 Early eras of the Imperium were an age of discovery, and all of the sinister and occluded paradoxes that came with it. The galaxy was a dark and dangerous place, a volume riven and wrecked after the millennia of terror and destruction that the Age of Strife had unleashed upon it. A volume riven and wrecked after the millennia of terror and destruction that the Age of Strife had unleashed upon it. Everywhere in these ruins there lurked horrors and mysteries in equal measure, but hope, too, after a fashion. The surviving colonies of humanity that had outlasted old night now found themselves a subject of a questing Emperor of Terra who sought to reunite them with their species. The stories of these reunions are legion, and no two are alike. On some worlds the Imperium Aquila was raised high with triumphant adulation, as the populace embraced the coming Imperium with open arms and blessed relief. While on others there were those who denied the writ of Terra, and for their obstinacy felt the tread of the legion as a startes and the wrath of their bolters. These are the polar points of a spectrum, and contained within that spectrum are uncountable tales that make up those unique years of Crusade and Imperium. For the Mechanicum of Mars, the situation was no different, but the examples, perhaps even stranger. A far less centralized society than the Imperium it was partnered to, Mechanicum's web of loyalties bound by common culture and creed made reuniting Lost Forge worlds a more difficult prospect in many cases, but with one forge in particular, the tale would be one that tested the boundaries of the era, and the darker era that followed it, in ways unprecedented. Herein is presented that tale. No then, that this is a record of Ocedentalum Thule, the last port on the edge of the ever blackness and of its mysteries, paradoxes, and heresies, the history of the Zana incursion. The mystery of Zana is an old one, older in fact than the Imperium itself. Its first recorded instance, with an imperial record, came from essentially simultaneously logged reports from multiple rogue trader expeditions that were forging through millennia defunct warp corridors towards the Galactic West. These ran the typical gamut of such reports, they were vastly contradictory and frequently hyperbolic, rogue traders being what they are, speaking of everything from a singular isolated human outpost amid the darkness of the void, to an empire of machines spanning several systems, nay, a sector, nay, several sectors. On one hand, it was a forbidden domain of dark imaginings wreathed with all the techno-terrors of old night, while on the other it was a beacon of progress and humanity holding at bay the predations of wild space, ruled over either by being's recognizably Martian in aspect, or deathless cyber things of utterly unknowable provenance, depending of course on which flotilla filed which report. The only thing that any of these accounts had to tie them together, in any capacity, was the name, single word, Zana. This sole point of similarity set off identifiable marker tags within adeptus administratum and divisio militaris logistical processing, demanding the delegation of more resources to its investigation. A combined report was prepared and filed, having slavishly combed through the reels of rogue trader's statements to establish the following, somewhere in the very western edges of the galactic reaches, technologically advanced power existed, that was either human or had once been, and one that stood a high probability of being a hitherto unknown or undiscovered forge offshoot of Martian colonization efforts. Both prior to and during the age of strife, Mars had sent many a colony ship into the furthest reaches of the galaxy, to establish worlds in her own image. Prior to the coming of old night, this had been led by the Martian regime of the dark age of technology, meplete as they were, with all the greatest and most terrible scientific imaginings of that benighted epoch. During the age of strife, these expeditions had been altogether more perilous, formed of mechanicum of Mars' generation ships cast forth into the chaotic warp, blindly stumbling along with millennia-old astro-navigation charts and equipment, with nary and navigator to spare amongst them. Great Crusade, Imperium, in partnership with Mechanicum, was intent on reuniting these lost forges with greater humanity, and just as the records of the worlds born of Terra were impossible to verify, so too were those of Mars. Many scraps of knowledge remained of pre-stripe Martian colonies, and those born of strife-era Mechanicum efforts, well, besides a few notable exceptions, it was impossible to even ascertain if the colony ships that had been sent out had survived their very first warp jumps. Some were exceptions, Gryphon, for instance, but by and large the fate of these expeditions remained unknown. Xana could be ancient beyond reckoning, or born of just such a lost ship of Mars, not a millennia ago. What form it had become would be anyone's guess, and certainly the rogue traders were of no help in that particular regard. The quest to discover the truth of Xana proceeded in much the same manner as the Crusades' efforts to establish links with other rumoured lost worlds of humanity. But it must be noted that it received apparently significant attention from two parties worthy of discussion, namely the Emperor of Mankind and the Fabricator General of the Mechanicum. In the case of the latter, it has been suggested the sheer hyperbole of those early reports captured their attention, for often was it that some kernel of truth lay behind the outlandish claims of rogue traders, while Mars very much doubted a scion of itself occupied sectors worth of space, it certainly seemed likely that this Xana was a powerful and independent polity, and as they had no record of its existence at all, one who may contain a fabulous wealth of technological and scientific information and resources. The Emperor, his motivations can only be speculated upon. Perhaps he thought that in Xana he may find a lead on one of his last sons, the Xana, or was worried that this realm was one that could potentially rival in power his budding Imperium. It is known that, unlike other cases, he personally dispatched several deep void scout ships. Both the efforts of Mars and Terra, Emperor and Fabricator General, were seemingly for not, however, their expeditions either did not return, or did so empty-handed, for decades on end. More pressing concerns with Crusade affairs, as well as more promising leads for more verifiable realms, would ultimately begin to bleed both attention and resources away from the search for Xana, until, in 843 and 30, a chance encounter would shift the course of history. Ironically, it was thanks to another rogue trader, one Mamzell Casoleda of the D'Aniassi dynasty. Fearing herself fleeing from a devastating encounter with the flotilla of Fra'al Xenos Corsairs, D'Aniassi recorded three massive and apparently automated warships on her ospex logs, upon the edge of the intergalactic gulf. Fearing death would claim her and her ship, D'Aniassi was surprised to receive hails instead of gunfire. The Barks offered aid to the stricken rogue trader, bearing in addition both the greetings and offer of parley between the sovereign forge domain of Xana and the emperor of the Imperium. Born by the warships to the forge itself, D'Aniassi and her galleon were repaired and refitted with what she described as stunning time, and was treated with utmost courtesy by the rulers of a world she termed a beacon on the shore of night. Xana, by the rogue trader's careful and meticulous account, was a world in orbit around a supermassive gas giant. The system's mainline star was in good health, but apparently was set alone in the void. There was nothing astrocortography would dare term a local constellation neighbor in the nearby volume for hundreds of light years. D'Aniassi's dubbing of the world as a beacon was apt. Xana was an island perched on the very precipice of the galaxy. Beyond there lay only the cold darkness of the intergalactic gulf and all its unknowable horrors. Quite how the lords of Xana came to know of the emperor, despite this being their first contact, we shall never know, and serves as the introductory mystery, shall we say, of that strange world. The initial negotiations between the Imperium and Xana were perfectly cordial, but on the Imperial side clouded by a deep and immediate suspicion for many of those involved. The Forge World, already a paradox since its name was first logged, only proved to be more so as information trickled in upon it. Of course, the reunion, and apparently good faith reunion at that with any lost world of humanity, was a moment to be celebrated. Xana represented a paradox that left some far too ill at ease to dismiss their fears. The world was recognizably a Mechanicum dogma aligned, worshipping the machine god in clear synchronicity with the religion of Red Mars. This established its birth as sometime during the Age of Strife, significantly after the Mechanicum had unified Mars and had begun sending expeditionary ships into the galaxy at large. However, unlike, say, Calibrax, it was no outpost of hardy settlers clinging to survival, and unlike Lucius or Gryphon, it was not verifiably arc-established in that it had maintained contact with Mars throughout the Age of Strife. Initial estimates indeed appeared to point to Xana outstripping Lucius and Gryphon both, in terms of its output and establishment. It was clearly a forge whose roots were deep and old. It had leveraged its technology to rearrange the very orbital alignment of its solar system, ensnaring planetary and demi-planetary bodies into the planet's own graffitic well through means Mechanicum logist texts were furiously speculating over. The host, or central forge, had allowed newer forge fangs to spring up both planetside in orbit and elsewhere in the system, each one more mature than almost any other single arc-established forge. It had its own navy of warships of an unknown design, not to mention