed his way towards the minotaur's chapter master leaving a trail of rent and severed terminators in his wake until suddenly the tomb ship shook to a resounding blow and began to tilt crazily the artificial gravity field within it rippling and buckling the necron overlord was thrown unceremoniously to his knees and looming there above him was ancient garion the contempted dreadnought's great fist raised to strike the lethal energy field that enraptured it churning soundlessly in the now airless vault the hammer blow fell but the reaper's blade was there to meet it and the dreadnought's forearm exploded in flame and spinning shrapnel the tomb ship tilted further still and get unreeled and staggered the dreadnought's huge armored feet skidding and losing purchase the overlord sprang bonelessly from the ground and laid in targaryen with his great blade in a rapid series of two-handed slashes sending splintered ceramide and showers of sparks fountaining from the wounded dreadnought gary on fell one knee actuator severed brackish blood and silver amniotic fluid leaking from the rents in his armor the overlord rose up to deliver the final blow and the black spear found him moloch punched the ancient relic weapon clean through the overlord's back and it exploded from the ark glyph that was emblazoned across the necrons chest reeved in pale flame and amber lightning transfixed the overlord spasmed upon the spear its death mask thrown back as if in a silent scream asterion molok smashed the dark overlord off his spear blade using his storm shield to deal the blow just as the tomb ship rocked again with fresh impacts the white flame of plasma weapon fire licking around the aperture in the vault chamber from the void beyond by a warrior's instinct to earned on a thousand battlefields moloch reacted before his conscious mind detected the reaping blade falling from on high raising his storm shield as the dark overlord's blade came down the ancient device blocking a blow that would have cleaved molok's head in two before it finally shorted and spat quickly coming apart under the repeated wild blows of the necrons glittering blade the world tilted once more and they parted moloch feeling the burning cold hate of the deathless creatures bail for crims and eyes as the broken skeletal figure retreated into the darkness the master of the minotaur's chapter himself was swept out into the void surrounded by the bodies of his dead warriors as if caused in a whirlpool the darkness shimmered as the vast shape of the stricken dead hand turned and blotted out the stars with its transit and began to accelerate away revealing the burning hulk of the minotaur's battle barge fidilitas lambda behind it the ship's dying act had been to ram the dead hand and in doing so it had at last caused enough damage to force the colossal ship's retreat with their master's vessel on the move the black fleet disengaged driven off but hardly defeated leaving only death and fire behind them whilst in a move completely unanticipated the sun killer and a dozen escorting raiders unexpectedly split from the body of the black fleet and made landing on the night side of uruk whose face was soon consumed by dark storms and pulses of unnatural radiance the rest of the surviving necron ships and the wounded dead hand simply vanished without trace from the organize of the handful of imperial warships still able to track them one second they registered and the next they were gone the necron host if not defeated had been checked but for most of the survivors that was a pyrrhic victory at best battlefleet orpheus was shattered less than ten percent of its vessels were still in anything resembling fighting order and every single one carried the scars of the battle as to the rest of the armada it lay in vast arcing clouds of still-burning hulks and tumbling debris a pyre for the once glorious defenders of the sector visible across the entire star system amara prime although rid of its principal invasion force burned still and was now the graveyard for billions such victories that had been claimed there had been brought at the most terrible price of all many surviving imperial forces were evacuated as quickly as possible from the shambling ruins and pulled back to the outer worlds of laymon and kalamar to regroup while the remnants of the civilian population there were regrettably left to their fate the battle of amara was over the orpheon decree the high lord's temporal martial of the most divine and righteous imperium of mankind witness and obey by the express order of the chamber maury of the order xenos of the inquisition and under the written seal of the inquisitorial representative and the high lords of terror should the following edict imperialis henceforth known as the orphean decree be obeyed and enacted by the act of discorporation shall the sector orpheus of the segmentum tempestus be no more it's right tithes and titles are nulled and its history be sealed and unremembered save for those whose duty it is to bear the burden of truth and the sorrow of watchfulness of the forces imperial currently contesting its remaining domains of the aforesaid sector shall the gift of martyrdom be given with the emperor's blessing may their glorious struggles be long and bleed from the foe of humanity its strength and number and may their souls find their reward in the hereafter by this decree shall accord and be enforced between the former sector known as orpheus whose stars be forbidden on pain of death and the sector of eredis let fortress worlds and places of strength be raised to maintain its watch under the auspices and direction of the ordo zenos unto this sacred charge addendum the first the the forces of the minotaurs chapter of the adaptive societies and the remaining warships of the battlefleet orpheus upon their immediate refitting and rearming for the purpose of this cell command an onerous duty enforce the purgation and exterminators of the worlds listed here in scouring them of life and bringing in to ruin any relic or taint of zeno's import unless they provide spur or sucker to the enemy in the times to come addendum the second the deforged world of maya shall be abandoned and scoured and its chambers data looms and forges be relocated to the colony world of thurgath whose system domains and people are seeded henceforth to the adeptus mechanicus in compensation for their loss let all this be done by the throne of terror zero two six six nine nine nine m m41 emperor protects all right there you go everybody thank you very much this was kind of a one shot uh little campaign from the pen of the mighty alan bly again so i'm gonna have some other similar ones coming up soon-ish so i hope you did enjoy this i might swap out the voice because i've been doing it a lot lately and i like to keep things um entertaining for me so i might swap that out soon but more stuff is coming more short stories more lore videos more reviews more things like this or campaign videos that sort of thing so do stay tuned please do like the video i really appreciate that lads it really helps let me know in the comments what you thought and uh yes subscribe if this is the first time you're watching my stuff so you can uh see the other stuff i've done and new stuff as it comes out i do hope you enjoy these um i'll be speeding got production as we go towards the end of 2020 now i'm going to be yeah basically a lot of stuff i've been working on is sort of coming to an end in terms of my preparation for it and all that sort of stuff so it's all coming uh the names scrolling past here are supporters of the channel thank you lads i really appreciate it it really helps me do the job um you know it's it just it's great and uh yeah i appreciate it if you would like to join this company of heroes and get your name up there as well and support me and the channel then please use the links below there's various options uh any of the options there are good whatever suits you best but if not don't worry about it but i do want you to like the video you got to do that anyway i'm going to go more stuff is coming very very soon i'm talking like days from whenever this is released so you're talking like two or three days probably so i'm going to be keeping production reasonably high uh i'm gonna go now i'm rambling thank you all very much thanks again bye-bye you

Channel: ABORDER PRINCE

Views: 196,416

Keywords: warhammer, 40K LORE, WARHAMMER LORE, WARHAMMER AUDIO, WARHAMMER 40K AUDIO, NECRONS LORE, FORGEWORLD, MINOTAURS, minotaurs 40k, minotaurs space marines, ASTARTES LORE, ASTERION MOLOC, DEATH KORP OF KRIEG, DEATH KORP OF KRIEG LORE, necrontyr, necrontyr warhammer, necrons warhammer 40k, WARHAMMER CAMPAIGN, rogue trader 40k, rogue traders, IMPERIUM OF MAN LORE, NECRON TOMB WORLD, NECRON WARMACHINE, space marine boarding action, space marine boarding torpedo, 40K NARRATION, kryptek

Id: jaqgw7FlayM

Length: 119min 58sec (7198 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020