a host of automata ships, like those encountered by the rogue trader Dianne Assi, that had many within the Mechanicum immediately concerned for the independence of those machine minds. It had even created its own Titan legion, recognizably based upon the precepts of the Martian triad Feren Morgulum, but whose disposition of god engines placed them in the primus grade category of the Colesia Titanica, alongside the likes of the legios Mortus, or Prasagius, or even Ignatum. In summation, as was whispered amongst Imperial and Mechanicum negotiators both, Zanna did not make sense. Absolutely no record of its foundation was either found upon Mars or was provided by the Zanians, nor would the magi of that world confirm how old the forge was. Even the timeframe involved, sheer establishment and advancement of Zanna, it was, if not an impossibility, than an almost absurd improbability. Powerful realms of humanity had been encountered in their plentitude, but those had been so divergent from the cultures and creeds of Terra and Mars as to almost be separate from the human species. Zanna, in such immaculate alignment with the Martian norm, yet seemingly in possession of a history and status that would be more at home in a society born of the dark age of technology, raised innumerable questions, and was answering none. As one Divisio Militaris official noted, Zanna is a gift simply too perfect to be trusted. It is either our greatest good fortune in these times of war, or it is a serpent lying in wait to slay us. My mind perceives the former, but my soul warns of the latter. Had the magi of Zanna been more willing to address these concerns, perhaps history would have taken a different course, but alas, this was far from the case. They were cordial, yes, but not what could be considered friendly, per se. Theirs was a guarded distance maintained in those early years, a clearly maintained barrier that the Zanni and Mechanicum kept between them and all outsiders. Their massive military capabilities, they explained as a necessity born of years of Xenos predations. While their apparent lack of clear origin was, so they claimed, the result of solar storms of unique severity that had caused irreparable damage to their oldest datalooms and archival macro stacks. Ambassadors from the fabricator general politely asked to examine what archives of forge currently possessed, and when these polite requests were politely denied, escalated these to demands that were equally sternly rebuffed. Negotiations on just how Zanna would enter the imperial fold were still ongoing, and none from the mysterious forge would cede an iota of their sovereignty to the lords of Sol until such a time as the accords were concluded. At no point did they display any form of hostility towards the Great Crusade, quite the opposite, appearing in all stated aspects to celebrate their reunion with humanity, but any negotiator worth their salt could see that the threat was implicit. Zanna did not desire war, but should they be backed into the proverbial corner, none would deny that hostilities would be inevitable. Younger or ill-experienced acolytes may question how this is possible, for was it not the avowed policy of the early Imperium, submit or face destruction? Was it not the emperor's choice offered to all humanity? His way was the only way, and to gain say it was annihilation itself. The situation was often far less cleanly cut than the iterators or their propaganda reels may have implied. The offer of clemency and integration, or invasion and obliteration, was only presented to foes of the Imperium that they could easily best, or reasonably best. Essentially, it was one given from a position of strength, from where victory could be assured within a decent cost. Foundry examples of this occur within official record, with the first being the Mechanicum itself, whose integration into the emperor's realm came with the Treaty of Olympus and not the Legion as a starty on Mars' red soil. Zanna, with its galactic isolation, massive military disposition for middable navy and frankly impossible to assess technological capabilities, threatened to be a campaign that some within the Divisio Militaris estimated would be the most significant armed engagement in the Western Crusade's history, potentially one of the costliest the early Imperium had ever endured. The lack of insight over the capabilities of the forge forced cost-benefit estimates to be placed as high as scaling would allow. An entire Astartes Legion would be needed, that much was clear, as well as not one but several Titan legios, since the war would invariably be fought on an engine scale against a primus-grade legio of Zanna's own. Divisio Militaris' voices added to this that preferably more than one Astartes Legion should be called upon, and an estimate of perhaps one million troops from the Exertus Imperialis should be supplied for ancillary combat support. Even if an Imperial victory could be carried in those days, none would say with certainty when it would be, and if the resulting conquest would, at the end of however many years or decades of war, be even worth the struggle in the first place. This was simply a conflict the Imperium could ill afford, if it could afford it at all, and now that their existence had been revealed to Zanna, any obvious delay in integration would clearly be read by the isolated Forge as a prelude to invasion, forcing both sides into a game of arms race brinksmanship that would only delay an inevitable conflagration. Negotiation then was the only option, and it is highly likely the Zanian Magi were well aware of the favorable position they were in to leverage whatever they wanted from the clearly eager but wary Imperium. After a tense several years of negotiations, the Treaty of Compliance was signed between the Lords of Zanna and the representatives of the Emperor, with the approval but barely disguised anger of the fabricator general. It was one of, if not the most generous, series of accords signed by the early Imperium, remaining a curious artifact of those Halcyon times even to this day. Zanna would retain its sovereignty within the Empire, falling under the Jew right and jurisdiction of the Mechanicum and its diffuse Byzantine web of futile obligations. However, its secrets would be its own. There was no legal compulsion for Zanna to divest its technological and scientific knowledge to Mars, explaining the wrath of the fabricator general for having been cheated out what he no doubt desired as a kingly prize. Zanna was free to conduct its secrets and affairs, provided it paid due diligence to the precepts and restrictions upon technological development as demanded by the machine god and emperor both. Although the question of how this would be enforced was not directly addressed, something of a diplomatic massaging one imagines. In return for this, Zanna would arm and supply the great crusade and provide harbour and garrison repair and refit for all expeditionary fleets that either requested or required it. The accords were, for the Imperium, incredibly well timed. No sooner had they been concluded and the great crusade would encounter its most devastating conflict yet, the rang-down Xenocides. The tagmata of Zanna, devised of Magi of the local Ordo-Reductor, whole legions of cybernetica automata, and supported by two newly formed Titan legions, Volchurum and Cydianus, raised from the massive god-engine strength of the forge, joined the first legion Dark Angels in the fires of that first Xenocide. That the Imperium survived this war, as well as the two Xenocides to come, is thanks in no small part to both the forces of Zanna and its productive might, as arms, armour, and armaments all flowed from the forge to arm the desperate imperial forces holding back the Xenos tides. Not only was the Imperium saved, but canny operators within it noted that, thanks to the conflict, the Empire had a much greater idea of the capabilities their new ally possessed, not to mention the fact that the Xenocides had bled and bloody to the forge of a large part of its initial military disposition. Though it would enter the latter half of the great crusade, a diminished remnant of its former strength, Zanna nevertheless retained an almost legendary quality across the Imperium. Its secretive magi, its galactic isolation, its apparently peerless technology, all yet continued in both popular imagination and reality both, but with that original independence retained through absolute and total observance to the stipulation of the Treaty of Compliance. Rumours, as they are wont to do, persisted, however, whispers of sinister experiments, forbidden research, and hidden heresies conducted out there in the dark upon that island in the void. But given the lack of ease of scrutiny, they remained just rumours, eclipsed too very visibly by the quite evident macabreities of the magi of, say, Serum or Vos. In this way, did Zanna persist? Comfortably isolated? Perfectly diligent? Quietly distrusted? In the years immediately preceding the heresy, subsequent to the Daven Incident, it is known that Horace Lupercal, Warmaster of the Imperium, dispatched agents galaxy wide in order to secure allies for his upcoming insurrection. The Warmaster was a being of towering strategic intelligence and knowing that all such entreaties were able to be made under the cover of total and utter trust in his loyalties. These agents, however, did not appear to reach Zanna before the Istvan atrocity and the outbreak of hostilities between traitor and loyalist forces. The ruling polity of Zanna, the Vodian Consistory, appeared initially to not take a single side. When pressed, their only statement was that the heresy was an internal matter for the Great Crusade's military, and as per their remit under the Treaty of Compliance, it would continue to supply the Imperium while retaining independence of political sovereignty and taking no direct involvement. What Zanni and Tagmata were abroad across the Galactic Reaches were quietly withdrawn to their home system where possible, although the same could not be said for the manifolds of the legios Volchurum and Cydianos, nor especially the forces of Night Household Malonex, engines of whom had been present during the scouring of Prospero and were believed even now to be at the van of the Warmaster's forces. Shipments and the supply chain from the forge were initially uninterrupted despite the news of Horace's treachery, continuing to ferry the wealth of Zanna to both loyalists and traitor forces. These however began to dwindle, even before the coming of the ruined storm, until finally they ceased. There was no imperial reason for this. The rogue traitors and chartist captains, as well as scattered loyalist elements in the western fringes, reported no warproot tumult at was afflicting the Galactic Core and East. Repeated demands were made from officials loyal to either Emperor or Warmaster, and even those within the rapidly sundering Mechanicum too, for the confirmation of Zanna's loyalty to their cause, all of which rebuked with the same denial of involvement and the same cold courtesy of claiming the heresy was an Imperial internal affairs matter. Around this time, it was reported a macro arch convoy sworn to Terra disappeared in Zanna's near local volume, as well as a rogue trader Flotilla bearing the eye of Horace. Neither were losses of any critical worth, but they were noted for the location. It is unknown whether either side decided to press the Vodian Consistory for confirmation of warp readings pointing to immaterial issues that would have destroyed these fleets, but one suspects that if they had, the answer would have been predictable. The first move by Zanna, that was in any way overt, would not take place until late 008M30, some two and a half years after the Dropside Massacre, when a tagmata in the Forge's Ashen Bone panoply intervened in a battle on a mining world, known as Gilder's Grave, on the western edges of the Vicodax Sector. These forces drove back the trader-aligned naval blockade that had isolated the world with stunning rapidity, only to turn their guns on its loyalist defenders, massacring them to a man and looting the entire planet of its extracted resources, notably all of its excavated rare earth minerals, as well as the entirety of its macro-engineering machinery, all before disappearing into the void. This pattern would be repeated on numerous occasions, Zanian tagmata performing calculated raids on loyalist and trader holdouts of value, ideally in the middle of ongoing conflicts where they would be least expected, only to disappear back to their home system. It appeared to be utterly uninterested in claiming any territory outside of the Zana system, merely in acquiring resources. Although to what use they would be, only speculation could be drawn. It is noteworthy that Imperial assayers predicted that Zana had long before contact run down its stock of raw materials planet-side and was somewhat dependent on incoming natural resources to maintain productivity. Either way, the higher echelons of both the trader and loyalist commands draw two conclusions. Either Zana was uninterested in anything save its own affairs, and was indeed avowedly neutral, or it was simply biding its time in order to give a clear victor in the conflict a chance to emerge. It presented a problem, yes, but also an opportunity. Both sides dedicated probe expeditions in order to render more information. Mysterious Forge was an issue for both. It was true, but was a prize, nevertheless. Its sinister reputation and storied past, not least its vital intervention in the Rangdan Xenocides, rendered it for both sides a potentially deadly ally and an equally deadly prospect of an enemy. Reports from the expeditions clearly revealed what Terra and Horus had feared and expected. Dozens of macro carriers were extant in the asteroid belt that ringed the gas giant Zana I, and many more likely were concealed within its rocky ring. Between them and the Forge world of Zana II, there was a constant traffic of cargo loaders. This massive military buildup could be utilized for one of three outcomes, by the Vodian Consistory itself, or to present to whichever side they had decided to ship this great boon to. After all, for all the storage capabilities these conveyors possessed, it appeared for all the world that whatever was being contained within was being readied for delivery to a prospective client. Both sides moved quickly upon this revelation. On Terra, the Praetorian, Rogaldorn, Primarch of the Seventh Legion, Imperial Fists, issued a very publicly visible declaration. Zana was Traetorus Perdicia, blast to the Imperium and Loyalist Mechanicum, and would exist evermore under the penalty of death for refusing to declare for Terra and Mars. At the same time, another, more official, Imperial dispatch was sent by the Agents of Malkador, the Sigilite, offering the Vodian Consistory clemency from Dorn's Rit, should Zana pledge, however loudly or quietly they desired, for the Emperor. And for whatever arms and armaments they were stockpiling, to be delivered immediately and with all haste to Terra, to serve in the Praetorian's fortification of Sol and the surrounding segmentum. The Warmaster, however, took a far subtler route. In the stroke of Cannae political operating, Horus did not dispatch one of his true Mechanicum emissaries. These magi who had declared for his banner saw themselves as the true lords of the red planet, and while their aims for the future of their polity were far from what the Mechanicum had been under its partnership with Terra, Horus reasoned that the coldness the Martian envoys to Zana had been received with in the past was reason enough to try a different route. The plenipotentiary of the Warmaster was a Davenite Lodge Priest, one of those strange animalistic cultists that had borne Horus through his recovery upon that fell world, and in dire retrospect, were clearly devotees of the ruinous powers of the Dark Pantheon. Identified by panicked loyalist agents as one Unvacar Noon, he was quite unlike what any would have expected, a bizarre barbarian looking individual bedecked with feathers and bones. Belying his appearance, however, his words were Cannae, civilized and above all, honeyed. In contrast with the agents of the Sigilite, he did not make any demands, only offers. This was no stick, like the Declaration of Dorn. It was only a carrot. Unvacar Noon offered boons. It was a tactic often leveraged by the Warmaster in his dealings with the Mechanicum. Just as his Primarch brothers and elements of the Legionnaires of Startes had been one to his banner by their various displeasures and hatreds of aspects of the Imperium and its rule, so too did Horus exploit the grievances of the Mechanicum forges that were historically at odds with Mars. Cyclothraith and Serum, for instance, are perfect examples. Worlds and systems won by Horus by offering them independence of rule and experimentation free from the restrictions yoked upon them by the Red Planet. In many ways, the diffuse and fractious Mechanicum made this a far easier task than the same amongst the Imperium, what with its complex web of feudalism being no difficult thing to sunder with promises of less responsibilities and more freedom. Unvacar Noon proffered such freedom to the Lords of Zanna, pointing to the crimes committed against them by the Imperium with its tithes and demands, the losses the Tagumata Zanna had endured fighting the Emperor's enemies and the diligence of how they had supplied the Imperium, but the lack of gratitude the Terra bade towards them. Under Horus's new Imperium, the Emissary promised, the accords Zanna would be allied under would be far more to their liking, but none of the ignorant meddling of Martian law or the heavy-handed bans the Emperor had placed upon their research and development. All the secrets of science they wished to uncover would be theirs to play with, Horus's envoy promised, just so long as the forge would supply the Warmaster in his struggle to oust the tyrannical Emperor. The details of the new accords were, however, far more complicated in their establishment, and it was confirmable that the Vodian Consistory, even after an agreement in implication had been reached with the agents of the Warmaster, continued in bad faith, or at least opportunism, to liaise with the Emissaries of the Sigillite, playing both sides for seemingly as long as possible. However, the die had been cast. Zanna's future was more clearly aligned with the freedom offered by this Davenite Priest, and in a stroke redolent of ancient contracts, this new era for the forge would be sealed with an exchange of gifts. Of course, the full might of Zanni an industry would be rendered unto Horus, as well as the bulk of the armaments the forge had been stockpiling, but in a stroke that surprised observers, the Consistory announced its intention to deliver to the Warmaster a truly unique gift, or rather, three of them, a trio of Ordinatus. The classification Ordinatus is a term reserved by the Mechanicum for the most powerful land-based weapons platforms they were capable of maintaining and developing. Typically mounted on massive tracked motility carriages and shielded to almost impervious degrees against outside attack, an Ordinatus is a weapon whose power eclipses all others, beyond those mounted on a kilometers-long spacecraft. Ordinati took no consistent pattern. It was a designation and a class rather than a nominate of rule. Weaponry could take the form of matter cyclone projectors, rad conflagrators, or magna beams, but what united them was their sheer potency and destructive potential. These devices were city slaughterers and engine slayers, creations capable of turning the tide of battle with a single shot or bringing down even the mightiest god engines of the Titan legions, whose power they often outlast. Ordinati of the Primaris grade were things ancient indeed, unique creations of the dark age of technology whose artifice was lost to time and whose rights of maintenance were a secret known only to a scant few. Ordinati of the Minoris grade were only Minoris in comparison to the un-eclipsable power of the Primaris grade. To even dub the Minoris denigrates the potential for civilization-ending annihilation they carried. Their manufacture, during the years of the great crusade, were reserved to only the most advanced of Forge worlds, steeped in ancient and secret knowledges. And even in this case, the creation was a process of decades, a painstakingly difficult process fraught with danger and undertaken rarely. This, then, was the Boon Zana was to present to Horus. Three Ordinati's eulatours, battle-ready and carrying sonic destructor cannons that surpassed in lethality any single device in the entire traitor arsenal. Even the diamantine siege weapons bequeathed in ignorance by the lion to 4th Legion Primarch Pertorabo prior to the drop-side massacre. The gift was kingly indeed, a staggering statement on the part of Zana, and one whose motivations must be examined further. One is of the mind that such a move was almost certainly a stab in the side of Mars, and, more particularly, her fabricator general, Kelbor Hale. Sworn to the Warmaster for his own aims, Hale had retained every single Ordinatus he controlled, and that was controlled by his Mechanicum Fieftums and Satrapies, releasing to the Warmaster only what devices, automata, or tagmata he deemed acceptable. With this trio, Zana made a move unlike any other Mechanicum polity had, and likely did so to seek to supplant or weaken the fabricator general in the eyes of the Warmaster, and to become the preeminent forge to be relied upon once Horus' new Imperium was birthed. The handover of the Ordinatei was to be conducted with full ceremonial majesty. Named Nepothax, Mithrax, and Asherax after ancient Terran divinities, the weapons would be first demonstrated to the Warmaster's chosen emissary on the dead moon of Zana to Siphony, a warworld utilized by the Magi of the Forge as weapons and technology testing grounds. The envoy in question would this time, now 009 M30, be no priest of Daven, but a member of the Sons of Horus themselves. Raxhal Coridon, captain within the elite Catulan Reavers of the Legion's first company, was a bloody figure who had won much acclaim for his butchering of his former Astartes brothers during the purging of loyalist elements on Istvan III. Coridon's status had only increased following the Dropside Massacre, becoming quite the rising star within the Legion for his efficacy in leading traitor compliance actions across segmentum obscurus. He was known to carry the favor of the Warmaster with a pride that equaled his brutal efficiency, and was clearly selected for the role of emissary for both the prestige he represented as a member of the Legion's first company, but also for the sheer violence he implied by his very existence. Both of these were to be reinforced by the vessel that bore Coridon to the Forge world itself, a Geryon-class Grand Cruiser named Kiketrice Tyrannus, seized as a prize from the Imperium during the Battle of Port Moor. Her hull, previously a finely wrought artifice of white and gold, was now scoured black by the fires of war that the sons of Horus and Coridon specifically had flung her might into, a fitting symbol for the once fine warship's fall from grace at the hands of her new masters. Within her escort flotella was born four Isos-class fleet tempers, armed transports within whose holds was held the gift of the Warmaster for the Vodian Consisterery, the dead and destroyed of Istvan itself, and scores of other battlefields that had felt the wrath of the sons of Horus. Tuzana, the Warmaster, presented nothing less than the knowledge of the Legiones Astartes, torn to pieces shredded to wreckage, but with all the secrets of the Emperor's gene-craft and artifice there for the Magi to pick apart like carrion birds. There was no collection of detritus. It was lore of a priceless quantity, a feast for inquiring minds now unshackled from the rules that had previously bound them. It was an absolute statement of the new paradigm Tuzana would occupy in partnership with Horus Lupercal. Yet, as history would so often have it, this was not to be the end of the story. Revelations unexpected lay in Tuzana's future. The mysteries of Tuzana have been revealed to thee, and if they have not one would highly recommend parsing the previous record entry in this duality, as therein you shall find the elucidation needed to proceed further along the path of the curious tale of this most sinister of Forge worlds. The pieces had been set, and the board was in play. Tuzana had offered itself to Horus Lupercal, traitorous Warmaster, in exchange for his boons and a place of primacy at his side, perhaps indeed one prestigious enough to challenge the paramountcy of Mars as the lead arbiter of all things within the new Mechanicum. To achieve this, Tuzana would not only grant to Lupercal the surplus of arms and armaments it had been greedily stockpiling since the outbreak of the heresy, but a trio of Ordinatus eulitor war machines, arcane and devastating mobile weapons platforms of unspeakable power. Yet, for all their aims and machinations, politicking and backstabbing, for all their assurances in the power of their Forge, their technology, their place within the galaxy, things did not go quite as the lords of Tuzana had intended. No then, that this be in second part the story of that benighted Forge world, the retribution of Terra that was about to befall them, the fateful conflict known as the Zana Incursion. The handover of the Ordinatae to the agents of the Warmaster was to be the pact that would seal Zana's future. It was an event the Vodian Consistory intended to deliver with all due reverence. Horus, too, knew the power of a deal, and the sheer boon the war machines represented, and accordingly had sent a captain of his first company Reavers, Raxhal Coridon, at the head of a flotilla of 16th Legion ships in the captured Grand Cruiser Kikatrice Tyrannus. Coridon was escorting the Warmaster's own gift, treasure trove of captured technology and biology from every single loyalist Astartes Legion. The stage was set for a summit that looked to shift the balance of the heresy in the western galactic reaches. But fate had other plans. As the Warmaster's ships hoeve into the orbit of the Titanic gas giant Zana-1, on final approach to the Forge world itself, Ospex Grids aboard ship and planet side blared emergency signals, indicating a sudden in-system warp translation. Pinpointed to a volume almost insanely close to the inner system's gravity well, a forced translation of scores of warships was confirmed by the traitor fleet. The incoming vessels made absolutely no attempt to hide who and what they were. Immediately identifiable as Imperial and Loyalist, with their choice of real-space entry, a statement in and of itself. Here, now, was Terra's retribution, for to attempt translation so close to the gravitic alignment of the local star and its planets was a manoeuvre rarely attempted for how lunatic dangerous it was. At the van was a ship of simply peerless pedigree, the Amphion, a Gloriana-class grand battleship whose mark was typically reserved for serving as flagships of the Legion Primarchs or the Emperor himself. The Amphion was one of the strategic lynchpins of Battlefleet Solar, and her presence here at the edge of the intergalactic gulf represented one thing, the judgment of the Praetorian of Terra, Roguel Dorn. Machine minds of Zanna process the deluge of Saint Sauriam data within human rapidity, conferring with Magi who likewise conferred amongst their fellows through new-spheric tele-links. They confirmed, beyond doubt, that there were now five enemy capital ships inbound with a host of escort cruisers and frigates, as well as a dozen transport craft whose emission patterns were utterly inconsistent with ships of their class. To the automata processes of Zanna this indicated in stark terms the process of the raid, for raid it was. This was no invasion, the transports were not loaded with troops, but munitions, their reactors already running hot beyond their thresholds. Suicidecraft, fire, ships, kill vessels for the Forge's own macro-conveyors, and those of the traitors. For all the fleet destroying power of a DeLoreanna-class battleship, the Amphion was there to primarily cover these vessels on their final desperate attack runs. Dorn's decision was clear, brutally clear, as is his character. Terra had lost Zanna, and now it was imperative for the Loyalist cause that the wealth of the Forge be denied to the Warmaster and his ilk. The entire Zanna system reacted as a kin to a biological system detecting a bacterium. Across the volume, everything from patrol automata to monitorships to battle arcs awoke with blinding speed, altering their trajectories and running attack vector calculations upon the intruders. The full processing power of the system's worth of cogitators bent to tabulating and re-tabulating millions of tactical projections. Within the asteroid belt of the gas giant, void servitors broke from their steel containment holds. Giant automata cephalopods, the size of frigates blistering with mechanical tentacles, igniting dead reactors, and now powering towards the Loyalist fleet. Despite the skill of the invaders and their navigators, their point of translation left them hours from their targets, and the Forge world had plenty of time to react to this intrusion into their territory. Naturally, the Sons of Horus vessels blitzed the Zanian new sphere with hails and confirmation requests, demanding updates on just what the Consistory intended to do about the invaders. Despite, of course, the very clear sensor readings on their own ships confirming the apocalyptic response of both void weaponry and fleet disposition that the Forge was now throwing at the Loyalists. The Magi of Zanna apologized profusely to their guests, stating that under no circumstances would the formalities be delayed or interrupted, nor would the demonstration of the Ordinati Corridon was scheduled to attend upon Zanna to Siphony. The ongoing situation was now another demonstration that Zanna was being forced to display, one of their own strength in the face of the enemy themselves. A test unasked for, but nevertheless risen to, lest the Warmaster's agents developed second thoughts about their Forge's capabilities or their commitment. There would, there could, be no loss of face here, so even as the system aroused itself like a nest of serpents, the accords continued to proceed as the Vodian Consistory had laid them out. As per arrangement, the gifts of Horus Lupacal made planetfall at the main Forges of Zanna too, Cetna, Escorial, and Tefra. The move assumed to be one to diffuse possible tensions amongst the ranking Magi of the regime by ensuring the carrion spoils were divvied up equanimously. The treasure would of course remain sealed within the various transport barges until Zanna had fulfilled its end of the bargain, locked under coded key numericles known only to the Warmaster's agents. Meanwhile, the 16th Legion cleaved into geosynchronous orbit over the testing ranges of Zanna to Siphony. The flotilla, with the barbarous Kikatris Taranus sheltered from the waves of munitions rocketing out system by the bulk of the planetoid. The Sons of Horus Detachment made planetfall in force, far more force indeed than the Lords of Zanna had expected. While not atypical for the Sons of Horus and their bellicose nature, it was nevertheless judged within New Spheric Communion as a mark of displeasure at the ongoing situation in the system, as well as a statement of expectation. This was the power of Horus. Zanna must respond in kind to prove itself worthy of the Warmaster's beneficence. Standing ready to meet the delegation, it is understood that the Zanian magi were represented by Archmejo's procurator Gillum Raijan, the prime arbiter of the United Voidian Consistory. This is largely all that can be corroborated about the meeting itself. It is easy to verify the participants of such a tree in a summit far less so to establish the nature of their parley, let alone its content. That being said, what does remain suggests the encounter was far from cordial. The Sons of Horus were at this point in their existence given to brutish candor that cleaved to belligerence and arrogance, which was ill at ease with the cold precision to formality favored by Zanian magi. The presence of Uncavar Noon, the Davenite Priest that had first brokered communication between the Forge and the Warmaster, was a curious oddity that nevertheless managed to soothe the rancor of his legion masters and placate the magi, mentioning nothing of the ongoing loyalist force powering towards them, nor the munitions, automata and starships being flung back. Both sides were eager to proceed with the demonstration and passed the strained pleasantries, and thus did the Lords of Zana reveal to the Warmaster's plenipotentiaries a tableau macabre indeed. The magi had built a false war for their guests, an enemy comprised of thousands of slave soldiers, ranging from abhuman thralls to chattel stock of the Forges, captured loyalist prisoners, even adsecularist divisions, all the products of Zana's greedy resource raids and incredible industry. All bore one thing in common, the suicide collar around their necks, devious device capable of remote detonation with a new spheric whim of the magi they were slaved to. Equipped with everything from small arms to common patterns of imperial battle line tanks, all of these slaves had been injected with a series of chemical and narcotic stimulants to spike their aggression centers, and all had been ordered to simply do one thing. Survive. The gates to the prison forge rent open, bequeathing unto the battlefield the triad of monstrosities that were the loci of the entire event, Nephothax, Ushorax, and Mithrax, the Ordynati. With a neurothropic pulse, the magi ordered their prisoners forward. Any who resisted knew it was death, any with the ken to see what was coming knew obedience was also death. Observing the entire thing from within armored cabins of their mastodon transports, with the sons of Horus, void shielded against the pattering small arms fire of the slave army, helm lenses panning and zooming to where the weaponry of Zanna had perched itself. Surging forward, the desperate charges of the magi swept towards the Ordynati, firing their guns and loosing random unguided explosive projectiles against the shielded weapons platforms in vain. It was a forlorn hope that they may somehow win their freedom, but no time was wasted by the Zannians. They saw little need to build tension, engaging in theatrics, merely to run the demonstration to the letter. The weapons spoke, and did so with a voice that broke the world. Sonic Destructor Canon's function, according to what one has found amongst prescribed writings within the Indeptus Mechanicus's data stacks, by collating through its generators and focusing disc sonic energy of such a potent waveform that it can rupture the bonds of matter within said waves path. The ground before them was recorded to have undulated with the blast wave, solid rock moving as akin to a roiling sea. The firing of such weapons produced a sound that annihilated all other sound into silence. So loud it breached the boundaries of what can even be considered noise. Bodies at the center of the waveform were simply turned into a red mist, and that mist evaporated into steam by sheer crushing force. Those closer to the edges had their bodies pulverized beyond all possible recognition. Any who were at the periphery and managed to survive did so with either their bodies, or minds, or indeed both, shattered, their very selves physically and mentally broken by the force of destruction that had just been unleashed upon them. One barrage had broken the slave army's resolve utterly, but the ordinary had only begun. The collared chattel of Xana had been encased in defense of an artificial cityscape, one that had been built and destroyed and built again at the whims of the mage eye of the forge, and their weapons testing requirements. Streaming forth from it now, goaded again by kill signals from the collars, was a second slave tide, this one comprising of assorted armored columns and heavy infantry divisions. No doubt having witnessed the annihilation of the previous engagement, if such slaughter can even be referred to as such, the tempo of this attack on the ordinary was far more fevered and desperate, but alas for naught. The ulitors spoke and all was unto dust. The killing would proceed for several hours hence. Again and again the slaves of the mage eye were brought before the ordinate in various combinations. Combined arms, mobile infantry, jump troops, automata divisions, even super heavy armored and self-propelled artillery tanks of rarer legion marks, all were simply snuffed out of existence by the voices of the ordinate. It was a charade by this account, a masquerade of a real battle. In realistic terms, devices such as ordinate's weapons could not have succeeded on their own against a decently led and coordinated force of arms, but that of course was not the point. The demonstration was just that, a demonstration, a chance to revel in the destruction across the torn and sundered battlefield, a blood bath of staggering proportions, painted by the destructive potential of the weaponry. One expects that the traitorous war master would have been most pleased. As the bloody ruin of the ordinate was unfolding, a similar catatlysm was also proceeding in the silence of the void. The system defense fleet of Zanna had engaged the attacking loyalist ships spearheaded by the Anfion. The mechanical vessels were charged with extreme urgency from the forge, with destroying the loyalist fire ships destined for the system's surplus supplies, and all ships in the attacking fleet knew their protection was the highest priority. Imperial ships formed a wedge formation with the Anfion at the vanguard, the weaponry and sheer brute force of the gloriana class trusted to carve a path through any that stood before her, as the loyalists continued in full burn towards Zanna. Her escorts frantically kept pace and tallies, attempting wherever possible to maneuver into gaps left within their lines or torn open by rabid servitor ships and monitor vessels. Often this would necessitate these ships using their own voids and even superstructures to protect the fire ships from incoming munitions, and although the punishing batteries from the Anfion and they themselves wrought terrible retribution upon the mechanical defenders, the hosts of Zanna were many, and those of the Imperium quite a bit more finite. The first loyalist casualty was a battleship to Ken's fury, first falling out of formation, its hull burning from scores of lance attacks, shortly thereafter joined in fiery death by the specter of Io, whose crew and armsmen had been utterly overrun by boarding parties of Thalax and Castalax Automata, launched from a half dozen Xenian transport box. The only reprieve for the Imperium was the falling silent of the defense platforms and ground batteries of the forge world itself, who, after hurling hours of munitions towards the attacking fleet, had bled their ammunition silos dry and were testing the operational limits of their barrels and firing chambers. As resupply orders were hurriedly prioritized, it was nevertheless clear that the battle would now be won and lost with the ships in play, but as cold consensus across the new sphere held, the attrition rate was swinging in Zanna's favor. That was, of course, until a completely unprecedented occurrence. For the second time that solar cycle, warp incursion detection engines screamed in acknowledgement of a new and unaccountable signal. Had this been in the system's outer reaches, it would have been perhaps indicative of loyalist reinforcements to the oncoming fleet. It was not, however, far from it. The signal was instead emerging from an impossibly close volume of the gas giant Zanna-1. Queries were flashed between ospex magi at the speed of thought, for surely this was a malfunction, only for harsh binaric blirts confirming that all machinery was operating within wholly demanded parameters being their answer. No, a ship had translated into the atmosphere of the planet itself, totally within the now depleted defense cordon of the Forge's batteries. All possible ships had burned out of the planet's local volume to intercept the loyalist fleet. There was none anywhere within even a proximate interception range. The ship rose from the merc cleanly and efficiently, with early visual logs parsing a sable dark superstructure of a unique disposition. This made identification for the magi of Zanna easy, although, and one may editorialize here, hopefully terrifying even for their cold machine minds. Unique was this vessel in so many ways, for she was not merely the creation of the Imperium, nor even Mechanicum. She was a ship older still, older than all record. This craft had been raised from the ice of Ganymede, the moon of Jupiter, in distant sol. It was a treasure of the dark age of technology, bequeathed by the Emperor himself to his most lethal destroyers at the very beginning of the great crusade. She was the Dark Sovereign Archaeocruiser of the First Legion Dark Angels. To experience acolytes, it should come as little surprise that the First Legion were in possession of such a vessel. The Angels, as the first combined Astarty's mainline combat force, had a storied history since the Unification Wars as being the Emperor's Angels of Death, and had proven themselves time and time again to be capable of meeting out his most righteous annihilation upon whatsoever promised mankind death, destruction, or worse. The Lord of Lightning had provided the First since its earliest days, with an arsenal of technology that vastly outstripped impotency and lethality, those of many other legions, and this extended to their fleet. Amongst the Starships, the Dark Angels were able to call upon were Marx truly unique in the galaxy, Relic ships of the dark age of technology, whose methods of creation had been lost in the downfall of that last epoch, but whose weapons systems granted them a deadliness that belied their size. What is of course surprising is the presence of the Dark Sovereign here, at Zana at this vital moment. Certainly the appearance of the cruiser, as well as in the volume of her translation, added a completely unseen series of factors into the defense of the Forge world, whose Magi, even as she rose from the atmosphere of Zana I, furiously re-ran their calculation torrents over what this could potentially mean. On the surface of Zana to Siphony, the artificial war was immediately halted as a conducting Magi, with Arch-Majos procurator Rai-Jan at their center, inloaded this new data with alarm. Seeing as how the only fighting vessels within range were those belonging to the guests of the Consistory, Rai-Jan turned to position the sons of Horus to engage their erstwhile cousins. He intended to do so through the voice of Uncavar Noon, the Davonite priest, only to find that the priest was no longer there. A different figure occupied his place, one who now plunged an electroshock barb into the Arch-Majos' body, as a massive figure of Rax-Hell Corridon stepped forward, crushing the tech-priest Skull with his fist. Amidst the thunder and fury of the incoming loyalist fleet and the rising tide of devastation, the Dark Sovereign was only just beginning to reap upon the now-spent orbital defense platforms of the Forge World. The deception upon Zana to Siphony went, initially, unnoticed, and this was all the opportunity the deceivers upon its surface needed to begin their operation in earnest. Rax-Hell Corridon was obviously not who he claimed to be, nor indeed were any within his entourage, from the Astartes to the Davonite. Acolytes will forgive me my misdirection at this point, it was simply a bit too delicious to deprive you of the surprise Zanian Mijai must no doubt have also experienced. The Astartes, Corridon, was in reality Endrid Har, the former captain of the 12th Legion world-eaters called Rivenhound by many who had grown to either admire or dread his reputation. Har was one of the oldest members of the 12th Legion, a Terran ascended to Astartes' status during the Unification Wars themselves, before the Legion was known as the world-eaters, before even they were known as the Warhounds. An unusually large marine, with a far higher than average degree of physical prowess, he had risen to prominence during those early days, with a marked lethality even amongst a legion of superlative butchers. During the revolt of the Date Tar, for instance, he had dispatched a Renegade Thunder Warrior in single combat by breaking the Gene Warrior's neck, even while each of the Brute's fellows had required the strength and skills of four to five Astartes to bring down. Following the Legion's reunification with its Primarch, Anggron, Har had been one of the few members of the newly renamed Eaters of Worlds to not accept the implantation of the so-called Butcher's Nails. The cybernetic implants fused the root of the Primarch's brain, and by whose actions the aggression centers of the mind were continually stimulated. Har had declared such a gesture empty, a position that had won him little favor within the reorganizing Legion, and one that would find him placed effectively into exile. Seconded to a group of Astartes drawn from all legions for clandestine activities at the behest of none other than Malkador the Sigilite, Har would spend the remainder of the Great Crusade upon such missions. At the time of the heresy's outbreak, the world-eater renounced both his Legion and his Primarch, consigning himself to the fate of a Black Shield, a legionary without a legion, swearing, as he did so, an oath of death that would see him pledged to atone in action and body for the crimes of his gene sire and Earth's twiled brothers until the time of his perishing. It is believed that Endred Har was accompanied by fellow Black Shields upon Zanatysiphany, and though it cannot be directly confirmed if the agents of the Sigilite were present, such a conclusion would not be considered, at least by yours truly, to be out of reach. While the formation of Malkador's Knights errant had not yet occurred in any true sense, the presence of a shape-shifting agent leads one to suspect the hand of the assassinorum-clad Calidus, whose deployment was typically sanctioned by the Imperial Master of Assassins, an office held by none other than the Sigilite himself. The Astartes, however, were cast-offs in a similar vein to Har. They had renounced their ties to their former legions and Primarchs in disgust over their traitorous actions. The disguise as the Sons of Horus had been total. Clearly, at some point prior to the Zana incursion, Endred Har and his Black Shields had both killed Raxal Corridon and seized the Kiketris Tyranus from the now dead captain, and had managed to do so without alerting the command echelons of the 16th Legion. The loyalist Astartes immediately seized the prizes within their grasp, all three of the Ordinati once destined for the armies of Horus Lupercal, and added to their reveal by corrupting the slave collars of the remaining Zanian prisoners, with Data Jinn torn from the banks of the still twitching body of the Arch-Majos Procurator. The slaves, freed from the baleful neurotropic influence of their rapidly dwindling Magi Handlers, ran amok, adding to the chaos of the scene as the wet wear of the Guardian Autometer struggled to compensate for the sudden abundance of enemies in their midst. In orbit, the Kiketris Tyranus maneuvered to block herself from the attentions and potential retribution of the surface batteries of Zana proper. Placing herself on the dark side of Tysiphany and refusing all hails that requested, and laterally demanded, she engaged the Dark Angels. Her launch bays crashed open as she began a full-scale drop assault on the testbed moon, dropping a company-sized Astartes force in the bellies of screaming Stormbird and Thunderhawk gunships. Endred Har's plan was proceeding apace. The first legion, meanwhile, was laying into the defenseless and scattering bulk haulers within the rings of Zana-1, as a predator would amongst livestock. The macro-carriers, preferred by the Mechanicum, and of course Zana, were colossal barks that knew no war, merely the long, plodding cargo runs they had intended to spend their entire service history undertaking. They had little in the way of shields. They had nothing in the way of weaponry. Even if they had not been caught at anchor, drives depowered reactors running cool, they would not have been able, even at full burden, to outrun a warship, especially not the one that was travelling towards them. The blade of the void-black cruiser carved through them as a knife through paper. Hundreds of vessels were sliced by contemptuous land strikes or set burning and wrecked by a light barrage of macro cannon fire. The Dark Sovereign reaved through the flotilla, annihilating her way to the central targets. The oldest Mechanicum barks Zana possessed. Unlike the carriers burning in their surrounding volume, these ships had, in their numbers, some teeth to resist the predations of the First Legion's cruiser, and once a firing solution was locked, they wasted no time in doing so. The barrage had little effect on the oncoming ship, whose technology and systems were of an age older and stranger than even the one that had wrought the Mechanicum ships, but her target was almost as esoteric as she was. A bizarre Mechanicum Droman, of a crystalline form that loyalist echelons had only been able to establish the name of, Mu-571. Undeniably of Xenos origin, this Droman was just one of the many mysteries Azanian priests had half kept hidden from the rest of the galaxy. The weapon's fire of the Dark Sovereign ceased as all of the vessel's arcane reactor output was channeled to shields and engines. The latter to catch her quarry, the former to ensure its protectors, could not arrest the hunt. Mu-571 burned engines at full to try and escape the oncoming blade, but it was for naught. The Sovereign clipped her topside, demolishing the Droman's shields with the sheer force of kinetic energy and sending the vessel spinning hopelessly out of inertial control. Its proximity allowed her to deliver a lethal payload, too, for within the bowels of Mu-571, suddenly materialized teleport spores, and the strain ships deckplating soon reverberated with the pounding adamantine steps of dark angel terminators. What was now to forever be known as the Zana Incursion was fully unfolding. Upon the benighted forgeworld itself, the newsphere was in what was as close to chaos as a consistory could reasonably permit. Data of bursts flashed across the planet near instantaneously, the crania of hundreds of mejai running hot and burning through coolant fluids as they processed the scale of what was happening. No doubt, amidst the constant inloading and unloading of binaric information, was coded many an accusation of dereliction of duty, or process, or obligations, and equally, there was little doubt that heads, or cranial extrusions, were and would roll for this. The Mechanicum of Zana may have been cold, secluded in alien, even by the standards of their kind, but they were still human, and they had been forced into a corner unlike any they had either expected or could have possibly predicted. The Vodian Consistory managed to maintain order, however, and despite the fury contained in the loji streams of each senior mageos, resolved to focus now on defending what could yet be defended. The loyalist fleet headed by the Amphion had been unexpected, but by the calculations run globally, defeatable regardless of the cost that may have been incurred. The arrival of an Archaeocruiser, bearing legion troops no less, and fully within the nominal defense volume of the forge, that was another matter entirely. Factoring that into the sudden betrayal of the Sons of Horus now fully understood by the Consistory, the Lords of Zana had lost not only the spatial volume of Zana 1, and their precious surplus stockpiles, but also the planetoid of Zana Tysiphonii, and the three Ordynatae destined for the Warmasters armies. Newspheric consensus was reached rapidly, although not nearly at the speed that the Gestalt had reached when reacting to the initial invasion. Override signals were fired into the defense picket ships that were currently savaging the Amphion and her escorts. Calculations predicted the withdrawal, for withdrawal it was, would be a costly one, but necessary in the face of now not one, but two completely unchallenged capital ships closer to planet side, the Dark Sovereign and the Kickatrice Tyrannus. Both were currently occupied, clearly, but both were unknown factors pursuing unaccountable aims, and in the face of the sheer power they represented, the Magi had no other sound choice. The paranoid decision may be, but pragmatic in many respects. The idea that there could yet be more loyalists in hiding, in disguise, or on their way in system, ruled the minds of the Consistory. They had suffered not one, but three separate and wholly unique catastrophes this day. They would not suffer more, catching them unprepared. And yet, they would. What occurred next is even more difficult to account for, in parsing the records of what remains about the Zana incursion. These even have largely been pieced together by predecessors to yours truly, from scattered vox logs and corrupted awe-specs screeds and fragmented vid recordings. What best work has been done was penned in the years prior to the Siege of Terra by Morphidia Tural, an exiled Zani in Majos who survived the heresy by petitioning the Praetorian for clemency in exchange for information. It is thanks to her seminal work, the paradoxes of binaric loyalty being in part the penance of the lost with diverse discussions pertaining to the Mechanicum that was, that one is even able to formulate one's own Chronicle, and we have a hint of what unfolded upon the surface of Zana II as a conflict raged throughout its system. According to Tural's work, and as Acolytes will of course remember, the Warmaster's carrion cargo of Legionnaires Astartes' corpses and technology had been delivered to the major forged starports of the Consistory, lying under lock and key until the demonstration of the Ordenatae was concluded. With the Sons of Horus that had delivered them, now revealed to in fact be the Black Shields of Endred Har, it was only a canny few magi that questioned just what these cargo haulers may contain, and despite the paranoia that was now ruling the Vodian Consistory, despite the resolve of the Newsphere to never be caught unaware again, from within these containers came now the pounding of armored fists and the tearing of metal. From within, they were rent, and out, well, the dead walked. In silent advance came Astartes, clad in the livery of the Ravenguard, the Iron Hands, the Salamanders, the betrayed and shattered legions who fell victim to the Warmaster on Istaman V, but also others, the Yellow of the Imperial Fists, the Pale Plate of the Whitescars. This revenant army was accompanied by a ram shackle series of armored vehicles and tracked weapons batteries, even dreadnought chassis. The defense automata and the adsecularis thralls of the port were immediately overwhelmed, while the Consistory, its multifarious oculi fixed firmly on orbital defense, once again found a foe in their midst, and once again, whose nature was wholly unexpected. Even once the Tagma of the Forges, the individual magi and automata and machina mannipals that made up the Mechanicum's Tagmata rushed to respond to this fresh invasion. They found themselves facing a wholly unstammable tide. This was no ordinary Astartes foe, but one of disturbing and unnatural resilience. The legionaries would lose limbs to mauler bolt cannon fire, but continue to fight. They displayed little issue in the wake of rad charges or chem rounds, armor that should have been rendered cord and dead by dozens of las cannon rounds continued to power forward, grinding automata under their tracks. Worse, at least from a strategic point of view, was that there was no means of communication to interrupt, no network for the Xanian magi to interrupt with data gin, no vox of any kind. The army was silent, but appeared to have only one goal, to kill until they could not. Fanning out through the forge veins of Xana, these Gola Astartes did just that. They killed and killed and killed. Xana too was now burning. Fifteen hours since the Amphion and her fleet had broken from the Materium, the previously unblemished volume under the rule of Xana was in ruins. The fleet of the forge disengaging and burning hard for the orbit of their homeworld was operating at only 33% of its starting disposition, having sustained dire casualties and damage in its costly disengagement with the oncoming Loyalist Armada. Although, of course, the Armada was oncoming no more. The Amphion and what remained of her escorts too disengaged, hulls scored and pitted from hours of punishing battle, but her fire ships no longer acquired, for in the rings of Xana I, the once mighty surplus stock that had been their target was burning. Over 70% of the arms and armaments that had been destined for the War Masters armies had been destroyed by the passage of the Dark Angels, who even now were running hard for the system's closest Mandeville point, the strange bulk of Mu-571 accompanying them as a prize. On the surface of Xana II itself, the Revenant army had finally been halted, but at the cost of mobilizing the entirety of the world's tag meta and its bonded nighthouse, Malonax. The sinister pilots of this nighthouse were combat veterans all, many having recently returned from service in Horus-aligned expeditionary fleets, but their prosecution of the Astartes invaders ultimately would cost them over half of the suits they possessed. There was no surrender called for, but the invaders had not even made a hint of communication anyway. Their progress was only arrested when the final Astartes had been broken in body so utterly as to be unable of movement. Tefra, Forge, had lost several of its reactors to breaches, rendering much of its territory uninhabitably radiation-soaked even by mechanical standards. While in escorial Forge, the invaders had breached the warren of subterranean tunnels the facilities extended into, forcing the Xanian tag meta into a costly and painfully protracted underground purgation operation. On the rent and ruptured testing grounds of Xana Tysiphany, matters were even bloodier. The slave population of the world had been liberated by the Astartes under Endred Har, and in the resulting chaos the Black Shields had ransacked the research and development facilities planet side, confiscating all technology they could and destroying all they could not. Curiously though, their progress had been stymied by the sudden appearance from the world's prison fanes of a brazen automata of hitherto unknown configurations. Quite unlike the Cybernetica, the Black Shields had battled during their takeover of Tysiphany, these machines were motivated by what was to all the world a predatory instinct, quite unlike the lumbering nature of the other automata, and Har's forces found themselves wholly unprepared for the viciousness of their assault. Quite who or what was directing them was at the time impossible to ascertain, and in a fighting retreat to consolidate what gains they had made, the Black Shields lost the Ordinatus Nepothax to the Revenous Cyberfiends, destroyed as a machine was rendered in its attempted recapture. This was the final straw for the former world eater who ordered a full-scale planetary withdrawal of his forces and the remaining two war engines. Despite sustaining damage as a powered out system, the Kikatris Tyranus managed to make her warp translation, and with the subsequent departure of the Amphion and her fleet, as well as a Dark Sovereign, the Zana Incursion, as an operation, came to a close. The whole affair is a series of cascading curiosities to say the least. Almost all of the major involved parties possessed motives that seemingly and paradoxically operated both in concert and opposed to one another. It is by what records remain impossible to ascertain if the Retribution Fleet of Terra, the Cruiser of the Dark Angels, and the False Sons of Horus under Endred Har, were even acting in concert. But given the consistency with which each was able to cover and supplement the efficacy of the others, surely some degree of coordination must have been agreed upon before time. It strikes one as impossible that such admittedly disparate loyalist elements could have compromised the defences of a world such as Zana to such a degree as they did while working alone or uncoordinated. But yet one can find no record of any such communion between them existing. Assuming, for the sheer sake of maintenance of sanity, if nothing else, that this combined operation linked the forces of the Praetorian with those of the Sigilite and those of the Dark Angels, for all of what it's worth, at this point, quite disparate elements in the military annals of the loyalists, it would appear that those under Endred Har and those of the First Legion were enlisted with the promise of prizes. For the Dark Angels, the strange Dromon, Mu-571, disappeared into the void with the Dark Sovereign. One will endeavor, of course, to uncover its fate, and whether its capture played any role in the Angel's prosecution of the Thramus Crusade, but I suspect not. If nothing else given the sheer galactic distance between the volumes of Zana and the then domain of the Night Haunter. Endred Har's forces made off with two of the three Ordynati. Not quite the victory they had clearly hoped to achieve, but a handsome prize nevertheless. Certainly, depriving the warmaster of these weapons and doing so while wearing Horus' own colours was no doubt a pleasing thing to the bitter Black Shield, and equally certainly, the presence of the Ordynati was a boon to the loyalists' defences of segmentum solar, until their reported destruction upon Beated Garmin, during the event known only as the Titan Death. Just as with the loss of the Ordynati, the great wealth of Zana was too deprived from Horus' clutches, and while the mundane contribution or lack thereof to the war effort that it would have represented can only be estimated versus the cost of the operation itself, such a blow was deemed satisfactory, as the mission's nominal success was communicated to those in the know, and the records were closed upon the matter. These mysteries, such as they are, are the least esoteric. Even the involvement of the First Legion pales in comparison to the curious case of the revenant Astartes that assaulted the Zanian Forges. Although one suspects some degree of parity, with other accounts from the Horus' heresy of equally disturbing nature. Dedicated Acolytes may remember, short while ago, your humble servant committed to record the case of the 10th Legion Iron Hands and their proscribed employment of a series of technologies known collectively as the Keys of Hell. Such rights, such machina, combined in dread symphony, were known, albeit apocryphally, to permit the employment of cybernetic resurrection. In short, the returning to life of those long dead by means technological. Such devices, such arts existed so far beyond the bounds of what can be considered safe or sane as to be considered lunacy by even those who were aware of them. But, as one discussed in said record, it is effectively confirmable that the Iron Hands, in their grief following the death of their Primarch, employed such technology to enact vengeance upon the forces of the Warmaster. Given the reports scattered that they may be, of what we know occurred on Zana, it appears safe to assume that, in this case, the Black Shields of Endretar possessed this technology and utilized it upon the dead and lost they had seized along with Coradon's diplomatic party. Weaponizing, the gift of Horus to the Magi of Zana, carries with it a certain barbed satisfaction, although one will not comment on the nigh heretical means through which it was accomplished. Best that be left for mines greater and wiser than mine. While the use of such techno-necromancy is the most likely explanation for the Gola unleashed upon the Magi of the Consistory, there is of course no way to be sure of such things. And even the records of that attack, admiral, as Morphidia Torell's work upon the matter is, remain disjointed and inconclusive. We must, unfortunately, place this particular case, this particular aspect of the incursion, amongst the sundry ominous mysteries of the age of darkness that yet remain unsolved and unaccountable for 10,000 years later. It would perhaps be remiss of me to call the final and most loathsome question of the conflict as one. I do so simply to remain true to the spirit of academic inquiry, as there can be no verifying the connection that I am nevertheless about to posit for the sake of clarity. The automata that suddenly arose from the underground prison complexes of Xana to Siphony to strike at Endred Har's Black Shields were of an entirely different caliber to those the Astartes had dispatched with relative ease during the assassination of the Arch-Major's Purcurator. They were, by accounts, collected from the data banks of the Kikatris Terranus, following her destruction later in the heresy, of an animalistic Mien, more akin to beast than battle robot. They were of patterns, undesurnable to the tech priests that examined any picked captures from the Astartes' helm logs. Nominal chassis remained, of course, of the typical Castellax, Vorax, and Domitar automata marks, but, for instance, all seem to have been subjected to modifications of such an extreme degree as to render them unclassifiable. No motivating force was discerned by the rapidly retreating Black Shields that fell under the voracious assault of these machines, and the tech marines attached to the company were only able to report the data links between them and whatever figure was holding their proverbial leashes was in a base can't unlike any they had encountered. Indeed, this was where any new-spheric links existed at all, for the tech marines were also given to report that, monstrously, most of the attacking automata were doing so of their own free will. This latter point, coupled with the violent behavior they displayed, of course draws one conclusion. Abominable intelligence. But I would caution you against jumping to that extreme just yet. To differentiate conjecture from plausibility in this regard, we must examine the latter history of Zana following the incursion. The raid damaged and depleted the Forge World's power severely, but not totally. The Provinder of Zana, the arms and armaments, to the Ordenatai, all had been denied to Horus, and perhaps could have been considered enough for Terra to rest comfortably in having wrought just retribution. But the incursion had of course cemented the pact between Zana and Horus nevertheless, and joined now they were in shared enemy and shared enmity. Most worryingly of all was that, according to loyalist intelligence, the Vodian Consistory was deposed almost immediately in the aftermath of the incursion, in a violent uprising by enraged magi across the Forge, who were being led by a darker force than even the ruling regime had been. One has noted, since the beginning of this record, that the Zanian Sinod had ever been typified as a coolly detached and isolated one, that verged on sinister, since the world was first reunited with the Imperium, and eventually torturously brought into its nominal umbrella rule. There had ever been rumours of just how such a Forge world breached the doctrines of the machine god, with their research and development. But without any form of oversight from Mars, a part of the compliance agreement signed by the Consistory with the Imperium, nothing could ever be confirmed. And it not was like the lords of Zana were going to tell anyway. The veil was of course utterly torn back in the aftermath of the incursion, with the rise of Zana's new regime, supported by the arts and artifices of the warmaster's dark hand. It would appear that, ironically, the rapidity of Zana's plunge into the foulest reaches of science and industry was the direct result of the assault of Haar's Black Shields. They had mounted upon the prison complexes of Zana to Siphony, and just quite what they unleashed within. Anacharis Scoria was, by scant references, a mageos-dominus in the service of the Vodian Consistory, several decades standard prior to the outbreak of the heresy. But for some unknown time, and for reasons redacted, he was stripped of his title of magister, and of his responsibilities, namely of being the chief enforcer of machine-cult doctrine to the regime. Imprisoned for these undisclosed crimes on, yes, Zana to Siphony, it was he who would in the aftermath of the incursion rise to power and prominence as the first amongst the world's new lords, earning the title the Zanophane Tyrant for his cold inhuman viciousness. Scoria's presence upon the battlefield of the Horus heresy as the years ground on towards a siege of terror are a matter of not inconsiderable debate, but where the new tag matter of Zana did march, they often did so accompanied by automata of unique brutality and violence. It is no small stretch of the imagination to presume that it was Scoria who was responsible for forcing the retreat of the Astartes who unwittingly freed him from his imprisonment. With dark irony, the driving force behind Zana's rebirth in later years was he. He, Scoria, led Zana to becoming one of the first hell-forges of the Dark Mechanicum. This, of course, was the ultimate fate of the world, consigned now forevermore to corruption, lunacy, and science unspeakable, a coalition of the insane and the abominable crafting the warp as they would their metals. The Zana incursion, as a loyalist operation, is a tale as fascinating as it is mysterious, and is likely we do not know the full ramifications of what was wrought that dreadful day, and we probably never will. Ave Imperator. Gloria in Excelsis, Terra. Thanks to the very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to Patreon.com slash Oculus Imperia. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.